Wild, Wild Fiji

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Boy what a week it has been, we've been up, we've been down, then back up and all with a happy ending. The week started with Monday (they often do) and the arrival of Nadia. Nadia will be Diveaway Fiji's new instructor for our Mango Resort operations. She comes to Fiji from the nice warm tropical country of England. OK, so she was a bit blue with frost bite getting off the plane but has since warmed up. She has dove other areas around the world from Indo to Utila so come stop by, have a beer and a dive (not in that order) and chat her up.

But then the down came in the form of downpours of bucket loads of rain from the second tropical depression of the year. Yes just like everywhere else Fiji can have not so great weather once and a while. With all the rain some areas in Fiji had some flooding problems and our rivers along the coral coast were swollen with runoff from the mountains. This large amount of water brought some unfavorable diving conditions and for a couple days we were left high and dry out of the water. Since we couldn't dive Vicky and I started practicing our pool volleyball skills and are getting quite good.

By Friday we were back to our standard of diving and our group of divers dropped into Bordello to find 30 meter viability with 5 turtles, eagle rays and boy did they come out of the water pumped all looking forward to what Saturday would hold. But even with the rain taking out a couple days of diving we still had several boat loads of divers smiling after their dives. Special thanks to Pat and Diana from Canada who made 6 dives with us last week along with Sandra and Michael. Then we had Estelle, Alizee and Florence making their first dive like Pheobe, Riannon and Jotham.

Well it had to come, it always does, the end of the week. The one day we don't get to dive in our nice warm 28 degree water. Now I'm not one to ever make and excuse to have a party but Saturday night we actually had several reasons to party. First of course was the arrival of Nadia to the DAF team. But we also had to celibrate the completion of two new PADI Divemasters! Over the past 2 months three people have been training to become PADI Divemasters at Diveaway Fiji. Amanda officially completed her course earlier this month but Fiji natives Drue and Ricardo finished up this past week. So to help usher them into the role of professional divers we gave the dreaded snorkel test. For those who are out of the loop the snorkel test is the highest honor given to newly certified DM's and Instructors. The candidate is seated (sometimes tied to) a chair, a regulation SCUBA mask is placed on their face and snorkel into their mouth. Note: tempered glass is a requirement for their safety. Then mass quantities of beer is pour through the snorkel as they gulp it down. Both Ric and Drue did very well on their snorkel tests, I think they were practicing throughout the week. In all honesty great job Ric and Drue you both worked very hard and truly deserve your certifications!

Oh and I finally got a memory card so my camera can now start to get wet! Definitely the highlight of my week! So guys come out and visit us and make some dives so I have models to shoot photos of. Hope to see you all out on the boats soon.

Be sure to check us out on Facebook to see more photos.

https://www.facebook.com/diveawayfiji

Cheers,

-Chris