Jun 28, 2011

Matava Resort June 2011

Spent a wonderful 9 days at the Matava Eco Resort http://www.matava.com on Kadavu island in Fiji http://matava.com/kadavu-island/ diving some spectacular reefs. Kadavu is the 4th largest island in Fiji and it refreshingly remains basically undeveloped with few roads and not much besides villages connected by paths. Much of the island is surrounded by the Great Astrolabe Reef the 4th largest fringing reef in the world. http://scuba-diving-fiji.com/fiji-scuba-dive-centre/great-astrolabe-reef .

Spent a wonderful 9 days at the Matava Eco Resort http://www.matava.com on Kadavu island in Fiji http://matava.com/kadavu-island/ diving some spectacular reefs. Kadavu is the 4th largest island in Fiji and it refreshingly remains basically undeveloped with few roads and not much besides villages connected by paths. Much of the island is surrounded by the Great Astrolabe Reef the 4th largest fringing reef in the world. http://scuba-diving-fiji.com/fiji-scuba-dive-centre/great-astrolabe-reef .

The resort itself is nestled along the southeast side of the island and can barely been seen from the water blending in so well with the lush natural beauty of the island. The owners have carefully built the resort to have as little impact on the land and sea as possible. Most of the electricity is created by the abundant solar energy of the tropics, which also provides the hot water for showers in your private and very comfortable bure. With no roads to the resort EVERYTHING is brought in by boat. That in itself would be a challenge, but additionally everything needs to be timed by the tides because of the shallowness of the inside areas of the reef where it connects to the island. At low tide boats are sitting in the sand and us divers are walking to or from the transfer boats across sand and sea grass flats.

Don’t think for a minute this is a “rustic” basic resort. Far from it. Despite the logistics of supplying the resort, the staff goes beyond being friendly and caring and don’t ask me how such amazing and varied meals came out of that kitchen. A large garden supplies the majority of veggies served at the resort with the rest coming from the local village. What a treat that was.

The beautifully landscaped grounds are filled with flowers that are used fresh daily all over the resort. The individual buries are comfortable with nice beds and linens and cooling provided by the tropical breezes. A ceiling fan would have been nice as well, however with limited electricity I understand why they did not have them in each bure. There are mosquitos about in the evenings so if you are bothered by them come prepared with long sleeves and pants and some bug repellent. I did not have a problem but my traveling companion did. You sleep under a mosquito net so once in bed it is not an issue.

Because that area of Fiji is also world renowned for its deep sea fishing, the resort has a sports fishing operation as well and about a third of the guests were serious fishermen. This resulted in fresh wahoo and other deep sea fish on the menu multiple days along with amazing plates of sashimi two nights in a row.

Although we did not do much besides diving, read through the Matava website for some of the other activities you can do there. Coming soon yoga retreats! As it was they provided mats, straps and blocks upon request and doing yoga every morning at sunrise became the norm. A yoga retreat with diving now that gets my attention! Or maybe the order is wrong there, great diving with inspiring yoga also included.

Enjoy the galleries that tell the rest of the story including the wedding! Yep a wedding. That was an unexpected surprise and a wonderful way to wrap up our trip, with a big part the last night.

Galleries

Getting There : Getting there was not for the weak hearted. Graham flew in the day before our departure....from Scotland thus he had already done 18 or so hours of travel across time zones. Our 10 hour flight from Los Angeles to Nandi Fiji left at 12:30am. Upon arrival in Nandi we had....8 hours to wait for our 40 minute puddle jumper flight to Kadavu Island then a 45 minute boat ride in a skift to finally reach the resort. Graham fell asleep anywhere he could.

Getting There

Getting there was not for the weak hearted. Graham flew in the day bef ...

Resort : Spent a wonderful 9 days at the Matava Eco Resort www.matava.com on Kadavu island in Fiji http://matava.com/kadavu-island/ diving some spectacular reefs. Kadavu is the 4th largest island in Fiji and it refreshingly remains basically undeveloped with few roads and not much besides villages connected by paths. Much of the island is surrounded by the Great Astrolabe Reef the 4th largest fringing reef in the world. http://scuba-diving-fiji.com/fiji-scuba-dive-centre/great-astrolabe-reef . The resort itself is nestled along the southeast side of the island and can barely been seen from the water blending in so well with the lush natural beauty of the island. The owners have carefully built the resort to have as little impact on the land and sea as possible. Most of the electricity is created by the abundant solar energy of the tropics, which also provides the hot water for showers in your private and very confortable bure. With no roads to the resort EVERYTHING is brought in by boat. That in itself would be a challenge, but additionally everything needs to be timed by the tides because of the shallowness of the inside areas of the reef where it connects to the island. At low tide boats are sitting in the sand and us divers are walking to or from the transfer boats across sand and sea grass flats. Don’t think for a minute this is a “rustic” basic resort. Far from it. Despite the logistics of supplying the resort, the staff goes beyond being friendly and caring and don’t ask me how such amazing and varied meals came out of that kitchen. A large garden supplies the majority of veggies served at the resort with the rest coming from the local village. What a treat that was. The beautifully landscaped grounds are filled with flowers that are used fresh daily all over the resort. The individual buries are comfortable with nice beds and linens and cooling provided by the tropical breezes. A ceiling fan would have been nice as well, however with limited electricity I understand why they did not have them in each bure. There are mosquitos about in the evenings so if you are bothered by them come prepared with long sleeves and pants and some bug repellent. I did not have a problem but my traveling companion did. You sleep under a mosquito net so once in bed it is not an issue. Because that area of Fiji is also world renowned for its deep sea fishing, the resort has a sports fishing operation as well and about a third of the guests were serious fishermen. This resulted in fresh wahoo and other deep sea fish on the menu multiple days along with amazing plates of sashimi two nights in a row. Although we did not do much besides diving, read through the Matava website for some of the other activities you can do there. Coming soon yoga retreats! As it was they provided mats, straps and blocks upon request and doing yoga every morning at sunrise became the norm. A yoga retreat with diving now that gets my attention! Or maybe the order is wrong there, great diving with inspiring yoga also included. For details on the diving and photos go here; http://gvanleer.smugmug.com/Travel/11-June-Fiji-Matava-Eco-Resort/Underwater-Astrolabe-Reef/17755102_PJd8ZN#1356076248_nNDrjxj

Resort

Spent a wonderful 9 days at the Matava Eco Resort www.matava.com on Ka ...

Underwater Astrolabe Reef : Spent a wonderful 9 days at the Matava Eco Resort www.matava.com on Kadavu island in Fiji. Kadavu island is the 4th largest island in Fiji and it refreshingly remains basically undeveloped with few roads and not much besides villages connected by paths. Much of the island is surrounded by the Great Astrolabe Reef the 4th largest fringing reef in the world. The accommodations and the resort itself are just fabulous. See the link at the bottom for more resort details. We did 3 dives most days with 4 dives on two of the days for a total of 24 dives that included one night dive and one dusk dive on the house reef. Unlimited shore diving is offered, however because of the extreme tides (we were there for a full moon), if you don’t dive on high tide, you will have a very long hike back to the resort with all your gear on which even with La Jolla Shores practice, ok that was just way too far! At another time of year you might get to dive the house reef more. It was worth the one dive we did get on it. Between the outside and inside of the reef we had quite a variety of dive sites to choose from. Although Fiji is better known for its soft corals, this area of Fiji consists of mostly hard corals. We just had tastes of soft corals here and there. The hard corals are varied and for the most part incredibly pristine and healthy which was refreshing to see. There were not a lot of large schooling fish for the most part, but we did see sharks on about a quarter of the dives which was not expected. We had mantas on two dives along with larger tuna types making passes at us on the outside reefs. There were plenty of other critters to entertain us although for a nudi file like me, did not find that many but suspect that was because we did not dive appealing to nudi type sites extensively. My best nudi finds were on the Korolevu Passage dives. The visibility varied depending if you were on the outside or inside of the reef with outside being maybe as good as 150’+ and the inside being more like 30’- 40’ depending on the tides and time of day. We had sheer walls, sloping reefs, patch reefs and sandy areas. One of my favorite sites was just a small rock in the middle of sand that we did twice. An entire eco system in miniature complete with three types of eels, scorpion leaf fish, schools of glass fish and cardinal fish, groupers, various shrimp, clown fish, the list goes on and on. Some of my best photos were taken at that rock discovered by one of the resort owners and appropriately named “Richard’s Rock” Our diving was done from either “panga” like skiffs when there is less than 4 divers or their very well designed aluminum “Dive Me”. A new smaller aluminum boat was to be delivered to the resort the week after we left to replace the skiffs entirely. If it is as well designed as “Dive Me” it will be top notch to dive from. The boat rides to the dive sites were as long as 45 minutes not necessarily because they were real far away, but because the extreme low tides while we were there made for creeping along through gaps in the reef very slowly an absolute must. The scenery was spectacular so no one minded. The normal is for a two tank morning dive with your surface interval done on the boat or a nearby beach. Tea and snacks served. You then are back to the resort for lunch and a single tank afternoon dive. I think in the summer they do two tank afternoon dives however not enough daylight for that at this time of the year down there. The dive crew and boat operators are top notch and leave you alone to dive pretty much your own profile once they are comfortable with your skills. The dives are mostly limited to an hour with some exceptions like Richards Rock where 90 minutes just seemed to fly by. Divers are sent up as they run low on air and picked up by the boat. Our guides pointed out things as they found them, but did not aggressively seek out things which worked fine for me given that we were basically diving our own profiles anyway. In 8 days of diving we only ever saw one other dive boat and it only had two divers on it, so basically we had miles of reef to ourselves. For the first 5 days the two of us were the only divers at the resort so it was truly a personal experience. Getting there is unfortunately one of the down sides. From San Diego we drove a rental car to catch our 10 ½ hour Air Pacific flight out of Los Angeles that did not depart until 12:45 am. We arrived in Nadi at 5:30am and then waited around for 9 hours for our 45 minute puddle jumper flight to Kadavu island. From there it was a 45 minute skiff ride to the resort. Fortunately it was a beautiful sunny afternoon and we soaked in the views and the warm air, but on a stormy day that would not have been a very pleasant ride. If you are flying tourist class on Air Pacific you are only allowed 50lbs per person and 12lbs in one carryon. You and your carry on will be weighed for the puddle jumper fight. These weight limits are totally impossible for divers. We packed little more than our dive gear with my gear all being “travel friendly” very lightweight equipment and still were hopelessly overweight. We paid $80 in overweight fees in LA which got us all the way to Kadavu island. On the way back it was a different story. We were charged just under $40 for the overweight to Nadi then charged another whopping $100 at check in back to LA. We had less luggage on the way back so were especially upset with the airline for this lack of consistency in their charges and felt we were double charged using that system. They showed no understanding whatsoever making us feel robbed. With regular weight gear, large camera housings and strobes, the baggage overweight charges would be double what we paid. This diver unfriendly baggage allowance and excessive overweight charges will give me cause for pause in my future travel decisions and I especially can’t recommend Air Pacific as a traveling diver because of it. Airlines like Continental are much more diver friendly allowing you one extra bag as long as it contains dive gear only. Hopefully after their merger with United that policy will remain in place. Our flight was a code share with Air New Zealand and Quantas so it will be tough to duck Air Pacific’s regulations by flying another airline. Overall a wonderful trip and I would love to go back there again. Probably go at a different time of year just for the variety and longer daylight hours so we can dive more! Photo links: Weaving boats through corals; http://gvanleer.smugmug.com/Travel/11-June-Fiji-Matava-Eco-Resort/Topside-on-the-Water/17752455_JdCZrx#1355465773_Dt6PtRf The resort: http://gvanleer.smugmug.com/Travel/11-June-Fiji-Matava-Eco-Resort/Resort/17752506_DT2DvG#1355444894_N6C4GTF About the reef http://scuba-diving-fiji.com/fiji-scuba-dive-centre/great-astrolabe-reef .

Underwater Astrolabe Reef

Spent a wonderful 9 days at the Matava Eco Resort www.matava.com on Ka ...

Topside on the Water : The boat rides to the dive sites were as long as 45 minutes not necessarily because they were real far away, but because the extreme low tides while we were there made for creeping along through gaps in the reef very slowly an absolute must. The scenery was spectacular so no one minded.

Topside on the Water

The boat rides to the dive sites were as long as 45 minutes not necess ...

Camera Fun : Handed off the camera to Graham for what I thought was going to be one or two shots. He went crazy! Then I started taking pictures of him taking pictures of me. Suggest you just quickly click through them. As you can see we laughed and laughed! And then there is Graham's new diving costume he is showing off at the end....

Camera Fun

Handed off the camera to Graham for what I thought was going to be one ...

Wedding : And then there was a wedding. Yep a wedding. A wonderful couple from the UK, Giles and Marcelle decided to elope rather than have a big family ceremony. By chance another delightful couple they know happened to be “in the area” in their world travels. Colin and Peggi who will celebrate their 40th anniversary next year, changed their plans and became the “wedding party”. All of us became their supporting cast of new friends, videographers and photographers. The resort did and unbelievable job in making this the most romantic wedding you can ever believe. Marcelle’s infectious laugh and broad smile says it all. Graham shot most of the stills here with me doing the video. Congratulations you two! Best wishes for many many years of happiness! It was a unexpected delight to be part of your wedding and a great party to end our trip on.

Wedding

And then there was a wedding. Yep a wedding. A wonderful couple from t ...

Gayle - Fiji, Kadavu Island, Matava Resort June 2011
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