After 12 days in the remote village of Nakuku, we took an hour and a half bus ride back to Savusavu. In our first day of scuba, we went to a dive resort. It was super weird being in a resort after trying for the past two months to be travelers not tourists. We split into two groups at the dive resort. The first group was for people that may be more comfortable going straight into diving and the second would read the scuba certification book first before getting into the water. I went with the first group. We went in the resort pool first and learned basic scuba skills such as how to recover your mouth piece, clear your goggles, purge your mouth piece, equalize your ears and understand the hand signals. The group spent 20 minutes in the pool and then went to the ocean to test out our new skills. We went 45 feet down on our first dive. It was the most surreal and magical experience I have ever had. There are no words to describe the feeling our group had that first time underwater. After we got out of the water, we spent the rest of the day lounging in the sun and reading the scuba book.
On day two, we took part of our scuba certification test over the first three chapters of our book. All of us passed this test. For our first dive of the day, we practiced our pool skills in the open water again. On our second dive that day, we went to an even more majestic destination. It was down 60 feet and we got to see a sea turtle, giant clam, giant tuna fish, eel, unicorn fish, and a white tip reef shark. Then we laid out by the resort pool and I got really sunburnt.
At the beginning of our final day of scuba, we went on our last dive. All of us had to be tested on a few more skills underwater such as taking our goggles all the way off underwater, putting them back on, and draining the water out of them again. We saw more sharks, such as a tiger shark. After the dive, we went back to the pool and took our final exam. It was not as bad as I thought it would be at all. Overall, it was a great experience that I am super grateful I got the opportunity to have.
We left Savusavu the following day and set off for Nadi. It was about a 12 hour travel day. It also happened to be one of our group member’s, Noah, birthday. Throughout the day, we celebrated with balloons, cake, and party hats. On our last two days in Fiji, we visited sand dunes, swam at the most beautiful beach, and had a really bizarre mud pool experience. We are now in Brisbane, Australia getting ready for our week at the Buddhist retreat center.
