Taveuni, Fiji: Paradise Taveuni

View from our patio

We stayed at Paradise Taveuni, based mostly on what we read about the diving at Paradise.  Our primary goal was to find a place that would maximize diving at Rainbow Reef, and then the next goal was to stay at the nicest place possible.  There were some places that were more luxurious, but the diving options did not seem as good.  There were also some places that were further north on the island, making them closer to both the airport and Rainbow Reef.  But Paradise has a house reef so you can shore dive in the afternoons/evenings, and there are also local sites for afternoon boat dives.  So these were the main reasons that we picked Paradise.

Tasty fruit bowl

Overall I was very happy with Paradise.  We made it to Rainbow Reef every day but one, plus there were several nice "local" dive sites, and we did several dives on the house reef.  The room was nice, though a little cramped (there were no ocean view suites available, so we went with an ocean view room).  The view from our patio and around the resort was very nice.  The food and drinks were fine, some days the food was really good, some days it was just okay.

When I was researching places to stay, I found some differing information about how long the boat ride was to Rainbow Reef, ranging from 20 minutes to an hour.  The reality was anywhere in-between, depending on the weather and which boat we were on (and probably the specific site we were going to).  In any case, it was "close enough" that the rides over there were not too far, and we made it over there even on some days when it was pretty rough crossing the channel.

The dive operations were pretty standard and convenient.  If we were diving nitrox, we had to analyze tanks before they loaded them onto the boat.  Otherwise, we each had a gear bin that we kept all of our gear in, and it was moved between the boat and the dive shop as necessary.  We just carried our cameras and sometimes our lights on and off of the boat.  The dive guides did a good job of guiding us without being hovery :). I would have liked to do more high current (soft coral) dives, though this was more related to the other people on the boat than the dive guides' choice.  But we generally got at least one really good high current soft coral dive per day.  There were also some nice macro critter finds by several of the dive guides, though generally not when Rob was shooting macro :P

So overall, I'd recommend Paradise, and considering going there again in the future.

Toad on our patio

Oh one last thing... there are these adorable toads all over the place around dusk.  They are so cute!  You have to be careful to avoid stepping on them in the lawn.  Other notable (cute) fauna includes crabs and lizards.  We found a crab in our (indoor) shower one day.