2014 Trip.

Flight from Sydney

In October 2014, we decided on a quick beachy getaway.  I didn’t realize that Fiji was so accessible from Sydney.  It’s an easy ~3 hour flight, with direct option on Jetstar, Virgin Australia and Fiji Airlines.  Since we are OneWorld members, we opted for the Jetstar flight so we could get miles.  Once you get to Nadi, which is the main airport in Fiji,  you have to either take the ‘fast boat’, a private speed boat, a helicopter or a seaplane to get to Tokoriki. We opted for the helipcopter, which probably wasn’t the cheapest option, but it only took 10 minutes and we got a pretty great view of Nadi and the surrounding islands. Easy walk from the main airport terminal over to the helcopter terminal, and I think we only had a 40 minute wait for the helocopter to come back and be ready. The main issue with arriving on the Jetstar flight is that the arrival time is after the last ‘ferry boat’, which causes you to either spend a night in Nadi, or choose one of the private options.  The Sherton also has an option to have your luggage go over on the ferry boat, and you can take a jet ski across to the island.  Sounds quite fun, but we didn’t want to be without our luggage for a whole day.

Updated Sheraton

We stayed at the new newly updated Sheraton and resort on Tokoriki.  Apparently this used to be a different hotel and Sheraton had just bought it and had spent quite a bit of time equipping money updating all the rooms as well as the main house.  We found a deal on the Internet which we used for the stay.  The resort was great, we were welcomed with tropical drinks, and the staff was fantastic.  We booked a Beach View room, and we were the last hut down the line, so we had a nice quiet and private spot to relax.

Patio at the hotel | Canon S120 | 70 mm | f/8.0 | 1/60th | ISO320

View from the patio | Canon S120 | 7.2 mm | f/2.8 | 1/60th | ISO320

Up the beach from our bure | Canon S120 | 5.2 mm | f/2.8 | 1/2000th | ISO80

Overall, I really enjoyed the resort, the staff and the service was great.  Somehow, we coincided our trip with school holidays in Australia, so when we arrived, there were loads of school kids, and as they left on the Friday or Saturday, the resort filled up with asian tourists.  It appears since then that the resort was severely damaged from Cyclone Winston, but should be opening back up in Jan 2017.

Tokoriki Island Resort

Now, if you want to avoid kids all together, the only other resort on the island is the aptly named Tokoriki Island Resort.  Their policy is only 18 or over, removing children from the equation altogether. It seems to be to be geared to the honeymoon demographic, with daily cocktails recommendations, and spa service.  We went because it is the only dive shop on the island – the Sheraton didn’t have a dive shop.  That being said, if we had wanted to spend approximately double the rate on the room, we likely would have stayed there.

Tokoriki Island Resort Pool | Canon S120 | 28 mm | f/2.2 | 1/1600th | ISO80

This last shot was in one of the large bowls or pots that were around the main building, just a reminder of how they really focus on every detail.  Really stunning location and resort, highly recommended.

Frangipani in a pot | Canon S120 | 24 mm | f/1.8 | 1/500th | ISO80

Dives

We really went to Fiji for two main reasons, get out of the city for a little south pacific break and relax, and to do some diving.  We ended up doing 4 dives over 2 days, most of which I have told many people were among my favorite dives I have ever done.  We ended up doing two separate dives on portions of the Tokoriki reef wall, the main portion of the wall and the South Wall.  We also dove the Magic Mushrooms site as well as the Blue Coral Reef.  All in all, the reason that I liked the diving so much in Tokoriki was that the reef was first of all easily accessible, it couldn’t have been more than 20 meters off shore, but it’s also generally relatively shallow, which means that you don’t use as much air as when you dive lower.  On our first dive, our average depth was only 6-7 meters, and we just cruised and cruised and cruised.  Our dive instructor was pretty amazed that we lasted 62 minutes, when most normal dives are closer to 30-40 minutes, with 45 minutes being a generally good target.  Just speaks to how easy those dives were.

Full photo album