Fiji- Phase 20- Week 2

Tuesday saw us ‘Open Water Babies’ get started on our skills. We managed to get half of our confined water dives completed which we were all pleased with. Paul had been on a fishing trip and caught a 27kg Tuna which we had for dinner, everyone agreed it was yummy and the best meal so far. The next day we ploughed on the Open Water training, finishing our confined water dives and starting our open water dives at a site called Lovers. We were all shattered and rounded off the day with some well deserved sunbathing.

On Thursday we found out the Semi, our village chief who we met at the sevu sevu had passed away in his sleep. Everyone was shocked by this news and there was a sombre mood in camp. To respect Semi and the villagers in Navatu we stopped diving for the day and treated it like a Sunday relaxing in the sun. On the Friday we did our Emergency First Responder (EFR) training, we spent the day trying to resuscitate “Annie” covering each other in bandages and learning some basic First Aid.

The next day the village gave us permission to continue diving so we pressed on and managed to get everyone qualified to Open Water Divers! In the afternoon we had camp clean, the boys were conveniently nowhere to be seen and when they reappeared we told them there would be no party until they had re-sanded all the paths , you’ve never seen people move so fast!

On Sunday we experienced our 1st church service in Navatu. All our families were pleased to see us and filled us up with pancakes and tea for breakfast, it beats porridge any day! Church was about an hour long, the girls sported their sexy Bula dresses and the boys their pocket sulus, smart shirts and ties. We sang Fijian hymns and we were given speech on behalf of the congregation to welcome us to the service. We had lunch with our families and in keeping with Sundays we had an afternoon nap to help digest our food. During the afternoon we had Kava, which we are starting to get used to and then returned home for dinner.

On Monday we undertook shore dives to help practise our underwater buoyancy and navigation skills, a boat dive also went out to Ariel’s Garden which was an amazing site, there were even sharks and turtles spotted! Most excitingly dinner that night was roast chicken with roast veg which went down exceedingly well!

Vicky