Maddy’s nose is practically glued to the window of the smallest airplane she’s ever been on, a 12-seat Fiji Link Twin Otter thrumming its way from Nadi to Taveuni across the infinite blue of Fijian waters.
My eyes are glued to her.
It is quite a thing, for someone who has had the incredible fortune of traveling all over the world and diving in some of its most magical waters for a living, to watch this girl I have loved for all her life see the South Pacific for the very first time.
Viti Levu and then Vanua Levu come into view below us. Offshore, it’s all whirling and swirling parfait layers of turquoise and deep blue—the lagoons, the reef and the depths—with Fiji’s emerald mountains stretching skyward.
It’s my niece’s first trip farther west than California, and she’s stoked. Adding to both of our good luck is the fact that this 18-year-old, whom I first taught to breathe through a snorkel in the Florida Keys when she was barely 5, is kicking off her gap year before college on a dive trip with her aunt.
We touch down on Taveuni, around 200 miles northeast of Fiji’s main island, Viti Levu, in a light drizzle that settles like mist as a double rainbow arches over the tarmac. Ladies selling beautiful black pearls at kiosks inside the tiny open-air airport smile and welcome us with a chorus of “Bula!” It feels like a warm tropical blanket already, both literally and figuratively.
It is so good to be back in Fiji.
Brandon ColeA golden damselfish and gorgonian sea fan add color to the reef.
Back to the Future
With more than 300 islands to explore in the archipelago, underwater walls covered with the healthiest pastures of soft coral in the world, and some of the sharkiest lagoons out there, Fiji offers it all.
I first visited the islands when I was close to Maddy’s age and also newly launched, far from the familiar faces and routines of home, on a yearlong backpacking trip around the world.
The destination was a no-brainer when it came to where I longed to take my niece, a confident diver who had yet to venture underwater beyond North America, for her graduation gift. It would be my first time, too, in Taveuni, Fiji’s “Garden Island,” known for its rugged and verdant terrain above the water’s surface and the dazzling Rainbow Reef below.
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Brandon ColeA colubrine sea snake (Laticauda colubrina).
No sooner have we checked into Paradise Taveuni Resort—more friendly “Bulas!” chorusing from every direction, followed by a foot massage overlooking the ocean and a fresh fruit juice—and Maddy is zipped into her wetsuit and off to complete the first dive of her PADI Advanced Open Water Diver course.
I’ve always tried to teach my niece that travel is the best education—my sister laments the times when I tried to ease the stress of a high school exam by telling Maddy she’d never need things like calculus in the real world (what are aunts for, right?).
But when it comes to diving, I told Maddy, there are a few certifications beyond Open Water Diver worth studying up for and getting under your belt so that the underwater world can open up to you all the more.
Brandon ColeHealthy cabbage coral blankets the reef
A House Reef Like No Other
Maddy and dive instructor Christine Lucia Riley, one of the resort’s beloved Fijian staff who’s been diving here with repeat guests for years, get busy checking gear and going over procedures. I consider coming along for their shore dive but decide it will be more fun to sip a spiked welcome cocktail in a hammock instead and wait for the topside recap.
When I see Maddy’s tank float to the surface by the resort’s dock alongside Riley 45 minutes later, my niece keeps her head in the water, snorkeling for another 10 minutes and torturing her Gen X aunt who can’t wait for her Gen Z hot take on everything she’s seen.
Terry Ward18-year-old Maddy is all smiles before boarding a 12-seat Fiji Link plane to Taveuni.
I’m feeling nostalgic, remembering my first time diving in Fiji off the island of Kadavu two decades ago, where I was floored to discover that corals actually did come in those candy colors I’d only seen in documentaries.
“Aunt Terry, I saw Nemo and ribbon eels,” Maddy finally pulls the reg from her mouth, pronouncing with delight. Suddenly she’s that little kid in the Florida Keys again, eyes wide as saucers at all the surprises the ocean has in store.
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Terry WardThe author and her niece Maddy in Nassau, Bahamas, in 2011.
Successful checkout shore dive under Maddy’s belt, our days ahead are filled with incredible dives we get to enjoy together under Riley’s encouraging tutelage—and with new friends Maddy has persuaded to get their advanced certifications alongside her. As part of their cert, I watch her and a pair of handsome Princeton grad students grid their way around Paradise’s house reef during their underwater navigation dive. Soon enough, though, I’m distracted, finning along what’s easily the most vibrant and healthy house reef I’ve ever dived—getting lost in the sight of an orangutan crab menacing me from a bubble coral with its rusty red claws before a pair of cuttlefish flashing their mantles steals my attention.
Brandon ColeThe iconic Great White Wall, covered in soft white corals that turn a pinkish hue under strobe lights, is a must-dive site on Fiji’s Rainbow Reef.
The Great White Wall
There are more than 40 dive sites peppered along the Rainbow Reef. And our time underwater unfolds in inundations of colorful anthias, chromis and damsels that positively cloud the corals in a foraging frenzy at sites like Fish Factory. Maddy and I bond in moments of made-up hand signals for “WTH” and utter underwater awe while practicing our best neutral buoyancy at Cabbage Patch, where a veritable pasture of delicate hard corals that look like lettuce heads cluster on the seafloor. The scene looks too perfect to be real.
But if there’s one site that looms large in Taveuni’s pantheon of must-dives, it’s the Great White Wall.
It’s the kind of dive that often gets mentioned in places far from Fiji, right after you’ve just completed an epic wall dive that you’re sure takes the cake. “But have you done the Great White Wall in Fiji?” some well-traveled diver who indeed has done it will inevitably ask. And as Maddy and I motor out on the dive boat to the site one morning, I try to explain to my niece just how lucky she is that this is where she’ll complete the deep dive portion of her advanced course, certifying her to dive to 100 feet.
David FleethamA hawksbill turtle swims beneath an overhang covered in colorful corals.
We giant-stride off the dive boat and descend through a tunnel marking the start of the dive, and I’m admiring Maddy’s deft buoyancy control while hoping we’ve timed things to perfection. The steeply plunging wall ahead is known for a flashy trick when there’s just the right tide and current flow: Like a magician lifting a curtain, the luminous soft white Dendronephthya corals plastering the wall will erupt into full “bloom.”
When we emerge from the tunnel about 70 feet down at the start of the Great White Wall, the spectacle begins. We drift downward as if through a dream—the glowing white wall one bookend for our passage, and beyond, Fiji’s forever blues.
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Brandon ColeA Fiji anemonefish, endemic to this area of the South Pacific.
Across the Somosomo Strait
On the morning we have to depart from Paradise Taveuni, Maddy heads to the dive shop to proudly collect her Advanced Open Water Diver certificate and warmly embraces Riley. Then the entire staff gathers to send us off with a beautiful Fijian song that needs no translation, the hospitality and warmth ringing through.
We’re both reluctant to leave new friends and all the great vibes. But that’s soon assuaged when we arrive by boat taxi across the Somosomo Strait at Sau Bay Resort & Spa, where a handful of bures and a tented tree-house hug a secluded stretch of sand in Vanua Levu’s southeastern reaches.
We quickly meet our new dive buddies, the only other guests at the resort, a couple of giddy Australian lovebirds who knew each other in high school and reconnected in their 60s over a shared love of diving. Before I know it, over grilled breadfruit and fresh fish for lunch, Maddy’s made plans to stay with them for a few nights when her gap year tour rolls onward to Queensland.
Michel LabrecqueAn outdoor dining area at Sau Bay Resort & Spa.
Between hiking up to the surrounding hilltops and beachside massages, we get in another thrilling dive at Great White Wall as well as an incredibly fishy site appropriately named the Zoo, where reef sharks and schooling barracuda steal the show. We surface and Maddy groans over my corny aunt joke when I tell her that barracuda are my favorite kind of school.
On our surface interval, we stay spellbound alongside the Aussies at the sight of fluking and breaching humpbacks at close range. From July to September, the behemoths pass through the Somosomo Strait during their annual migration north from Antarctica. Like something from a movie, another of Taveuni’s omnipresent rainbows materializes to frame the scene. The cetaceans seem to be just as stoked to be in these waters as we are.
Terry WardMaddy participates in a beach cleanup with local kids.
Sau Bay’s house reef, where we snorkel one afternoon post-dive (after all, there are few reasons to say no to more time in the water in Fiji), is a stunner that makes me wish I had more than just my iPhone in a baggie to shoot over/under photos of Maddy in her mermaid era.
The reef is carpeted with pristine hard and soft corals, including a “magic” variety our guide points out that flashes from purple to white when you wave your fingers near it. On a night dive on the same reef, we get treated to ghost pipefish and a bobtail squid.
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Michel LabrecqueSunset at Paradise Taveuni Resort.
It’s our last day in Fiji, and some new friends are waiting to meet us in the nearby village of Nawi, where the kids have the day off school. They wade out into the water to greet us, whooping it up as the boat makes a landing on the sand for a beach cleanup organized by the resort together with the community.
Suddenly, Maddy—salty-haired, sun-kissed and face radiating pure joy—is the pied piper. The kids cluster around her, eager to throw any trash they can find on the sand and tangled up in the seaweed into her bag.
Brandon ColeSchooling scalefin anthias.
Some of the littlest ones approach her with shells in their outstretched palms, gifts from the sea. “Vinaka!” I hear my niece say again and again as she accepts each one as if it’s the most beautiful treasure ever, and the kids giggle back, “Thank you.”
I hang back, taking it all in and remembering when.
My niece has the smile of a girl who feels as comfortable on land, out in the great wide world, as she does underwater. I couldn’t be prouder.
Terry WardA migrating humpback whale breaches in the Somosomo Strait.
Need to Know Diving in Taveuni
When to Visit
Taveuni is divable year-round, but April through November brings the best visibility. I visited with Maddy in mid-August.
Conditions
Water temperatures range from 77 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit, with excellent visibility (between 65 and 130 feet). A rash guard or 3 mm wetsuit is recommended.
Getting There
Fly into Nadi, then take a 12-seat Fiji Link flight (one hour, 20 minutes) to Taveuni.
Dive Operators
On the southern end of Taveuni, fronting the Rainbow Reef, Paradise Taveuni Resort has an on-site PADI Dive Center and dock for shore dives and boat departures just steps from 16 beautiful accommodations, all with tropical outdoor showers and air conditioning.
A short boat ride across the Somosomo Strait, on the east central coast of Vanua Levu, Sau Bay Resort & Spa has six lovely accommodations, including a tented “tree-house” bure, steps from a sandy beach. It accesses Taveuni’s top diving sites from its on-site PADI Eco Center (Fiji’s first).
