Dive Review of
Tiliva Resort in
Fiji and Tuvalu/Kadavu

Bermuda, Maldives, Palau, Kona

Dive Conditions

Divemaster set max time before starting ascent.    

Rinse bucket on boat.  No camera table.  

Overall Rating

Flying on Sun Air was somewhat of an adventure, but they got us where we
needed to be.

Landing on Kadavu and then walking down the beach to the waiting boat is
fun. It's amazing how isolated the villages and resorts are on Kadavu. The
whole island is really unspoiled. Tiliva resort is a beautiful place. The
resort is so well landscaped and arranged that you can never see all the
buildings from one place. Our kids had a blast running around on all the
little paths between bures and "the big house" where we ate. It
was really nice being in a place where the kids could run around and play
at the beach unsupervised. It's not like home where we have to worry about
cars or kidnappers...

Kemu and Barbara were clearly unused to hosting small children (our kids
are 4 and 2.5), but they tried very hard to accomodate our requirements.
They are both friendly, and try very hard to make everyone happy. The food
was good and plentiful, although every breakfast is the same, and most of
the other meals included beef and potatoes. Fish dinner one night was
excellent.

We dove three days at Tiliva. The divemaster, Siwa, doesn't use a computer,
doesn't talk very much, and doesn't point stuff out underwater. He set a
max depth and bottom time for each dive. Most of the time he stayed deeper
than we were, and spent more time at depth than our computers would have
allowed. We mostly set our own profiles. Siwa told us when to start
ascending. Many dives we finished with 800 psi. Most of the rental
equipment was OK, although one of us had a BCD with a sticky power
inflator. Most dives had no current, although one drift dive with Siwa + 8
divers got pretty disorganized.

The first day we went diving the boat handling was poor. We surfaced after
both dives several hundred yards from the boat. Siwa had a safety sausage,
but no whistle. I used my Dive Alert air horn to signal the boat. After the
second dive, the boat driver drove right through the group of divers,
hitting one woman on the head. They were quite careless about having the
propeller in gear with divers in the water. After that day, several divers
complained to Barbara. On all the following days they had the right person
driving the boat, and everything was much safer and better organized. The
boat is covered, has a big cabin forward, and one rinse bucket for cameras.
They carry a second outboard motor as backup.

Diving inside the reef is OK, but "not like Fiji should be". 90%
of the coral is dead. Some fish, and usually something interesting to see,
but pretty disappointing compared to our expectations. On the outside of
the reef, it's completely different. Tons of hard coral, and it's all
alive. Fun and interesting coral formations in many places. Some soft
coral, but not very much. Some dives had lots of medium-sized fish. Some
dives had very few fish. It seemed like there aren't known and charted dive
sites; it's just a matter of driving the boat out to the reef and picking a
spot. Compared to the wall dives in Palau (in 2001), this was way better
hard coral, fewer and smaller fish, less soft coral, essentially no
current, and much less "Ohmigod" excitement.

Whether or not the dive boat can go outside the reef depends on weather and
tides. You want to be there when high tide is between noon and 4PM, and
when the winds are calm. We had only 1 bummer day inside the reef. The
other 4 guests at the resort had about 5 disappointing days. But we were
all happy with the outside-the-reef dives.

The local hike to the waterfall was fun. The highlight were the two 8 year
old local boys who took charge of our kids. One of the 8 year olds carried
Wyatt (age 2.5) down all the steep and slippery stuff. It was fun to watch,
but it makes Mom nervous...

In all, Tiliva was a great place. They could benefit from a better dive
staff, but that's very difficult for them because their only source of
labor is the neighboring village. We had a good time diving, but you need
to be prepared (with locating equipment, your own computer, and the right
attitude) to take care of yourself.

On our departure day, the day-room at Tokatoka was completely perfect. I
wouldn't want to spend my whole Fiji vacation at that place, and their food
was lousy. For an afternoon before the big plane trip, though, it had
everything we needed: showers, a great pool, froofy drinks with umbrellas,
a massage spa, and a bed to take a nap. We had a good dinner at Ed's bar
with lots of interesting locals to watch. 

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