Sailing in Fiji - what a great way to celebrate my 60th birthday.Surfing, diving and Mantaray...Ep30

We check in to Fiji with no problems whatsoever. As we were one of the first yachts to enter Fiji using the Blue Lane initiative that Fiji set up, the local newspaper The Fiji Sun interviewed us and published an article with a photo of us on our boat. We praised the Fiji Prime Minister for having the courage to open his country to yachts in this difficult time. We thanked Cynthia Rasch, the manager of Denarau Marina too for her tireless efforts in working with 15 Fijian Government departments and many local businesses to set up the Blue Lanes to enable yachts to enter. We signed up with Deep Blue Diving to do our Open Water Dive course and this was a great decision. Emma was a fantastic trainer and Tivua was a top spot to do the course, with all our training and dives being done in the open ocean. We bought our dive gear through them from Viti Water Sports in Denarau and also bought a dive compressor to ensure there was no impediment to us seeing all the wonders of underwater Fiji, the world capital of soft coral. We returned to Musket Cove and then anchored at Namotu Island, just near all the famous Fijian surf breaks. Being inexperienced surfers we stuck to the small breaks of Canoes and Swimming Pools near Namotu but loved surfing just inches above the reef. Our first dives with our new dive qualification were on Plantation Pinnacles and Sunflower reefs. We then headed up to the Yasawa Islands, to the north of Denarau. The plan was to swim with mantarays for Russ’s 60th birthday and fortunately it all worked out magnificently. Our first snorkel with the mantarays was thrilling – there were 7 mantarays in the pass and because they were focused on eating the plentiful plankton, they weren’t concerned about staying away from us. A local researcher said that today was the closest he has seen the mantarays come to humans. How lucky! WE returned the next day but there were only 2 and they were more wary of getting close to us.