Day 10: Tui Tai Day 6- Fiji Gold

We woke today to a sunrise, a real sunrise! It was great as the weather really appeared to be turning. 7am dive was just ok. Current wasn't good for our original dive plan. Plan B got a D. We went against our gut and went for the kayak mangrove tour. It was also not superb. Mangroves are all the same. In hindsight, we should have enjoyed the boat. However, the 2:30 dive was amazing! It was team GOwen. Just Owen, G, and I. That's always a good dive. Diving with small groups is just so much better, and Owen is a rock star, never leads us astray. We were tired and both were having sinus and ear issues. I asked Owen how the afternoon dive was compared to this morning. He shrugged, in his Owen way, and said, "better." So without further questioning, we suited up and set off. Got there in no time flat, that boat goes so much faster when it is not overloaded. We dove "still waters". There was nothing still about it. Upon our decent we saw two sharks, right up close. Owen then pointed out the magic coral, when you touch it it turns from orange to white. Super cool! We saw a boatload of sharks and nudibranchs. We then saw a whole school of poisonous yellowtail barracuda. Owen wrote out what they were and they must be rare as he got super excited. We were soon swarmed with golden trevally, a big silver fish with a gorgeous yellow tail. We sunk to our knees and just watched them. These two giant and fairly uncommon schools just swam around us at 30 meters for about 5-10 full minutes. I think our favorite part of that experience was seeing how excited Owen was. He sounded like me with the mantas and the hammerheads. If your guide, who's done thousands of dives gets that excited, you know you are seeing a rare event. We felt very lucky. About five minutes in he wrote on the white board, "WTF?!!!" I nearly choked and flooded my mask from laughing so hard. After nearly exceeding our allotted bottom time at that depth we continued the dive seeing tons more sharks, other big fish, and a spectacular garden of purple coral. I will never tire of that view. The purple and magenta coral has been superb! Truly beautiful:) Owen gave us the three minute safety stop signal and asked ok? I shook my head no with a passion. That's how you know it's a fabulous dive, when you are sad to begin your ascent. When we finally hit the surface I say, "better Owen, that's like comparing Florida (no mean to offend) to Fiji!We are not even talking the same sport!" Very little beats a good dive! So, we were relaxing on the boat and typing about the dive when Georgeann spotted a huge school of dolphins playing along side out boat. Total bonus. We are getting ready now for a typical Fijian community visit and kava ceremony. Should be pretty awesome! This will be our third different culture to see in one week. That part has been a total perk of this trip!