This past Winter took me to Fiji to celebrate my relationship with my partner. Fiji has become one of the worlds popular honeymoon destinations, and we definately felt that on our trip.

Here I will walk you through exactly how we spent our time in paradise.

Our trip started with a flight to San Diego to spend a couple days with my family before taking a ride share van to LAX to catch our flight to Fiji.

We arrived in Fiji early in the morning, we then caught a taxi to Port Denarau to catch our ferry, The Malolo Cat, to our first resort, Lomani Island Resort.

Lomani Island Resort is on the island of Malolo Lailai in the Mamnuca Island chain. We spent four lovely nights here. Our accomodations consisted of our own private beachfront villa aka Bure.

While here our activities consisted of:

• Enjoying the Bure’s private plunge pool
• Spending time on the beach
• Lounging by the resort pool
• Eating deliciously prepared meals
• Surfing Nomatu Left
• Snorkelling the house reef and Nomatu Reef

Next we made our way back to the main island by ferry to catch a different ferry, the Yasawa Flyer, which frequents the Yasawa Island Chain on a daily schedule once a day.

There are many islands too stay on in the Yasawa’s. With our remaining time in Fiji we chose to stay on 2 more of them. Our next stop was a resort by the name of Barefoot Manta Fiji. As the name suggests the island is famous for its Manta Ray sightings. Our visit was not during Manta Ray season, and so we did not see any Manta Ray while there.

We spent 3 nights at Barefoot Manta Resort. Our accommodations also consisted of a Beachfront Bure. The difference between the first resort and this resort were night and day, while the first resort was more of a luxury resort, Barefoot had a more eco-lodge feel and appearance. We loved both resorts. At Barefoot we spent time lounging on the beach, singing and dancing with the staff, attending our first Cava Ceremony, and did a bunch of snorkeling too.

Our time in Barefoot was also spent in quite a different way. At Barefoot they offered a free discovery scuba dive to introduce people to the world of diving. We decided to take the free course and had a blast. With the two remaining days on the island we decided to start our scuba diver certification course. The Scuba diver course is a step down from an open water course. With Scuba Diver certification you are limited to 12 meters and limited to diving with an instructor at all times.

The Open Water Scuba course consists of e-learning, 5 pool sessions, and 4 Open Water Dives. The Scuba Diver Cert accounts for the e-learning, the pool sessions, and only 2 of the 4 open water dives.

Update (Future): I completed my Open Water Cert in Cancun in April, and my Advanced Open Water Certification in in the Philipines in September, while my partner completed her Open Water Certification in Zanzibar, with future aspiration to get her Advanced Open Water.

In addition the Scuba Diver Course, we also had an extra day to do some fun dives. We chose to dive with Bull Sharks at a sister resort called Barefoot Kuata which was located on a different island. What a thrilling experience, I never imagined I would be outside of a cage swimming with these huge apex predators.

We left Barefoot Manta the next day and headed north on the Yasawa Flyer to Coconut Beach Resort. Coconut Beach Resort was a quite resort with lots of personal attention from the staff. The resort itself was beautiful and our Beachfront Bure was amazing.

We spent four amazing nights at this resort. While at Coconut Beach we spent our time on the beach, snorkelling the house reef, and doing a few more fun dives. The resort offered a lot of group activities which included Cava ceremonies, traditional Fijian dance performances, a visit to the world famous Blue Lagoon, and a visit to an underwater cave.

We left Coconut Beach after our four nights there straight to port denarau, then directly to the airport. We flew from Fiji to LAX. We spent a day/night in LA before heading back to San Diego using the reLAXSAN van service. While back in San Diego we spent some more time with my family before eventually heading back home to New York.

If you are looking for a picture perfect place to enjoy paradise I cannot reccomend Fiji more. Thank you for following my story and as always Saif Travels!