Taveuni Dive Resort, Taveuni

Taveuni Dive Resort is a sustainable dive resort, designed by divers for divers, providing unparalleled access to Fiji’s world-famous Rainbow Reef. Taveuni Dive Resort provides scuba diving, accommodation, dining, and tourism activities to chartered dive groups, small groups of scuba divers, and independent travellers attracted to the locale. The resort also runs The Salty Fox Bar & Grill.

The resort has four covered dive boats that take divers to some of the many dive sites in the Somosomo Straits each day. The average resort to reef time is a breezy 20 minutes.

As a 5 Star PADI IDC, Taveuni Dive Resort offers all the PADI courses from open water upwards. The resort also has a pool for dive training – or just relaxing around after a day’s diving – adjacent The Salty Fox Bar & Grill.

There are plenty of non-diving activities for diving and non-diving guests including water activities and shore excursions, and the golf course and tennis courts of the Taveuni Estates country club are also accessible to guests.

Read more about the diving, accommodation and sustainability of Taveuni Dive Resort directly.

Taveuni Dive Resort is located within Taveuni Estates on the west coast of the island of Taveuni. There are regular domestic flights to Matei domestic airport from Nadi and Suva. Airport transfers are included for stays over three days.

The first sustainable resort on Taveuni, Taveuni Dive Resort provides very comfortable accommodation that fits the style of its location, built by locals with locally sourced materials. Most of its power is harvested from the sun, most of its water is harvested from rain, and much of its waste is recycled. Most of its employees are locals living within walking distance. Wherever possible its design and operations are guided by the principles of sustainable development.

At Taveuni Dive Resort, there is no published dive schedule, other than for the Great White Wall, which, subject to demand, is scheduled first dive of the day at low slack tide. Taking everything into account – time, tide, current, weather and diver experience level, – the Taveuni Dive Resort guides will determine which sites have the best conditions in the circumstances on the day.

Using their combined experience of 10,000 dives on the Rainbow Reef, they are uniquely placed to give guests the best possible experience. All sites are tide dependent and that usually sets the timetable for the day.

When you first arrive at Taveuni Dive Resort, you’ll be sized up for any rental gear, and all your gear will be taken down to the boats for the first day of diving. After that, the resort crew will rinse your gear and store it securely down by the marina. The next, and all subsequent days of diving your gear will be set up on the boat waiting for you for your first dive of the day. (On the last day of diving your gear will be rinsed thoroughly, and brought up to the resort where the gear will be hung outside your bure to dry, and ready for packing up for your trip home.)

So on any given dive day all you need to do is arrive down at the marina with your camera at the agreed time.

Once aboard you’ll be at the dive site within 10 to 30 minutes depending on the site visited, and once over the site, the dive guide will give you a thorough dive brief of the site. This will include a map showing the major features of the site, the depths and the current direction. It’s important to absorb this information so that you can follow the general route through the dive site and see the major features without having to work against the current at any point.

After that it’s gear up and go! The boats are wide, spacious and stable so there’s plenty of room, and entry is your choice of backward roll over the side or giant stride over the stern. As many sites are prone to current, it’s best to descend as soon as practical.

The major challenge you’ll have with any of the dive sites in the Somosomo Strait is where to point your camera first as everything looks so good! It’s tempting to gad about madly and try to see everything. The best policy is to exhale gently, relax and let the reef come to you. There will be angelfish, butterflies, coral trout, damsels, emperors, filefish, gropers, hawkfish … the list is endless … and that’s just the fish. Take time to admire the corals – hard and soft – as that’s what makes places like Rainbow Reef so special. If you have a light use it – what looks like blue soft coral might actually be red! It really brings out all the colours of the _Rainbow_ Reef.

Your dive guide will pace the dive according to current and air consumption and by the time the safety stop comes around you’ll be up on a reef top at 5.5m. Again there’s another opportunity to just let the reef come to you. Stay in one place and watch the reef society go about its business – it’s fascinating.

Surfacing as a group, the dive boat will magically appear and exit is via the ladder at the stern. You can climb up fully kitted or de-kit as much or as little as you want in the water first.

Your second tank is sitting waiting next to where you park your first and the surface interval won’t pass quickly enough before you can once again get down to that wonderful reef. Take your time to enjoy a drink and snack whilst your tank is changed, and the boat motors slowly to the next site.

Once again there’s a thorough brief before entry and the second dive follows the same pattern as the first. After the second dive, you’ll be back to the resort and your room where a sustainable hot shower in your luxurious bure awaits you.

Pricing for Taveuni Dive Resort