Barefoot Manta - Snorkeling & Diving

Leaving the Blue Lagoon Resort with blue skies, turquoise waters and warm sunshine, the next stop on my Fij adventure was Drawaqa Island, home to the Barefoot Manta Resort. I was traveling to Drawaga with a group of girls I met at the Blue Lagoon Resort and who would celebrate one of the girl's birthdays in a few days (more on that in the next post). For this island, I penciled in two nights.

Anyway, as soon as we arrived at Barefoot Manta, I quickly went to the dive shop to book a dive for the next day and rented a snorkel to go into the water to see some more ocean life. Even though it was low tide when I went in, within minutes, I was surrounded by hundreds of Convict fishes - a super start to my time on the island.

The following day, I caught a beautiful sunset by the beach before diving with four other divers and two guides. We had a little briefing about our location (Coral Garden) beforehand and then suited up and jumped into the water. It was my first dive post my certification and I felt comfortable and enjoyed the dive. However, the dive was not as beautiful as I had hoped (not as colourful as those I did previously), even though we saw some nice corals and a little white-tip shark having a nap. As soon as we got a bit closer, the shark swam away, unfortunately, and it was literally impossible to follow it.

Once back on shore, I quickly dried myself off and went to the Marine Biology Centre on the island as they were hosting a talk about sharks. That was super cool, as I learned about how sharks use their senses, that they actually hate human blood, what they eat, how they survive, etc. It was really interesting, especially in preparation of something I had planned quite some time ago (more on that soon).

After lunch, I was hanging out with one of the guides to observe the appearance of Manta Rays via a drone and then joined the girl group on the beach for some water fun, tanning and laughs. In the afternoon, I went snorkeling again (yes, by this point, I absolutely loved it) and had to say that it was the best snorkeling that I had done to this point. It was colourful, I saw a few things I had not seen before (ie, clams) and swam with lots of different fish.

This was my last 'activity on the island as I was leaving the next morning. The girls and l did wake up early to climb a little hill for the sunrise, but it was too cloudy to actually see the sun rising.

Then it was already time to leave. Generally speaking, while the snorkeling here was amazing and the marine biology center and shark talk were very interesting, I did not really ‚connect‘ with the island. The food was not as great as in the other two places, the dorms were not as nice, the staff was friendly as you would expect but I did not have a longer chat with any of them and there were not many activities on offer. And despite it having three beaches (Sunrise, Sunset ant Manta Beach), I did not mind only having spent two days on the island. The goodbye song was beautiful, though (see video).Leia mais