We left Navala early on one of only two buses and said goodbye to Bulou who shed a tear as we left. After a long bus ride to RakiRaki at the north of the island we caught a boat to nananu-i-ra. The lodge was really well set up and pretty friendly as usual and most of the backpackers were british, the island was nice, white sandy beaches and a fairly good walk over the top with good views. We'd only planned for one dive while we were there but ended up paying for aour advanced course (with Nick at Reef Safari) which included 5 dives we wanted to do and was far cheaper than in Oz where we were planning to do it anyway. Our first dive was our boat dive through breathtaker to shark junction (beautiful fan corals and at least a dozen reef sharks passing by as we sat above the coral) Dive number two was our naturalist dive (not naked) at cannibal cove. We learned about fish and marine life first then we went to a great spot where there were all sorts of soft and hard corals, amazing swim throughs, and Nick was writing down names of fish etc for us to learn. Number three was the night dive. We walked off the beach and had a really calm shallow dive to the reef, very odd, with our torches. We spotted hidden crayfish, a Moray eel, and the cutest puffer fish asleep on the bottom with its tail curled around like a cat. We turned our torches off to see the bio-iluminescence when we swirled our hands about. The fourth dive was the dreaded wreck dive, possibly one of the most stupid things for a claustrophobic person with a dreaded fear of being trapped underwater to do. The visibility was awful, going down we couldnt see anything and all cut our hands on the barnicled rope. It was a small ship with an open cargo bay, and a swim through its cabin corridoor which had been sunk just for diving. As expected it ended in Claire having a panic attack and being put off diving for life (well just after the dive it felt like that). I got caught in the corridoor then got trapped as I tried to get out......very horrible. Although there was a great batfish. We headed straight to the bar for some dutch courage for claire after it. The final dive was on our last day, Claires stubborn gene kicked in and we went off for our deep 30m dive with Nick, Alison (a girl we'd got to know), John and Chris (the dive master, leeds born shark gordon carpenter). At the bottom we palyed games, first we cracked open an egg to show how the pressure holds it together, then filled a condom with air and watched it expand as it shot to the surface, finally we took out a bag of crisps which looked like it was freeze dried. Nobody got narked so we headed up by a set of bommies called dream maker, this was our favourite site, huge fan corals, hard corals etc etc. Congrats we are now advanced divers! Back on the mainland we caught charlies bus down to the airport (via his house to collect his wife)at nadi to collect our bags for our flight out the next morning and we stayed at the famous Nadi Bay hotel (nice place, good fancy restaurant, although horribly done up fijiian women (doesnt suit them at all))