These past two days were not the best for me. Unfortunately, I came down with a head cold that had been going around here at Matava. I suspect that it may have been transmitted to me during one of the kava ceremonies. It started out as just a sore throat, and I didn’t think much of it, but during my second dive of our first three-tank day, my biggest fear happened — I couldn’t equalize. I heard the sound I usually hear during equalization, followed by an intense pain in my inner ear. When I tried to dive on the third tank, I only made it a meter before the pain happened again. So, I decided to sit out on the next two days of diving. Missing out on dives is the last thing I want to do in Fiji, but I was able to make plenty of progress in my species identifications! [Ed: We can report that Greg has recovered from this and is back diving]

A few of the well-worn identification guides the students can use at Matava.

– Greg