Bula Mike,
Happy Holidays and Happy New Year. Thank you for helping to put together my families' trip to Castaway Island Resort last month, our second trip you've helped put together for us. I thought I'd give you a critique of our week there, as well as give you the opportunity to make suggestions re what we might consider for the summer of 2010.
As a reminder of who we are, we are a family of 5, with 3 kids currently ages 13, 10, and 7. I've travelled fairly extensively-lived in Malaysia as a high school student for a year, speak 5 languages, my wife's family originated from the Phillipines, etc... I often like to dive on tropical vacations, but my wife does not. My 10 year old got his Jr certification while at Castaway. We are activity oriented. A lovely beach is fine and appreciated, but there have to be activities to engage in as well. My wife enjoys tennis, so usually wants to find a place with or near opportunity to hit a bit if she can.
Castaway: My wife and I booked with you at Koro Sun 3 years ago on your recommendation, just the two of us without kids. Great trip-just about perfect. Great food, beautiful people, good diving, my wife cried as we left. Not much of a beach or pool, and the intimate nature of the place accepts but isn't too populated with kids, so Castaway was a better destination for family, but set the standard for comparison of accommodation, food, and friendliness for us to date. So with that in mind, there were things that were nice about Castaway and some things that fell a bit short.
The good: Beautiful location. Beautiful beach. Nice facilities: Nice size pool in good condition, tennis court, spacious bures, beautiful dining area, boats in good condition, good dive facility, lots of families with kids to make friends with, great dive staff (good with kids too, as my 10-yr-old will testify).
The fair (I won't say bad b/c I don't think anything was "bad", just a tad off or disappointing at times): Food was good, but not great. Nothing bad, but just a notch above good buffet quality. Certainly not the level of Koro Sun from '06. The staff were nice, but with many the radiant warmth was just not there. ( My wife was not moved to tears when we were leaving.) The diving is beautiful but tame - great for my 10-year-old to learn, but similar at all sites so that 6 days of diving clear calm waters with pretty corals gets monotonous for me. No schools of barracuda, no large sharks, no rays, no swim throughs, etc... And, while relaxing, being contained on a beautiful island, nice as it is, is a bit limiting compared to the opportunities available on Vanua Levu with the waterfall trek, mountain biking, access to village, church, pearl farm, etc... Not as much "ethnic" fiji. The meke was great, but otherwise was a nice-sized family resort on a beautiful island, but would give B+, whereas Koro Sun would have received an A-, with their demerits coming from lack of a real beach and small not-really-viable pool area.
Okay, so those are our likes/dislikes and personalities of our family. So I'm starting to look ahead to summer of 2010 and I am open to recommendations. Enough for now. Thanks again, and if you've got some nice creative thoughts, feel free to think about what you'd recommend to close friends with similar backgrounds/experiences, and let me know. Happy New Year.
Sincerely,
A. Schwarz, MD
Tustin, CA
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