Lowdown on diving spots

The Lonely Planet's guide to Fiji.

Lonely Planet's Fiji, $39.99
Lonely Planet's Diving and Snorkeling Fiji, $34.99

The mission was to find out how much help a couple of Lonely Planet guides would be to someone going on a holiday in the islands - in my case a scuba diving trip to Taveuni in Fiji.

I've often used Lonely Planet guides to plan trips but in this case I had already booked my accommodation and the dive package before the books arrived so they didn't have to carry out their usual task of advising on what part of the country to visit.

The fact that I was confined to a small area also decreased the usefulness of the books and I must admit they were rarely referred to once in Fiji.

However, their first purpose was to get me excited before I departed, which they duly did, and having read each section religiously I left with a good grounding of what to expect.

One particularly useful section in the Fiji guide covers places to eat in each region. From this I discovered that the resort we were staying at had western meals for $20-25 whereas you could walk two minutes down the road and get either a local, or western, meal of equal quality for $4-5 and have the added benefit of mixing with the locals.

This isn't just being parsimonious, though it does save you money, but more that eating around ensures that you get a real taste of Fiji and your money is distributed around the community instead of just into the bank account of the resort.

The guide also gave me an idea of what the resort I had booked would be like though its description seemed to be harsher than the reality. Still, as the authors state, "Things change - prices go up, schedules change, good places go bad" and vice versa.

My advance reading had me prepared for the basics of the local language so that I was able to rattle off greetings like "bula" and "vinaka" rather than the embarrassing mispronunciations of "baloo" and "vinka" that my Lonely Planet-less dive buddy mumbled.

I would particularly recommend Lonely Planet's Diving and Snorkeling Fiji to novice divers or anyone who had not dived for a while. It had plenty of useful information on dive sites, equipment requirements and diving safety.

It's a colourful and snappy book which will have you salivating in anticipation of your tropical dives. Better still, the descriptions of the sites I dived were accurate, and the water was clear and warm, the fish and coral life fantastic.

I dived with Aqua-Trek, who are mentioned in the guide, and thought that they were very professional, especially in an environment that had strong currents. It was good to see how the reefs are being protected by the dive companies through the installation of permanent mooring buoys removing the damage caused by anchors.

There are seventy-four dive sites described in the book but unfortunately due to their geographical spread you would be lucky to do more than four on your average holiday break.

Overall these books are a great travel aid whose value would be further enhanced if you were travelling through a larger area of Fiji.

Wavetrack New Zealand Surfing Guide
By Peter Morse and Paul Brunskill
Greenroom Surf Media Ltd, $39.95

Any surfer who gives away intimate details of nearly every known surf spot in New Zealand to the world risks losing a few mates.

That's the gamble Peter Morse and Paul Brunskill have taken with this guide - early feedback suggests surfing bonds have survived but they're still a little edgy. Rightly so, as this 550-page little ripper of a book commits generations of oral tradition and local lore to print as no other New Zealand guide or website has attempted before.

The authors tapped the expertise of 50 surfers around the country to build up detailed descriptions of 470 surf spots. Each is accompanied by a nifty map describing ideal swell and wind directions, reefs and hazards. Not all is revealed. Directions to the odd "Spot X" or secret break are hinted at, with cheery advice to "ask a friendly local" for more details.

The guide is bang-on with breaks I'm familiar with around Auckland and Gisborne. One minor hiccup - the Tatapouri Hotel it recommends for a cold one burned down nine years ago - but this is a surfing guide, not a hospitality manual.

The A6-size book would fit into a fairly baggy pocket and certainly into your glovebox. The photos showing breaks at their best are excellent and the brief explanation of weather that produces them achieves in four pages what others fail to do in 40. Also handy are contact details of surf shops around the country - they usually give visitors a good steer on where to go for waves.

This is mainly for surfers, but any beachgoer who wants to know more about remote spots in particular will find this most helpful.