Dive Review of TOPdive/Havaiki in
French Polynesia/Fakarava

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TOPdive/Havaiki: "Not just for pearl divers", Jun, 2021, by Martin Klein, NC, US ( Reviewer 3 reports with 4 Helpful votes). Report 11700 has 3 Helpful votes.
No photos available at this time
Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Accommodations		Food
Service and Attitude		Environmental Sensitivity	N/A
Dive Operation		Shore Diving	N/A
Snorkeling
Overall Rating
Value for $$
Beginners
Advanced
Comments	Fakarava is one of the more rustic islands in French Polynesia. Havaiki, where we stayed, is said to be the most upscale accommodation on the island. It is situated on a very nice beach. You stay in beach huts that are functionally appointed and offer air conditioning. There is very little storage space, especially for divers. The bath with a shower is small and rinsing dive gear would be a challenge. We were travelling with our teenage kids and booked a beach hut for four. We were warned that it would be tight and it was. It would be fine for two people. WiFi works best at the beach bar. At our hut there was no WiFi reception at all. Rooms come with a meal plan. Breakfast is bread/French pastries, and an assortment of jams and deli type meats. They will also prepare eggs. Dinner is a pre-set three course meal. Appetizers were mostly good, and deserts were their strength. Entrees were disappointing. It seemed like their kitchen could not handle preparing so many of the same meals at the same time. They would bring out all the entrees to the different tables around the same time. The fish was usually way overcooked and dry and the meat did not impress either. That being said, service was friendly but hours are limited. As I recall, there is a 1 1/2 hour window for dinner. The beach bar is closed in the evening. There are a few scattered restaurants on the island that may be worthwhile trying. We went to one by the (very) small harbor for lunch and it was very good. There is also a supermarket with a decent selection nearby. There is a pearl farm onsite and it's worth participating in the educational presentation being offered after breakfast every other day. The hotel also offers a number of excursions that look interesting. I recommend getting one of the (free) bicycles or rent one of the electric cars to drive around the island. There are some beautiful spots north of the airport toward the pass with deserted beaches. Snorkeling in front of the hotel's very pretty beach is underwhelming save for the resident nurse sharks. You can watch them cruise back and forth from the long boat dock and when you time it right you can swim or snorkel with them for a bit. They were probably the biggest of all the sharks we saw on our trip Like in Rangiroa, we dove with TopDive. This makes sense since they offer discounted multi-dive packages that cover multiple islands. We were not disappointed with the operation. All diving is Nitrox and much of what I wrote in my Rangiroa report applies - lots of sharks, schools of big fish, a very healthy reef... There were more shark varieties than in Rangiroa. Besides the grey reef sharks, we saw silvertips and white tip sharks. There is a part of the reef called Ali Babba. The current was not ripping and the site was like an aquarium exploding with life and color. It is important to note that my description above applies to the North Pass. The remote South Pass is a different story. Dive operations in the North will take you to the South if conditions allow. Often they won't. It's close to a two hour boat ride and the last half hour is very rough even in good conditions because parts of the atoll ring have collapsed and don't provide protection from the open sea. TopDive would not go when we were there but we were able to book a boat through our hotel that would do the trip. The ride was long and it was rough but it was very much worth it. The boat takes you to Tetamanu village right at the South Pass. The hotel had arranged for us to dive with the Tetamanu Dive Center. It is not affiliated with TopDive. I am not going to describe the dives in any detail because they were not typical. The tides were off because of unusual ocean swells that supposedly only happen about 10 days out of the year. There was no current and pass diving was a bust. Therefore, the diving did not compare. From what I read, many if not most divers prefer the South over the North under normal conditions. We did see some sharks and the reef was healthy. We did not like that they enforced the 60 foot depth limit (see my Rangiroa report for explanation) and kept the dives to 45 minutes although we stayed shallow and had plenty of air left. Nonetheless, we highly recommend at least a short visit to the South for a couple of reasons. You spend some time at the pink sand islands and they are breathtakingly beautiful. We barbecued speared fish on the deserted beach. You stepped in the water and there were blacktip sharks from tiny to 2 feet long everywhere. The scenery was simply incredible even by French Polynesian standards. The second reason is the restaurant at Tetamanu village or rather what lies beneath. It is built on stilts and it is hands-down the best snorkeling spot we have ever been to. Walking from the shore to the drop under the restaurant you are already surrounded by small blacktip sharks in a foot of water. Under the restaurant the bottom drops into an underwater wonderland. Thick schools of all kinds of fish, hefty Napoleons and plenty of sharks patrolling in packs back and forth along the channel. A photographer's dream. The concentration of life in this small area is truly extraordinary. I can't praise it enough and you don't even need a tank. It is just incredible that you can take a few steps from shore and be surrounded by what amounts to a world class dive site. You can stay in the South over night or even for a week and more but few seem to do it. There are two "hotels". They are very basic - no air conditioning, no warm water... The place at Tetamanu village did look clean and the huts seemed airy with enough room for two. I did not get to see the bath. I don't believe that there are any other restaurants than the one at the hotel. There is no menu so you eat what they prepare. We did not have time to eat there so I can't comment on the food but the setting is hard to beat if you don't mind rustic. And then there is the long boat ride from the airport and back. As a multi-day trip it may work well for serious divers but less so for a family with varying degrees of enthusiasm for a dedicated dive trip. I encourage you to also read my Rangiroa report since many decide between Rangiroa and Fakarava or at least wonder how to split their time between the two. Both deliver on the diving. They both have plenty of sharks. The unique underwater experiences that differentiated them for us were the dolphins in Rangiroa and Tetamanu in Fakarava. We are glad that we got to experience both. If you have to decide between the two it becomes a very difficult unless you have a taste for luxury. Rangiroa wins hands down if a beautiful hotel, great food and creature comforts are very important to you. There simply is no place like the Kia Ora on Fakarava, North or South.
Websites	TOPdive Havaiki
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	251-500 dives
Where else diving	Caribbean, Florida, Indonesia, Thailand, South Africa, Hawaii, Galapagos
Closest Airport	Fakarava	Getting There	via San Francisco, Papeete (Tahiti)
Dive Conditions
Weather	sunny, rainy, cloudy	Seas	calm, choppy, currents
Water Temp	83-85°F / 28-29°C	Wetsuit Thickness	3
Water Visibility	100-0 Ft/ 30-0 M
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	?
Enforced diving restrictions
Liveaboard?	no	Nitrox Available?
What I Saw
Sharks	Lots	Mantas	None
Dolphins	None	Whale Sharks	None
Turtles	1 or 2	Whales	None
Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):
Corals		Tropical Fish
Small Critters	N/A	Large Fish
Large Pelagics
Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Subject Matter	N/A	Boat Facilities	N/A
Overall rating for UWP's	N/A	Shore Facilities	N/A
UW Photo Comments	[None]

Report currently has 3 Helpful votes

Subscriber's Comments

By MICHAEL ZAGACHIN in MA, US at Nov 04, 2021 09:49 EST

In case you wondering, this is one of the best reports I ever read on Undercurrent. And I am a member since forever. Thank you.

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Dive Review of TOPdive/Havaiki in French Polynesia/Fakarava

TOPdive/Havaiki: "Not just for pearl divers", Jun, 2021,

Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Overall Rating

Reporter and Travel

Dive Conditions

Dive Policy

What I Saw

Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):

Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Subscriber's Comments

Dive Review of TOPdive/Havaiki in
French Polynesia/Fakarava