I suspected the long journey would be worth it. Viani, after all, is perfectly situated for divers looking to access Fiji’sfamed Rainbow Reef, first mapped by Jacques Cousteau and one of the world’s prime examples of the soft-coral ecosystem. In normal times, the reef would be teeming not just with fish, but with visitors from around the globe. But in the early days of Fiji’s tentative post-pandemic reopening, we virtually had this bucket-list dive site to ourselves. The resort I was visiting in Viani Bay, a small, three-bungalow operation called Dive Academy Fiji, is the brainchild of Marina Walser and Jone Waitaiti, business partners who met on Germany’s frigid (and, in my mind, utterly inexplicable) scuba-diving circuit. Marina, tired of a long career in the corporate world, had wanted a change of scenery that involved better weather and diving; Jone had yearned to return to his native Fiji. The journey from dream to reality was a long one.