My trip to Salomon Islands, July 2001

In 2001 I went to the Salomon Islands and had a wonderful time. The trip wasn't without its problems and the remark during the briefing before the trip, that this was going to be very different from any other place we'd been was not far off.

Honiara

At long last, we arrived in the capital on the island Guadalcanal. (We were supposed to arrive the night before, but that flight was cancelled, which we found out when we arrived very late in Sydney.)

Whenever we stayed in Honiara, we stayed at Chester Rest House, a very nice place run by a group of Anglican brothers (brother as a title, that is). It's a policy of the agency which arranged the trip that we normally stay at places local people would stay at and not hotels for tourists.
We started with a short walk around the are to look around and shop for supplies both at the market and in stores, for the boat journey to Malaita the next day. (It can be noted that for security reasons, we really had to stay in the town proper, as at this time the area around still wasn't considered totally safe. But I wonder if it wasn't practically so for foreigners, as the tension was between different groups from Salomon Islands and no foreigners had come to harm during the earlier actual violence, which in itself stopped tourists from coming for some time. We were if not the first at least almost the first to return.)

In the afternoon we had a briefing both in general about the different islands and in particular about the next days.

In the background we could hear singing from a nearby church. There are lots of churches in Salomon Islands.

Mana Island

The next days didn't go as planned. Our tour leader, Ronnie Butala, had been down to the harbour a couple of hours before the boat to Auki on Malaita's west coast was leaving to confirm the arrangement. When we came down one hour before the scheduled time, the ship wasn't any longer going to Malaita. The reason was that there had been a traffic accident and it had to take two dead bodies to another island. Such things can happen to scheduled traffic.

So it was clearly time for a change of plans, especially since there was no other transport to Malaita within a reasonable time. We suggested that perhaps we could reshuffle the programme a bit and do what was planned for the last days first instead, and go to Maravagi Island Resort on the small Mana Island a couple of hours north of Honiara.
They didn't have rooms for all of us the first night, but they did have tents. It was quite hot in the tents, so I raised the outer cover of the tent to just use the inner tent as sort of mosquito net. Much better. But in the middle of the night it started to rain, so I had to go up and pull the outer covering again so it wouldn't rain on me and the other two guys. (And there were no mosquitos there, but most of us were bitten by something on the ground.) The other nights we stayed in bungalows. We ate at their restaurant. Good food, but not cheap. Actually it was a recurring problem all through the stay in Salomon Islands that we were spending lots more money than estimated.

These few days, we took it real easy.

The water just outside the resort was quite suitable for snorkling. Me, I don't exactly snorkel, but still I got these photos (first time I used a camera under water).

One even there was a musical performance. Main instruments are flutes and drums.

I think these days were meant to refresh us after the various hardships, especially the rather monotonous food, but didn't mind a bit of rest before them.

On to part 2 (of 3).

Photos from some of my other travels

Photos and sounds from 2001 July, photos by me unless I'm in the photo myself or if the caption says differently, document created 2001 Dec 30 by Urban