Brisbane – Honiara. Mathijs and my first flight together this year and the official start of our trip around the world!! 🙂 We couldn’t be more excited. Immigration was rather quick when we landed in Honiara, and then we were out in the tropical heat of the Solomon Islands! A girl on Couchsurfing had offered to pick us up and drive us to our accommodation in Honiara, together with her „Solomon mum“ – very sweet! The drive from the airport took longer than expected and there was quite some traffic and construction work going on. Finally, we arrived at Chester Resthouse where we were lucky to get upgraded to a much bigger room! Good start – and the views from the large terrace over the city are good as well (even though the city as such is not really pretty).

For the first evening and most of the next day, we had quite some organizational things to do: Buying a local SIM card, getting our ferry tickets to Ghizo, and… most importantly: reserving our spots on the ferry! The ticket guarantees that you get on the ferry, however there is only so much floor space in both 1st and 2nd class. Come first, serve first! The rest of the people has to somehow squeeze in, often also laying in the corridors or outside on the floor. The ferry MV Anjeanette which we took, arrives Saturday noon already in port, and if you already have your ticket, you can then get on and put your mattress down to secure a spot (and hope no one moves it – block more space than you need, since it will definitely get squeezed a bit).

While the locals all sleep on very thin straw mattresses, Mathijs and I had our camping mats to secure the spot, then covered in the beach towel so that hopefully no one would see that it’s expensive sleeping mats. We also made sure to spread out some personal things like clothes, books etc. to make sure people would see this spot is already taken. Lol. In hindsight, this would have not been necessary, mat and beach towel or even just beach towel is probably fine. You DO want a proper mat though, since even in 1st class it’s directly on the hard floor, so you need to be able to sleep on there. We booked 1st class tickets because it has aircon (which didn’t really work though) and because we thought it would be less full as less people would pay the 50 SBD compared to 2nd class. I guess in the end, it was a good decision, even though in 2nd class there was more proper luggage storage space and well…aircon didn’t really work anyways. And 1st class was also crowded for the majority of the ride. We (well… more just me) then spent the rest of the afternoon worrying about our stuff on the boat, if someone would move it or take something. Unfortunately I was a bit right to worry, because my little toilet bag with essentials to freshen up during the ferry ride, had disappeared when we checked back on our stuff later. Annoying, but of course not the worst thing to have stolen. It did make me feel a little less safe on the ferry though, so during the ride Mathijs and I always made sure that one of us was with the bags while the other one could go use the bathroom, have a walk around and look outside etc. At least no one had (significantly) moved our mats and we had a good corner reserved for ourselves. More about the ferry ride in another blog entry though.

In Honiara, we walked around the city for a bit, but as mentioned…it’s not very pretty or should I say rather ugly and lacks in sights. Except for – and don’t miss this one – the central market! Wow! Mathijs and I always like markets a lot, but the one in Honiara is especially colourful and nice. It was also good as a first check, how much things cost and what all you can buy. We got some bananas and boiled eggs for the ferry and a fresh coconut to drink immediately.

That was it for our start in Honiara! We boarded the ferry already shortly past 6pm, even though it was only due to leave at 9pm (and actually left at 9.45pm). A good decision! That way there was still some space for our big backpacks to put and we could make sure to be there and actually block our „beds“. We saw some mats that locals had put down, where another mat was being laid over it half-way, thus reducing the space by 50%. Our camping mats might have helped to avoid that since obviously you can’t easily lay something over them given that they are air-filled and much thicker than the straw mats of the locals. Haha. 27 hours to Gizo! A loooong ride. More about that one shortly.