Schlagwort-Archive: south pacific

Solomon Islands, World Trip 2018-19

The skulls & beaches of Munda

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It was difficult to find out beforehand how to get from Gizo to Munda. The shuttle from Agnes Lodge which used to run Mondays, Fridays and some Wednesdays, is currently only running if there are enough people. So I suspect never/once a month maybe? But, there is at least one boat daily which goes to Noro, from where you can take the bus (20-30min) to Munda town. Works for us! We asked around at the smaller boats near the market in the morning and were introduced to a boat driver who would go back to Noro at 1.30pm so we signed up for that. Be on time! They wanted to leave earlier but were nice enough to wait around for us luckily… The boat trip was really good for the most part, the weather had calmed down and there was very little chop. It was like a little sightseeing ride, but I had my camera packed away so unfortunately no pics! You will just have to believe that nature was amazing, all little green untouched islands next to us, with small beaches, the water shining in all kinds of blues.

The bus from Noro to Munda was easy too. It basically waits for the boat to arrive and costs 20 SBD p.p. The boat ride was 150 SBD p.p. by the way, so the total ends up being much cheaper than the 250 SBD shuttle from Agnes Lodge anyways! In Munda, we didn’t have a reservation, because everything we found online was too expensive for us. Luckily it seems that you can bargain very well here, and we got our super nice double room at Munda Guesthouse for 300 SBD instead of 400 SBD or more what we saw online. Best guesthouse so far, with hot water and all!

Friday is market day in Munda and we walked around there a bit, did some shopping for our next meals and took some pictures. Munda is a peaceful village where not much is happening. There are however about 5 or 6 little supermarkets which sell the basic needs, all run by Chinese (they are starting to take over the Solomons it seems…).

There’s also Go West Tours, located at Agnes Lodge, which offer some tours of the area, most of them rather pricey unfortunately (like most things in the Solomon Islands). We opted for a tour to Hopei Island in the afternoon, basically a boat would drop us there and pick us up 4h later. So we ended up with our own private island! Not too bad, huh!?

An afternoon there was enough though – the coral reef was sadly mostly dead, so we didn’t snorkel as much as we thought we would. The most exciting thing we saw under water was when walking around the island – Mathijs almost stepped on a sea snake! Pheww… that could have ended badly. In hindsight, there is probably better islands to go to for an afternoon of snorkelling! Such as… Bikini Island, where we went to next day: We had opted to book yet another tour with Go West Tours (bargain hard – their starting prices are way too high!!), bringing us to Skull Island, Vona Vona Lagoon and Bikini Island for snorkelling. First stop was Skull Island, a tiny islet where skulls of former village chiefs are being kept. We had expected something bigger, but it’s just a pile of rocks on where there are about 4 or 5 piles of about 5-6 skulls each. Also, we didn’t get a whole lot of details from our boat driver/guide as in how, when, when, what, why… So in all it was a bit of a disappointing visit!

In addition, it had started to rain heavily, so the decision was made to stop by Lola Island and take shelter from the rain at their resort for a bit. We spent about an hour or so waiting around there, which was made better by the resident black tip reef sharks who were circling around the pier. We tried to go in and snorkel with them, but they were rather shy and the water was too murky from the rain – so they were actually better visible from the pier than underwater.

When the rain stopped a bit, we went on to Bikini Island – and were wow-ed! It’s a stunning island and what’s more – the island around it and the little lagoon they form (we suspect that was the Vona Vona Lagoon) were just stunning – the water turquoise and the beaches bright white, the palm trees swaying in the wind… The snorkelling was great too! We didn’t see anything big in particular, but the reef is beautiful and healthy, with lots of different reef fish and colourful coral.

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When we saw a thunderstorm approaching from afar, we asked our boat driver if it would be good to leave. Due to his politeness or lack of English (not sure), that meant we were headed straight into the storm (we had thought Munda was the other direction, so wanted to avoid the storm of course). At one point this got rather scary when the waves became higher and higher. We were in this little boat out on the ocean and I totally did not trust our boat driver, since he had got the boat stranded on coral reefs 3 times that day already… So in a moment of fear, I shouted at him and basically told him we need to wait in some bay until it calms down, I’m not going any further. We did that for a bit and then found a different way which was less choppy back to Munda. Nevertheless, we were completely soaking wet and frozen stiff by the time we arrived – very much looking forward to the hot shower of Munda Guesthouse…

On our last day in Munda, we went for another stroll around the village. Everyone was in their best Sunday outfits and going to church. Munda and its surroundings are truly beautiful – there is so much green, so many beautiful plants everywhere. It’s too bad there is not much you can do (yet), with almost no tourist infrastructure and expensive tour prices for what there is. Maybe, the region will develop more in terms of tourism, and offer more to the backpacker at one point in the future… Until then, there is lots of chilling time to be had everywhere.

Solomon Islands, World Trip 2018-19

Gizo – above and below the surface

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When we arrived in Gizo by ferry from Honiara, it was in the middle of the night, around 1 am. Let me tell you – DO ask your accommodation to pick you up from the pier if at all possible, since it is not easy at all to find the smaller guesthouses in the dark! We were walking along the road already for a while, searching for Cegily Guesthouse, when luckily I asked a passing men about it, and it turned out that he was from the guesthouse and came looking for us since they were worried we would not find the way. So sweet! And very lucky that we asked him, for there is no way we would have been able to spot the small trail leading up to the guesthouse otherwise, with no sign or anything. We desperately needed a shower of course, and then just fell into our bed!

Next day, we wanted to get our bearings of Gizo. We headed into „town“ (or shall I say: village) and wandered a bit around the market. Then we made our way to Dive Gizo, the only dive shop on the island. We booked 2 dives for the next day and rented some bicycles for the rest of the afternoon to explore the little island.

It was lots of fun cycling through little villages with kids screaming „helloooo“ to us, and seeing some pretty little beaches along the way. Unfortunately they don’t really qualify for swimming, as there is lots of coral and the water is shallow. So we just cycled further and further, with many photo stops along the way, taking in the beautiful green nature of Gizo and enjoying the total remoteness of being the only tourists around.

We didn’t bring enough water though and there were no shops along the way, so at one point we decided to turn around, instead of cycling all the way to the western point of the island and end of the road. Too bad, I would have loved to do it all the way! But at this point I felt very exhausted and energy-depleted, probably because of dehydration, and struggled to make it back to town. While I would very much recommend renting bikes from Gizo Dive and exploring the island, it would have been better to do it as a full day trip, take our time more, and go all the way to the end. And take enough water and food!

Next day, we got up early to go out diving. The dive sites we visited were the wreck of Toa Maru, a really cool dive of a beautifully eerie wreck where which we could penetrate at different points, and Grand Central Station. GCS is a famous dive that can have strong currents and therefore, large pelagics showing up. We were lucky the current was decent but not too strong and saw lots of grey reef sharks and schools of other fish. At one point, it was like diving in a fish soup! There was a huge group of barracudas which stayed with us for a while as well at one point. Two really cool dives!

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Between the dives, we had lunch on a tiny picturesque island. The lunch was a fish bbq which tasted delicious and around the island there was some good snorkelling where we spotted a turtle! All in all, a great day out with Gizo Dive, highly recommended.

Originally we had planned to visit the island of Kolombangara next, however accommodation there was pricey and we were not in the mood for camping with lots of rain at various parts of the day. Everything was rather muddy, and we didn’t want our first camping experience like that! Also, the trails probably would have been too muddy to make it up to the crater anyways. Wow, and it’s „dry season“ here. Really wouldn’t want to visit in rainy season! So we decided to stay a day longer in Gizo while trying to figure out our program for the next few days. It was a grey and rather rainy day, but we still opted to go snorkeling at Imagination Island for a couple of hours – a good decision, even in the rain! Their house reef is surprisingly beautiful, lots of healthy coral and smaller reef fish – and a couple resident black tip reef sharks, which we kept spotting here and there.

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General, Solomon Islands, World Trip 2018-19

27 hours on the MV Anjeanette

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As described in my post about Honiara, we spent most of our time in the city preparing for the ferry ride. Buying the tickets in advance is not actually necessary, you can buy them also on the boat, even once the ferry has already left the harbour. However, the crucial part is getting on the ferry much much earlier than the 9pm departure time (think noon-ish), in order to secure a spot for your sleeping mat. More about that in my Honiara blog post.

The MV Anjeanette leaves Honiara every Saturday evening at 9pm and arrives in Gizo around midnight the next day. I took the time from when we left Honiara (9.45pm) to when we arrived in Gizo and it ended up being pretty much exactely the announced 27h. And it was a rather loooong ride! We were super lucky with the weather as the sea was often so calm that we were unsure if we were even moving. However, the temperature in our „1st class room“ (as big as an average living room) was way too high for us to sleep comfortably! I think we managed about 2-3 h each during the first night and maybe an hour more the second night before arrival in Gizo. Everything else was fine actually – our mats were rather comfy, the cabin light on our side was broken, thus it wasn’t too bright, and once settled, most people dozed off so it wasn’t too loud either. But because of the lack in aircon, we were just sweating and it felt like there was not enough fresh air coming in. So we took turns to get outside into the fresh air… The best would actually be to sleep outside, if there was any space. It’s only corridors though, so people will be constantly stepping over you, not to forget all sea sick people who might wanna stand next to you to throw up (hopefully into the ocean then). So unless that aircon is usually working better, I doubt there is anything we could have done better to make the trip more comfortable! There is another boat, MV Fair Glory, which leaves Sunday morning and arrives Monday noon in Gizo – a couple of people have mentioned to us that this one is to be preferred over MV Anjeanette.

The day-time part of the ferry ride was actually quite nice. There are quite some stops where you can see a bit of the local life, offloading and loading of the ferry etc. and also part of the trip leads all the way through Marovo Lagoon which was beautiful to see! The day was rather grey, but still all the little islands were amazing! So much green, so much nature, and in between some little simple huts, people on small boats going there way etc. On one of the stops (think it was Gasini) there were lots of sharks circling the boat, hoping for food waste!

And Mathijs saw some dolphins at one point. In Ughele, there seems to always be a small market popping up when the ferry comes in – and they are even selling fully cooked meals! This would have been a good one for us to know, since we realized it too late and didn’t get to buy anything anymore. On the ferry itself, there is a little shop which sells cookies, crackers, cup noodles and some soft drinks. It’s not even overpriced, pretty much the same as shops in Honiara, but just doesn’t offer a lot of choice. We had bought some bread and jam in Honiara, bananas and boiled eggs at the market and got some cup noodles along the way.

The ferry runs along the following route: Honiara – Bunikalo – Gasini – Chea – Seghe (Marovo Lagoon main gateway though one of the smallest stops) – Ughele (Rendova Island) – Noro (transfer to Munda by bus) – Ringgi (Kolombangara Island) – Gizo. The part Honiara – Bunikalo was during the night, and then it was dark again from between Ughele and Noro onward. The last part was dragging the most of course, since we really could not sleep in our „1st class non working aircon living room type of cabin“ and we were kind of done with just chilling and reading. Also, the toilets became smellier and smellier and the boat dirtier and dirtier. More and more cockroaches came out (wasn’t as bad as expected though). So in the end we were counting every minute to finally arrive at our destination, Gizo!