Schlagwort-Archive: world trip

Solomon Islands, World Trip 2018-19

Marovo Lagoon – where jungle meets ocean

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In order to get from Munda to the Marovo Lagoon, we had to take the local bus back to Noro and board MV Anjeanette once again, heading back from Gizo to Honiara, via Seghe/Marovo Lagoon area. What may sound easy ended up being the most annoying trip of our time in the Solomon Islands so far: No one in Munda was able to tell us with certainty what the departure time would be. We heard anything between 8 am and noon. In the end we decided to be at the port around 9 am in order not to miss the ferry. We waited. And waited. And waited. And waited…even more. At 1pm Anjeanette finally showed up and we excitedly boarded the ferry thinking we’d finally get going. Wrong. It took another 2 h for the ferry to get unloaded until we left Noro port at 3 pm. The trip to the first stop – Ughele, the market town – went rather quick and we got some dinner there. However, what followed afterwards were about 4 more hours of a rather choppy ride during which I felt quite sick. Needless to say we were more than done with Anjeanette when we arrived in Seghe at 10 pm – FINALLY. I cannot believe what should have been a rather quick trip ended up taking us over 12 h in total! Welcome to the Solomon Islands. Lol.

Also, in Seghe the ferry didn’t moor to the pier but just stopped in the middle of the lagoon, with all small boats coming up to it to pick up/drop off people and cargo. So we had to clamber out of the big ferry and into the moving small boat in the pitch black, with our heavy backpacks – an adventure by itself!

Next day, we woke up in our half open over-the-water bungalow, with bird sounds all around us. Pepele Lodge is a beautiful place, simple but very clean and charming. The owner Lasa took us on his shopping drive around the lagoon which was very nice since we got to see the beautiful landscape already a bit and we stopped by the weekly market in Seghe.

In the afternoon we rented a kayak and paddled a bit around the area – the water was super calm and flat like a mirror! Very peaceful. We were on the constant lookout for crocodiles though, knowing there are some in this area. And sure enough later during our last morning at Pepele, we spotted a big one cruising by, not too far from our lovely hut!

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On our 2nd day at the Marovo Lagoon, Lasa’s brother brought us to Uepi Dive Resort where we had scheduled 2 dives for the day. We were lucky: it was a sunny day and we were able to dive the 2 dive sites we were most interested in: Elbow Point and Uepi Point. While the evasive hammerheads unfortunately didn’t show themselves at Elbow Point, we spotted our first ever leopard shark – a big one, resting on the sand! There was also an eagle ray and some grey reef sharks to be seen. Great dive! And after lunch, Uepi Point ended up being even better!! During just one dive, we saw three different species of sharks – grey, black and white tipped reef sharks, a blue spotted stingray, some moray eels and to finish off a turtle! The coolest part were all the sharks of course, I couldn’t even count how many we saw anymore!

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We then had a day of chilling and walking to the nearest village – on small muddy trails that I don’t think we’d have found without the help of Lasa’s kids. It’s a nice little village though – worth a visit, even though there’s not much going on. I guess most people were hiding from the rain too.

Luckily sun came out again next day as we had booked a snorkelling trip with Lasa. In the course of the day we visited 3 snorkel spots and were dropped off at Matikuri Lodge in the end. The snorkelling was really cool, and the boat ride itself amazing!! We first drove a bit South of Seghe and then through the „passage“ – an overgrown tunnel of trees which all small boats going from Munda to Marovo Lagoon and vice versa have to pass. It was one of the most beautiful boat rides of my life! It just doesn’t come out that well on the photos, so you just have to take my word for it.

Our first snorkel spot was at the end of the passage, where boats get out into the open sea – a cool spot with low visibility unfortunately. Still, we spotted a turtle and some sharks! The topography of this site is amazing, it must be really beautiful in clear water conditions. The next spot was called Ravu (Penguin Reef) and we tried to attract sharks by making sounds with an empty water bottle under water. At first we thought it wasn’t working, but suddenly there they were! And loads of them!! Around 10-15 grey reef sharks of different sizes showed up out of the blue, some – including a big one – came very close! It almost became a bit much even for us shark lovers 😉 But definitely a really cool experience. Lastly, we went to the reef off Bahoro Island where a fishing boat crashed into the reef some years ago (noone died). It’s a really cool wreck standing vertically against the reef. Mathijs free dived down a bit, but I’m pretty much stuck to the surface since my ears just won’t equalize when free diving. Unfortunately I had packed my underwater camera somewhere in my big backpack, so no underwater pics of the day!

After some picnic lunch on a deserted island, Lasa dropped us off at Matikuri Lodge – a lodge in the South of the Marovo Lagoon. This is where we spent the next couple of nights, unfortunately mostly stuck in the seemingly never-ending rain… We tried to go snorkelling on the house reef twice, again trying our shark bottle trick – but with not much success. The visibility was also really low due to the rains. In a rain break, we explored the island a bit, first following a trail in the jungle and then walking along the coast. The Solomon Islands are really the place where jungle meets ocean!

The island would be amazing for sure in dry, sunny weather. Heavy rains meant we were stuck to chilling, reading, playing cards and sleeping long most of the time though. On our last day, the weather finally cleared up and we went to two nearby islands for snorkelling. The first place was not that great – low visibility, most coral dead – but suddenly a huuuuge ornate eagle ray showed up right next to it!! It’s wing span must have been at least 3m and it stayed with us a bit until it got scared and quickly ‚flew‘ away. We read up about it later on and found out it’s one of the rarest rays in the world, an endangered species!! I feel soooo lucky to have spotted such a rare animal. Next, we spotted some massive bumphead parrotfish – so all in all a really good snorkel spot in the end.

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We then continued to another island to relax a bit and snorkel more. Here, we saw the occasional reef sharks but visibility was low again. What was amazing though was the coral garden – some of the most intact and beautiful corals I’ve seen! A good end to our time in the Marovo Lagoon…

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From here, we took our ‚beloved‘ MV Anjeanette once again back to Honiara, a 16 h overnight trip in choppy waters. In Honiara, we had 1.5 days mainly to get ourselves a bit organized, do the laundry, book some flights etc. Traveling the Solomon Islands has been an adventure but weather and infrastructure (or lack thereof) made it challenging at times…

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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