The Solomon Islands: Part 1
We started the WWII history tour in the airport before the slow, busy journey to the homestay along the most ridiculously potholed roads. We had a whole apartment amidst a lush, jungle like garden & a jumble of wooden buildings.
We arrived in the Solomon Islands at Honiara on the north coast of Guadalcanal, one of the 992 islands that make up the nation. This part of our Pacific leg was going to be completely different to our other stops – here it would be raw, rugged & much more of a history lesson than a paradise island beach thing, though hopefully a few of those thrown in as well. First impressions were that it felt far more African than Pacifican, if there is such a thing as Pacifican. Honiara doesn’t look or feel like a capital city. It’s down at heel & looks like its been through a recent conflict. There’s just one roadwork-strewn, dusty & busy highway (being reconstructed by the Chinese, no doubt with ‘conditions’) that leads to the port & airport where shops are in dark, shuttered ‘garages’, minibuses are all overloaded & the enormous concrete sports centre (another Chinese construction) sits unused but for flagship events with visiting international dignitries. Off the main highway you could be in the jungle. Dirt tracks, a mass of flooded potholes, pass for roads where tiny rickety wooden houses & even smaller shacks selling phone top-ups & an eclectic selection of groceries sit next to barred windows fronting bottle-shops.
On the waterfront there was one delightful cafe where every expat & the rare tourist goes for breakfast and one lovely restaurant (seemingly accessed via a scrapyard) with great cocktails, delicious gnocchi & excellent music, otherwise it was a basic selection of places with plastic chairs selling burgers. Internet was patchy at best, never working when we actually needed it. There’s no real tourist infrastructure here (although the tiny museum was surprisingly interesting) and the whole city looks very run down. You expect a capital city to be the best of a country, but in the Solomon Islands this does not appear to be the case. However, the people more than make up for it with their friendliness. Tourists in the capital are rare & more so those that wander around. Walking down the hill to the waterfront cafe in the early morning we had ‘Good Mornings’ & ‘Hellos’ from everyone we passed, including a lot of very polite kids. It was entirely different to Fiji.
We took a tour of the WWII sites with our hosts Jhen & JR, the most lovely people. It felt like a day out with friends & a much more rewarding & interesting day than attempting to do it on our own on unreliable, haphazard buses that don’t actually go where you want them to & are apparently very hot, sweaty & smelly (showering & deodorant are not an important thing here). A guy staying in our homestay spent 12 hours getting to one WWII site & back on the buses – more endurance than enjoyment!
We collected provisions & bounced along a potholed track passing the grassy field & hill where Sean Penn filmed ‘The Thin Red Line’ as JR regaled us with tales of the island, including the dark mysteries of the Vele, a form of black magic that enables practitioners to travel great distances in the blink of an eye. His uncle once precured a crying 5 year old JR’s favourite cream bun within an hour from the nearest bakery (in reality a four hour drive away), much to his mother’s unease.
At Bonegi beach Simon snorkeled around the WWII wreck of the Japanese freighter Hirokawa Maru, sunk in 1942 & now slowly disolving into the sea whilst providing an interesting habitat for coral & fish as well as atmospheric photos in the clear turquoise waters. It was too choppy for me, so I sat chatting with Jhen & JR on some nearby rickety wooden benches enjoying our first beer of the day. Not a nice beach, but peaceful & with a nice breeze to cool down from the strong sun.
The Vilu Military Museum was an open air collection of bits from crashed or blown up planes, bombs & guns, both American & Japanese, collected from around Guadalcanal by one man. Interesting, but hot & mosquito ridden. Simon found it fascinating (definitely a boy thing).
We also visited the National Museum, which in addition to a fascinating set of photographs of the World War II Solomon Scouts (a collection of native trackers and reconnaissance personnel helping the Americans locate and wipe-out Japanese positions), we also learnt about a little known event in more recent Solomon’s history, that of ‘The Tensions’. Though no-one is quite sure how it started, in 1997 a series of land disputes in Guadalcanal and Malaita islands soon got out of hand, and fuelled by the corruption of a weak and feeble government, soon escalated into fully fledged civil war in all but name. Hundreds lost their lives in a 5 year reign of chaos where governmental and societal structures totally collapsed and factional warlords controlled everything, a little like Haiti is today. But in a rare and wonderful example of cross-Pacific cooperation, the Australians and 14 other island nations formed a group called RAMSI (Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands) which negotiated a truce and gradually restored order and working institutions, with an army of thousands of soldiers, police officers, managerial staff and administrators. It dragged the country back onto its feet, though many still believe the Solomons is now a shell of its former self.
The following day was more chaotic. Our boat trip out to Roderick Bay in the nearby Nggela Islands was 2.5 hrs late, starting with us having to ask a local to contact the organiser when our Esims refused to work. It was a long, hot & boring wait, but once we eventually got going, the 90 minute boat ride to Roderick Bay was lovely, calm & enjoyable. We were lucky, it’s notorious for being horrendously rough. It was hot, but the wind kept us cool(ish), we didn’t get wet & we were entertained by tiny fish gliding along next to the boat before plopping back into the sea.
The shipwreck at Roderick Bay is a more recent one. In 2000 the cruise ship World Discovery hit a reef and was deliberately run aground in shallow water to avoid sinking. Attempts to salvage it were abandoned when angry locals claiming ownership drove the salvage team away at gunpoint & so it remains where it was left. It now has trees growing from its lopsided windows & an array of sea-life growing on its submerged sides. Here amongst the corals & decorative seaweed we ‘found Nemo’ (aka Clownfish), along with giant clams, blue starfish, huge angel fish & thousands of other tiny colourful fish being chased by larger less vibrant ones. We might have been 2 hours late getting there & only got fried sausage & rice for lunch as the owner didn’t know we were coming, but we got lucky with a traditional performance of music in the form of panpipes (blown, or hit with rubber paddles) & a tribal dance put on for a party of miserable, uncommunicative & downright weird Chinese people. We were the only people clapping the performance.
We were very late getting back & also very hot & sweaty after our walk back up the hill to our homestay (lots of ‘Good Evenings’ called out as we passed) which meant none of our clothes had time to dry before our ridiculously early morning flight & soggy clothes weigh more – not good when we only had a small weight limit. Cue lots of angst as we decided what stuff to leave in Honiara.
At 5am we arrived at the airport, where we had to wait for it to be opened! The plane to Munda, on the island of New Georgia, was tiny with just 16 seats. We had a view directly into the cockpit which was interesting if a little unnerving with all the flashing lights & beeping. Flying at such a low altitude, it was more scenic flight than basic inter-island transfer. The views were stunning. Spread out below us was a wide expanse of beautiful deep blue sea dotted with tiny green islands each surrounded by a ring of bright turquoise waters. A short walk from the airport – with our much lighter bags – and we could check in to our accommodation & get a few extra hours kip. It was still only 8am & we’d been up over 4 hours already!
After relaxing for so many days in Fiji, being here in Munda was the first time we’d really stopped since we left the Gold Coast Inn. We’d been in the Solomon Islands for less than 3 days & it had been full-on busy.
We had brunch at the only place in town – town being a relative word, as Munda is really no more than just a handful of buildings – on a deck overlooking the sea & a series of tiny islands. We’d returned to the tropical island paradise after the dust & pollution of Honiara. It looked idyllic now, but during Cyclone Maila last week waters rose several metres, damaging the deck & swamping the jetty. The village on the island across the lagoon was worse hit & the day before a helicopter bringing relief supplies of rice suffered electrical faults & had to be landed in the shallow waters, just missing the reef. We spoke to the team currently extracting all the oil from the fuel tanks & they said the owners had already written it off, so it may be left as yet another wreck to be reclaimed by the sea & become a dive site.
There’s only one thing to do in Munda & that’s the Peter Joseph WWII museum. A tiny museum created by one man from the salvaged war finds scattered through the nearby jungles & reefs. Named after the US serviceman whose dog-tag he found first, it contains hundreds of relics; grenades, guns with ammunition still in place, coca cola bottles, sake bottles, lunch tins (the stainless steel ones still pristine), canteens, helmets & radios, all housed in a green painted wooden shed where huge spiders merrily weave webs between the artefacts. Snakes are apparently also frequent visitors but thankfully not whilst we were there. Barney, the owner, brings it all to life with stories of his finds & his uncle’s involvement in the coast guard services that helped the allies. This was boy heaven (again) & Simon loved it.
The afternoon rain brought dark clouds to the previously clear sky & provided a fabulous sunset over the lagoon, an orange glow against the grey, moody clouds. We drank a cold beer & watched as small boys gleefully surfed along the wet jetty to tumble off the end into the water. Our dinner on the wooden deck overlooking the bay was delicious; fish in coconut cream cooked in banana leaf with proper chip-shop chips. Drinking beer as the lightning flashes illuminated the islands, it felt like a very different day from the one where we’d woken up in Honiara at 3am!
It was a beautiful morning when we set out on the little boat to Kolombangara Island, the sea tranquil and calm & the sun shining in a clear blue sky. It was a speedy 45 minute journey & we were enjoying zipping aross the water, waving to locals on other little boats & seeing the small wooden houses perched on the edge of the shores. We could see the menacing black clouds shrouding the top of the perfectly round volcanic island of Kolombangara in the distance & as we drew closer we also saw the rain coming down in torrents. We were just 5 minutes from the jetty when it hit. Our bags were nicely wrapped up in tarpaulin but we were not so fortunate. The large drops hit us face on, wet patches on our t-shirts soon spread until we were completely saturated, rain dripping from the peaks of our caps. We squelched off the boat at Ringgi, the main dock for the island, where we wrung out our clothes as best we could into large puddles before climbing into the mud splattered landcruiser for the rest of our journey to Imbu Rano Lodge. We bumped uphill climbing steadily, past trees whose tall straight trunks looked like they’d been painted in camouflage colours & giant ferns with fronds over a metre long. This was proper rainforest & a complete contrast both in scenery & temperature to the hot, palm fringed turquoise sea we’d just left.
Imbu Rano means ‘mountain mist’ & we arrived as the sun came out & the mists lifted to give us uninterupted views over the Vila River Valley towards the Mount Rano & Mount Veve peaks on the crater rim. The lodge is run by Kolombangara Island Biodiversity Conservation Association as a reseach station & eco-lodge but attracts very few visitors & so it was that we had the whole place to ourselves. This was eco-tourism at its most basic. There were no organised activities, no hot water (there was a cold shower in a hut that had a large resident yellow & black spider that sat in its web disconcertingly just above your head), no wifi & just 2 staff, Rose (the friendly singing cook) & her husband Eddie (the taciturn security/guide). There was also no bar & one of our only two cans of beer had managed to mysteriously get punctured on the journey, leaking its contents into Simon’s bag. His t-shirts now have a delightful beery perfume. Isolated as the lodge is in the midst of the jungle we felt completely immersed in nature with the calls of birds & insects all we could hear as we sat on the viewing deck with our soggy clothes hanging up to dry.
Sunset provided a soft orange glow over the peaks before darkness quickly fell, bats swooped in front of the lodge & the croaking & chirping of frogs echoed through the trees. We went out in the pitch dark with Eddie, in search of these noisy beasties. Tramping along muddy leaf strewn tracks Eddie warned us that some frogs look like leaves so be careful where you tred. Easier said than done in the dark. It turned out we were very good at spotting frogs, over 20 in the hour we were out, none more than about 5cm long. Lots of the brown & silver Solomon Wrinkled Ground frog, an unidentified small browny-red one that looked like it had a bad case of sunburn & a fabulous yellow Solomon Island Leaf frog that does indeed look like a leaf with its tiny pointed nose & spikey fringes to its legs.
You don’t realise quite how noisy a forest is until you spend a night in one. In the inky darkness with no aircon or fan, no sound of electronics buzzing, all we could hear were the sounds of the forest. A beautiful, peaceful sound to fall asleep with. We slept very soundly in our timber cabin.
We woke early to a completely clear sky & panoramic views but clouds soon accumulated over the peaks in the morning as the day heated up. Simon set off on a walk with Eddie through the forest but they were unable to get far as the effects of the cyclone became clear with fallen, uprooted trees everywhere. The sound of Eddie’s machete started only a few minutes after they left…
The aborted Imbu Ranu ‘Camp 1’ trek: Though slightly dubious about Eddie the uncommunicative guide, I still wanted to hike in the jungle surrounding Imbu Rano as it’s some of the most pristine in the South Pacific. We chose to make the trip to the first camp up on the ridge towards Mount Veve peak, the highest remaining point of the now extinct Kolombangara volcano and a few hours hard slog away. Eddie didn’t seem entirely confident, but armed with a lethal looking machete we trudged past the lodge and up onto the path. The machete was soon put to use. A large tree had fallen and Eddie hacked and chopped his way through the blockage to allow us to climb over. About 3 or 4 metres later we came across another fallen tree. More circumspect hacking, through vines, shoots, foliage, small branches, then increasingly large branches. Then we hit another blockage, then another. Some fallen trees needed to be walked along like a gymnastics beam, treacherously slippy, with drops into thickets hiding who knows what. Footsteps were made into foliage with hope that the ground beneath would be solid, rather than any certainty. We disappeared up to our waists at times and jarred ankles and knees. Eddie slipped and slid in his flip flops (“Mistake” he confessed and decided barefoot was better). I was steadier in boots, but not by much. Huge tree root mounds were scattered everywhere, enormous muddy brown circles of ripped out dirt and trailing root systems upended as the trees had come crashing to the ground. Trailing sharp tendrils tore at us and we scuffed our skin on sharp thorns wrapped around the fallen timbers. Still we continued, with Eddie getting visibly more exhausted as we made hard won, but scant progress. It was like all the films you’ve even seen about 19th Century jungle expeditions chopping their way through impenetrable forests. Eddie occasionally tried to make a new path when we couldn’t get through. Some worked out, some had to be abandoned. We were totally soaked to the skin in our clothes. I asked Eddie whether it was even possible to complete the hike. “Yes”, he said, ”might take a day”. He was visibly flagging now. I gave him the opt out. “Let’s turn back. It’s too difficult to make any progress.” He looked saddened, but quickly agreed. “Cyclone very bad, very, very bad one,” he muttered. It appears that Tropical Cyclone ‘Maila’ had passed directly over Kolombangara Island a week ago, and we were the first to attempt any hiking since. The damage it had done to the forest was pretty extensive and had put paid to the possibility of hiking any distance. “Sorry,” Eddie muttered as we headed back, gaining some newfound and totally deserved respect. I don’t think he’d understood how bad it was, but had laboured and fought his way through as much as he could for my benefit, only to be defeated by the enormity of the task. I doubt anyone could have got through that…..
The small walk down to a nearby pool where we’d hoped for an afternoon swim had also been blocked by fallen trees so we settled in for a relaxing afternoon on the viewing deck listening to the high-pitched buzz of cicadas & watching the large, colourful butterflies flit from tree to tree. Torrential rain started just after lunch and the jungle clad peaks were obscured by a thick white mist. The wind got up as the rain got heavier & we retreated further & further back on the deck away from the splatters until we had to admit defeat & retreat to the dry of our room. The insects disappeared & the bird calls ceased in the heavy rain but as the rains stopped the noise of the forest started again, the squawking, whistling & booming calls of the elusive birds that we heard but never managed to see. Then sunny & warm again. A multitude of weathers in just a few hours. The only thing we didn’t have was snow.
Helen (24th April 2026)
Definitely a Simon place with interesting WWII history. The view from your last lodge looks beautiful. Shame the cyclone spoiled Simons trek, where was his machete to help Eddie out??
Good question. Eddie would have been mortified had I tried to help (he took his job very seriously) and no doubt I’d have been a total menace armed with my own machete – more likely to sever my own limbs than those of any tree…
What a varied and challenging part of the trip.just shows that nature will win out.
Hope the alchol free days werent too hard x x
Take care & stay safe
Yep – we’ve been lucky though managing to avoid the really terrible and devastating weather. Days without alcohol were many at the start of this trip, but are becoming increasingly rare. Not great for the belly…..
You were lucky to be following the cyclone instead of being caught up in it. You certainly had the full jungle experience then. Don’t suppose you will be going back there in a hurry. Ian says it’s sacrilege wasting the beer.. did you suck the t shirts lol
Your mother say just take & stay safe. XXX ❤️
It would have been a nightmare being in this cyclone as opposed to the one we had in Fiji – this one was much much worse…. I can’t tell you how annoyed I was at losing a beer though. At least it wasn’t both of them.