A Brief Sojourn in the Solomon Islands (Retrospective from July, 2014)

Ottawa, October 17, 2015

After over a year of sloth, it's time to bring my blog up to date with some of the travels that I have gotten up to over the last year.  This is from July of last year (2014) when I went to the Solomon Islands.  More updates coming later!

After saying goodbye to Terri and spending an evening in the mass-tourism mecca of Seminyak, late in the evening of July 9th, 2014 I boarded a flight from Denpasar airport to Brisbane, Australia.  I arrived in the morning, just in time to see the final shots of the shootout between the Netherlands and Argentina on the big screen in the arrivals hall.  Australia has a neat system for visas that more countries should copy.  Everyone except Aussies and Kiwis needs a visa before arriving, but it can be arranged online without the nonsense of sending your passport to an embassy.  Your name goes on an online list and when you arrive, the immigration officer looks you up online. Very easy and efficient.

Anyway, I was in Australia for only a few hours, as I got on another Virgin Australia flight to Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands.  I had decided to visit Papua New Guinea on this trip, and since the Lonely Planet guide for PNG also covers the Solomons, I had decided to add the Solomons to my journey, the 116th country on my life list.  I got to Honiara mid-afternoon and wandered through the dilapidated old airport looking (successfully) for a place to change money and (unsuccessfully) for a bus into town.  I had booked a room in the Red Mansion hotel and eventually found a cab of great age to take me there.  It was the cheapest room I could find, and it was still 700 Solomon dollars (US$ 85) for a very indifferent room seveal kilometres from downtown Honiara.  I had crossed the line dividing Southeast Asia and its reasonable prices from the Pacific and its ridiculous prices.  The city looked poor, dusty and still recovering from the days of the civil war (1998-2003).  I dropped off my luggage at the hotel, wandered down the hill to the main road and caught a bus downtown for a reasonable S$ 3 (about US$ 0.40) to see if I could figure out the interisland ferry schedule.  I was too late; offices were already closed.  I found a small Chinese take-out joint, ate some greasy fish and chips and then caught a bus back to the hotel, mindful of the dire warnings I had heard about nocturnal security problems in Honiara.

The next day I got up early, ate a truly unimpressive hotel breakfast, checked out, left my luggage and went back into town.  I found a travel agent who knew nothing much about interisland ferry schedules, found a slow, overpriced internet joint, then bought a Solomon Islands Telecom SIM card. After a quick phone call to the ferry company (who were only marginally more helpul than the travel agent), I set off in search of a cheaper place to stay.  On a hill just behind the three-block downtown core, I found the Rock Haven Inn where a windowless basement cell was only S$385 (US$ 50).  I caught a bus back to the Red Mansion, picked up my luggage and caught a cab back to the hotel.  The early afternoon was devoted to organization:  buying a ferry ticket for the 12th to Munda, booking a hotel in Munda, talking to Dive Munda and Dive Gizo on the phone, having a beer at the Yacht Club and arranging diving for the next day on the outskirts of Honiara.

With logistics taken care of, it was time for some sightseeing.  I headed out of town on a minibus to go to the trailhead for a hike recommended in the Lonely Planet, to the Mataniko waterfalls.  The bus led out of the crowded dusty centre to the dirt-poor shantytowns on the outskirts of town.  I set off up the trail, forded a river and was promptly chatted up by a local guy who demanded S$200 (US$ 30) for "traditional fees" and guide services.  Since this sort of thing drives me nuts, I decided to give up the waterfall in favour of the US War Memorial.  I walked up into the hills, trying to figure out the shortest route, and finally found myself at the memorial.  The US has put up a very informative memorial to the bloody Guadalcanal campaign (Honiara is on the island of Guadalcanal) in 1942-43. 

US Guadalcanal Campaign war memorial in Honiara 

Local kids at the War Memorial, Honiara

Guadalcanal marked a major turning point in World War Two in the Pacific.  The Battle of Midway in June 1942 was the first naval battle that didn't go Japan's way, while Guadalcanal marked the first land battle lost by the previously invincible Japanese army.  The memorial is an oasis of order and cleanliness amidst the garbage-strewn streets of Honiara, but I almost didn't get in as the groundskeeper was nowhere to be found.  Eventually he showed up from across the street and I spent a good hour reading the history and admiring the views over the surrounding hills.  A few days after I visited, the memorial was badly vandalized by persons unknown.  Some overpriced Chinese food at the Sea King restaurant and it was time for an early night in bed.  On my way home at dusk, walking four blocks back to my hotel, the staff at the restaurant looked horrified that I was going to walk and not take a taxi.  Nothing happened to me, but there was definitely an air of menace as the sun went down.  I spent the night roasting in my concrete box and sleeping poorly.

July 11th was devoted to diving.  I headed over to Dive Tulagi, the only dive shop in town, and a group of 6 Western client and a couple of Solomon Island dive guides headed out of town in the back of a truck.  We headed to a dive site called Bonegi, where Japanese shipwrecks from 1942 are just offshore.  The diving was indifferent:  visibility was terrible, with a lot of silt, supposedly from massive floods a couple of months earlier, obscuring the top 5 metres of the water column.  My dive guide was fairly terrible, with little control over his buoyancy, not much of an eye for interesting creatures and an alarming tendency to stand on live coral.  I still managed to see some interesting bushy soft corals, lots of crabs and a very pretty shrimp in bubble coral.  The wreck was impressive, but more or less impossible to get inside.  I hoped for better diving in Munda and Gizo.  My fellow divers included a couple of Australians working for RAMSI, the military intervention force sent to restore order in 2003.  They were interesting to talk to, amusingly cynical about the country and its venal politicians and the non-existent economy.  Another guy was an Anglican minister, in the Solomons for a church training course, (Religion is a big, big deal in the Solomons.)

That afternoon I had a late fish and chips lunch at the Kokonut Kafe and reflected on what I'd seen so far in the Solomons.  It was a paradoxical country, very expensive but dirt poor.  The roads were full of ancient wrecks of cars, and yet nobody was on bicycles or on the cheap motorcycles that are the staple of transport in Southeast Asia.  All the shops were run by Chinese businessmen who often sat on an elevated chair keeping an eagle eye on their local employees.  The only thing that seemed to get local people excited was chewing betel.  There were ubiquitous NGOs that seemed to make up much of the local economy.  

Pidgin:  "You me together clean up; stop dengue!"

There was little of the commercial bustle that I was so used to in Indonesia.  The people are very dark-skinned Melanesians, rather like Australian Aborigines in appearance, but with a lot of red or blond hair in evidence.  The most striking part of the country so far were the wonderful Pidgin English signs, like "Iu spitim, iu klinim" (you spit, you clean) for "No betel chewing".  

The next morning I headed down to the ferry dock by 7:45, looking forward to a relaxing day on the ferry that would take me 24 hours west to Munda.  Instead it was one of the most miserable 24 hours I have ever spent on any public transport anywhere.  

The huge crowd trying to board the MV Chanella to Munda

The regular ferry was out of action for maintenance and had been replaced by a cargo freighter over which a tarpaulin had been stretched.  It was hopelessly overcrowded, like a refugee boat on the Mediterranean, and I was barely able to find a tiny space to wedge myself between the piles of bags and possessions covering every square centimetre of the deck.  It was dangerously overcrowded, hot and sweaty and smoky, with waves splashing up over the sides and torrential downpours eventually finding gaps in the tarps.  The journey acquired the feeling of a nightmare as I drifted off to sleep only to wake up from someone stepping on my feet or raindrops landing on my face. At least it cost me S$ 500 (US$ 70)!  I decided that from now on I would fly.

I was infinitely relieved to get off the boat at Noro, 20 kilometres past Munda, at 9 o'clock in the morning.  The boat can't dock at Munda because the old pier in town burned down over a decade ago and nobody can agree on who should pay for a new one.  I waited for a couple of hours for a bus, as company buses shuttling fish cannery workers around passed by one after another.  Finally a bus showed up and dropped me off in what passes for downtown Munda, outside the Qua Roviana guesthouse.  I got a room, showered off the grime from a night spent sweating in my clothes and went out to arrange diving across the street at Dive Munda.  I bought a plane ticket at the airport (I decided to give Gizo a miss and to fly back from Munda to Honiara the day before my flight out of the country), had a great lunch at the Grass Haus Cafe (run by a local guy who has returned from working abroad), went for a long run, did some yoga and went out to dinner at the Agnes Motel where I chatted with a handful of long-term Aussie expats about the Solomon Islands.  They had a depressing litany of complaints, from the government's willingness to sell its tropical timber and its offshore fishing rights to foreigners (Malaysians and Taiwanese and Chinese) for a trifling sum, to the hopelessness of the banks and the post office.  The shops in Munda (entirely run by Chinese again, as in Honiara) sell almost exclusively imported food, and from the wrong places:  expensive Australian rice rather than cheaper Thai rice).  I went to bed tired and dispirited.

Shallow lagoon outside Munda

Nine hours of solid sleep later and I awoke refreshed and much more positive.  I spent the next two days diving with Dive Munda, a very professional (and expensive!  US$180 a day for two dives a day!  Pacific island prices, rather than Indonesian prices) outfit run by a British couple.  Compared to Honiara, the diving was amazing.  The reef is in good shape, and the number of large fish is high.  On the first day, I went out with a Canadian couple, Mathieu and Audrey, into pretty big swells outside the lagoon that encloses Munda.  We saw 8 sharks on the first dive and 2 on the second dive, several turtles, Spanish mackerel, rainbow runners and barracuda.  On the second day, it was only me and the dive guide Solomon, and we had an even better day, with more than a dozen sharks of three species (whitetip, blacktip and grey reef), along with eagle rays, a spotted ray and even a mobula ray (a smaller version of the manta).  Apparently the area right around Munda has been declared a marine sanctuary and, despite poaching by some local fishermen, fish numbers and reef health are both really high.  The local authorities have banned shark finning after Dive Munda explained the local benefits of tourism and diving.  It was really world class diving, and just about worth the eye-watering prices.

After the second day of diving, I got picked up by Eddie the boatman and brought across an open strait to Rendova Island and a tiny homestay, Titiru Eco-Lodge, where I would spend the next four nights before returning to Honiara for my flight to PNG.  I was immediately charmed when the 6 staff members welcomed me on the dock by singing a four-verse welcome song, putting a floral lei around my neck and giving me a fresh green coconut to drink.

My hut at Titiru

Talking to people in Munda the night before (a group of Rotary Club volunteers who had come over from Brisbane to do volunteer work on the local school and the hospital), I had learned that the total number of tourist visas granted every year to the Solomons is about 8000, and at least half of those are for volunteers and missionaries.  There are no more than 3000 real tourists a year, or about 8 arrivals a day.  Somehow this tiny trickle of tourists supports some 80 "eco-lodges" spread all over the dozens of main islands in this extensive, sparsely-populated country, and I was the only guest at this one.  There were 4 cottages spread around a wonderfully-landscaped garden, full of colourful flowers and birds.  All sorts of possible activities were written up on a chalkboard:  caves, mangrove walks, village visits, mountain climbing, snorkelling, bat-watching.  I had a guide assigned to show me around everything, and two cooks to keep me fed.

Sadly, the weather was pretty disappointing over the next four days, with Biblical downpours most days, and I never got to climb the local volcano.  

Wild waterlogged soccer game on Titiru

I did make it into the caves, and walked around the local village watching the school students play football since their teachers had all had to go to Munda to go to the bank, leaving them at a loose end.  Snorkelling was challenging, as it was almost impossible to get from the limestone shore over the reef into the water.  I enjoyed swimming in the freshwater lagoon, although we later saw a big crocodile basking on the opposite shore and I decided swimming probably wasn't worth the risk.  The mangroves were full of massive soldier crabs and interesting birds, including red-throated parrots. Mostly, though, I read (finally finishing Proust's In Search of Lost Time, after almost two years of off-and-on reading), juggled, played guitar and drew, waiting for the rain to end.  

Titiru Lagoon

 I spent a lot of time talking to my guide, Haigo, and the owner of the lodge, Kilo.  From them I got a bit of a picture of the texture of life in the outer islands.  The area around Munda is a hotspot for logging by a Malaysian multinational, and Haigo and Kilo had both worked for logging firms, often the only source of paid employment to be found.  By some estimates, there are only about 3 years' worth of timber left to  be felled in the entire country.  The country's prime minister is in contempt of high court rulings to halt logging by his relatives in his constituency.  The main agricultural crop in the boondocks, copra (roasted coconut flesh) sells for a mere S$2.80 a kilogram (US$0.40 a kg).  The country has a population of about 600,000 people and they speak an amazing 60 different languages.  There are missionaries and members of the Wycliffe Society on every island trying to translate the Bible into all these languages.  Local villagers get paid S$4 an hour for casual labour (US$ 0.55 an hour), very low given the high prices in shops.

My very well-paid boatman Eddie

After 4 enjoyable, lazy days, it was time to leave my island.  I paid S$2000 (about US$300) for my 4 days of lodging and food; expensive, but par for the course in the Solomons.  What really annoyed me was that my boat trip to and from Titiru (2 45-minute rides on a 30-hp open dinghy) cost almost as much:  S$800 each way.  There are no poor boat owners in the Solomons!  I got to Munda, caught a flight to Honiara and spent my last night at the Agnes Guesthouse, trying to sleep through the deafening loudspeakers of a Christian revival meeting across the street, and (at 3 am) the loudest dogfight I have ever heard.  

As I flew out to Port Moresby on July 21st, I  reflected on my experience in the Solomons.  It was remarkably expensive for not very good quality food and accommodation.  The diving in Munda was great but (again) really expensive.  The country itself is a bit sad:  poor, politically dysfunctional, with no economic growth and serious social problems (rape, murder, unemployment, casual violence), with venal leaders addicted to selling out the country's resources cheaply to foreigners in exchange for a cut of the action.  I don't see this changing for the better anytime soon.  So I'm glad I visited, but I won't be rushing back again any time soon.  Little did I know that PNG was going to make me miss the Solomons!