Honiara, Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands - September 2016

If your not into beautiful tropical fish and coral then maybe skip over this post.

In all our travels around the South Pacific we’ve never been to the Solomon Islands…until today. Yep, today we anchored in the vast Iron Bottom Sound and tendered into the wharf near Point Cruz. Once again we were ashore early to beat the tender rush hour, and at the same time to give us plenty of time to organise a snorkelling trip out to a spot called Bonegi.

A section of our welcoming committee at Honiara.

There was a wide selection of tours set up on the wharf.

Like our friends in Papua New Guinea the people on the Solomon Islands appeared to be incredibly happy to share their home with us for a day.

Bonegi looks a little underwhelming from the beach.

But once your in the water Bonegi is stunning.

Bonegi is the site where a couple of Japanese Freighters were sunk one night in 1942, and the good news for us and the Japanese seaman is that the freighters were sunk almost right on the beach, the remains of Bonegi number 2 still break the surface and make for great snorkelling, Bonegi number 1 is near by but needs to be scuba dived as its a bit deeper. After a bumpy half hour drive we arrived at the black sand Bonegi Beach to find it basically deserted, an immediate pay off for giving the breakfast buffet a miss this morning. Now being a snorkeler and not a scuba diver it's not that often that I’ve been able to dive a wreck so when we arrived at the beach to see the wreck poking out of the water twenty metres off the beach I was pretty excited.

Alright strap yourself in.......

Grabbing our gear we were quickly swimming out to the wreck but something weird was going on, no matter what I did I couldn’t keep my mask clear, thinking it was just me I kept rinsing it out only for it to appear to fog up straight away as soon as I put my head under water, fuck this is no good. Stopping to clear my mask again I mentioned to Sam the trouble I was having and she said that she was having the same issue, hmmm….. To cut a long story short it appears that there is a lot of fresh cold water flowing under the sand into the salt water around here and its creating a kind of inversion layer on top of the salt water, and the cold fresh water was fogging our masks up. Once I kind of worked out what was going on we were in business again, all we and to do was to duck dive down under the inversion layer and our masks cleared up, the inversion layer was only around 200mm deep so it wasn’t too hard.

Sorry about the water on the lens.  Bonegi could be dived by most people as you can almost walk out to the wreck.

With clear masks we were able to take in our surrounds, the wreck was slowly being reclaimed by nature and now was home to a fair bit of coral as well as the best collection of tropical fish that we’d seen on this trip. It was great fun swimming through the wreck checking out all the nocks and crannies, although we had to be a bit careful of the sharp rusty metal protruding out at random angles, yeah what could possibly go wrong there hey?! By the time we reached the part of the wreck furtherest from the beach we were probably in about 6 or 7 metres of water, probably the limit for snorkelling really. Now I’m not going to attempt to name the tropical fish that we saw today as I’d only make a fool of myself so you’re going to have to put up with a lot of un-captioned photos on this post.

After around three hours out at Bonegi Beach it was time to head back to the big smoke, Honiara. The plan today had been head out early snorkelling before returning to the ship for a shower before we would then check out the bright lights of Honiara in the afternoon, things didn’t exactly pan out that way though. When we arrived back at the wharf at lunch time the line to get back on the ship stretched for 100’s of metres, it looked like the wind had come up while we were diving and the little tenders were now having all sorts of trouble in the choppy conditions, well actually the tenders were fine but the elderly punters off the ship were struggling getting on and off the tenders, frequently needing the assistance of 4 crew members to man handle them on. With it now also baking hot I wasn’t keen to stand in a line for a couple of hours so heading into town with our snorkelling gear quickly became the lesser of two evils.

Leaving the crowds at the wharf we headed towards our usual spot, the local produce market. We hadn’t been in a decent sized town since leaving Sydney around ten days ago so even Honiara seemed big and bustling, we even passed the Hyundai Mall on the way to the markets, it may not be like one of the many mega malls we have in Australia but it did have air-conditioning so that was a good thing. Almost next door to Hyundai Mall was the local produce market, not only did these markets have plenty of fruit and vegetables but they also had a large selection of fresh fish sitting there in the afternoon heat, yeah it was the total authentic experience, smell and all!

Peak hour in Honiara.

Well....at least it had air conditioning.

After taking in the sight, sounds and smells of the produce market we decided to head back the other direction and check out the National Museum & Cultural Centre. Now a lot of these small SouthPacific countries will take a couple of different currencies so today I happened to be carrying some local money, a bit of US and some Aussie money, arriving at the entrance to the National Museum & Cultural Centre I was surprised to see that entry was $1 US or $5 Australian, obviously our dollar must of crashed while we’d been living it up on the high seas! Anyway after parting with 2 dollars US we wandered into the museum. If you happen to find yourself in Honiara and want to get a bit of a handle on what the Solomon Islands are all about then this little museum should probably be your first stop. We learnt all about the Polynesion’s arriving as well as the Spanish sailing over from Peru (probably once they’d finished with the Inca’s). There is also sections on modern history even up to and including the troubles of around 10 years ago when Australia led a peace keeping force over here. The one disappointing thing for me at the museum was that we weren’t allowed to take photos and with my early onset dementia setting in I‘m struggling to remember all the details of what I read.

Never miss a chance to visit the local markets if you want a bit of an authentic experience.

They look good...don't they.

We were getting a bit tired and hungry by now, it had been hours since we’d left the boat so we were probably suffering a bit of buffet withdrawal syndrome. Looking forward to heading back to the ship to wash the salt off and have a bit of a feed we arrived back at the wharf to find the tender line still 100’s of metres long, bugger me a feral traveller could waste away to nothing here! So not being overly keen to stand in a never ending conga line for a couple of hours in the baking mid afternoon heat we once again postponed our plans to re board the ship. What to do? Looking around for somewhere to get something to eat near the wharf we spied the Lime Lounge, something in the dim dark recesses of my mind clicked and I vaguely remembered reading some good things about this establishment somewhere. So with that ringing endorsement going around my head we wandered in to check things out,now the first thing we noticed was that this establishment had air conditioning, yay! The second thing that became immediately apparent was that we weren’t the only ones who had come up with this cunning plan, it seems that the Lime Lounge was doing a roaring trade today with punters waiting to get back on the ship. Now as it turns out that is selling the Lime Lounge a little short, the food there was very good (we had a couple of burgers), the drinks were cold and believe it or not it had free wifi (about dial up speed though), all in all the Lime Lounge made for a very nice place to escape the hustle and bustle outside for awhile.

The National Museum & Cultural Centre is worth a visit, but your not allowed to take many photos.

This is a memorial to the Spanish who were the first Europeans to arrive on the island.

When in Honiara the feral traveller chooses to eat and drink at the Lime Lounge.

Like Papua New Guinea, there is a fairly strong WW2 history in the Solomon Islands.

The Dirt.
This was our first time in the Solomon Islands so we didn’t really know what to expect, after cruising around the back blocks of Papua New Guinea for a week Honiara seemed like the big smoke. Indeed Honaira would probably supply most of your needs, but the real action happens out of town, diving is the go here I think. Now if you can scuba dive then the skies (well ocean, actually) your limit around here, there are all sorts of great dives from what I’ve heard, the closest I’ve ever got to scuba is wearing a breathing apparatus while doing fire training so there was no scuba for us today. So we headed to Bonagi to snorkel the wreck, Bonegi is around 12 kilometres west of Honiara so you’ll need to organise transport and once you get there you’ll have to pay an entrance fee of around S$25 (relax it’s only around $5 Aussie), its definitely worth doing though! The National Museum & Cultural Centre is worth a look to get a handle on the Solomon Islands history. Finally if your feeling peckish or just want to escape the hustle and bustle outside for awhile then I can recommend the Lime Lounge for some nice food in a quiet atmosphere.

The punters were still struggling a bit getting on and off the tenders.

We were the afternoons entertainment I think.

But the band played on.....These guys were great, they played a mix of traditional and contemporary music on their flutes, think Stairway to Heaven and you'll get the idea.

Sailing away from our first visit to Honiara, we were about due for our afternoon thunderstorm.