Within 3 days of being in India, we found ourselves on a beach on the Gold Coast of Oz. We were planning on going to one of the many South Pacific islands in our year out, so we hopped on the plane to Solomon Islands, near Papua New Guinea.
We totally didn`t know what to expect. What would the people look like? How would they be with us? What else would we find there?
We arrived in Honiara to an excuse for an airport! After struggling to find a hotel, we made our way to the outer lying island of Marawagi on a speed boat, where Sheetal and I were the only 2 tourists on the entire island. We spent 2-3 days snorkelling amongst a huge spectrum of multicoloured fish and spectacular coral.
We then went to Gizo, another island in the Solomons group, famous for its world class diving. The flight on the 15 seater plane (where you are sitting so close to the cockpit you can touch it) to Gizo was was absolutely amazing. Hundreds of islands with lush greenery in the centre, surrounded by white sand in turquoise shallows were right below us. Gizo airport was a separate island where we had to get onto a boat to get to where we were gonna stay. We just wanted to jump into the crystal clear water straight away, especially in the baking heat.
GIZO was our first real introduction to the Solomons. We found a fantastic place to stay on top of a hill overlooking the Solomon Sea.It had a friendly dog. After a couple of weeks of diving for myself, exploring shipwrecks and the most spectacular coral formations i have ever seen (The Toa Maru wreck is a Japanese warship that went down in World War II. On my second dive there I saw skeletons inside it, along with tanks, guns and so on), Sheetal was overcoming her fears of the deep, doing the Padi Open water course.
After spending days in the sea, evenings were spent chilling in quiet bars downing the locally brewed beer. As vegetarians we didn't expect such a delicious variety of food as we found. The mogo sold in the only market on the Island (which consisted of about 12 stalls) was the sweetest we had ever cooked or tasted. On the market was a plethora of brightly coloured fish straight out of the sea 2 meters behind them. Live crabs, and other Marine goodies were on offer. Besides seafood, piles of fresh green beetlenut (sopari) was also for sale. squirts of red juice were found all over the pavements and walls, not unlike streets of India. Women aswell as men were found to be forever participating in this activity. However, unlike india, these guys chewed the green, raw nut which made our mouths feel like leather when we tried them.
A short plane hop away was the Maravo Lagoon, heaven on earth, reached by 2hours sitting on a kayak with an engine fitted on the back. When we reached our home for 3 days, we stepped off the boat onto a ladder. The platform stretched from inside the green blue emerald sea right into the beautiful beach hut. Electricity was by generator only and the toilet was a home made, stylish contraption on the other side of the (small) Island.
After having a rain water shower (no we didn't prance around like in a bollywood movie! The water was stored in a tank) our friendly, humble host prepared us the hugest Solomon Island feast you could ever imagine; all this just for the two of us.
Following a sticky night we were up by 6am standing on the jetty, reef sharks were cruising past us one by one. We then snorkelled one of the most fertile coral colonies in the world. A dazzling array of millions of colours of coral, fish in thier thousands flying about in the warm ocean and families of shark zooming by one metre right infront of our faces. Small fish eating coral, bigger fish eating small fish, with us sitting on a rock looking down into the water with our masks on.
We experienced the extremely strong ocean current the next day, doing a drift dive. Again we didn't have to look for the multitudes of shark because they came to us. A family of shark was seen chasing their dinner.
The Solomonese people are amongst the friendliest we have encountered anywhere. Where else on earth does every single person greet you as you pass them by on the street whether day or night, sun or rain. The Solomons was also one of the slowest countries we have ever seen. People seemed to be moving backwards when walking and the taxis were even slower. Their language even has half the words missing. Pidgin English is a broken form of English that doesn't use "useless" words such as the, at or to.
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