Solomon Islands

I flew into Honiara on a plane that felt like a school bus with wings, and the first thing I noticed stepping onto the tarmac was the heat — not the aggressive, wet heat of Southeast Asia, but something quieter, heavier, like the air itself had been sitting in the sun all week. The capital is not a beautiful city. It’s a working port town with a chaotic market, Chinese-run stores, and a waterfront that smells of fish and diesel. But by the time I’d eaten a plate of fresh tuna at the Central Market for the equivalent of two dollars, I understood that Honiara wasn’t the point. The islands beyond it were.

The Solomon Islands are close to a thousand islands spread across the southwest Pacific, east of Papua New Guinea, with fewer visitors in a year than a busy European resort gets in a week. Distances are large and transport is by small plane or boat, so it pays to pick two or three areas rather than try to see everything.

Guadalcanal and the War

Guadalcanal is where the Pacific War turned in 1942–43, and its traces are everywhere. Around Honiara you can visit memorials, the battle ridges above town and rusting landing craft on the beaches west of the city. The Guadalcanal Hinterland climbs into steep forested mountains and villages reached on foot, best visited with a local guide.

Across the strait, Tulagi was the colonial capital before the war and is now a quiet island with excellent wreck diving. The waters between Guadalcanal and the Florida Islands are known as Iron Bottom Sound for the dozens of ships that sank there.

Marovo Lagoon and the Western Province

I took the ferry west toward the Marovo Lagoon, which is billed in the few travel pieces that cover this place as one of the largest saltwater lagoons in the world. That’s accurate but it still doesn’t prepare you. The water runs from pale mint to deep cobalt depending on the depth, and the islands that frame it are so green they look painted. I stayed in a small guesthouse run by a family in a village reachable only by wooden boat — the kind of place where dinner was whatever came in off the reef that afternoon, and the generator went off at nine.

The reef itself was extraordinary. I’m not a hyperbolic person about diving, but the coral here is intact in a way I’ve stopped expecting. Sea fans taller than I am, schools of surgeonfish that move in formation, a hawksbill turtle that tolerated my presence for twenty minutes before growing bored. The WWII wrecks are everywhere — Japanese Zeros and American Hellcats scattered across the lagoon floor with the casual indifference of abandoned machinery, coral beginning to reclaim them hull by hull.

The lagoon wraps around New Georgia, the main island of the Western Province. Off its coast, Tetepare Island is one of the largest uninhabited islands in the South Pacific, protected by its landowners and visited from a small eco-lodge, with leatherback turtles nesting on its beaches.

Getting around requires patience. Boats run when they run, schedules are approximate, and the word for tomorrow is used interchangeably with the word for later. I missed a connection in Gizo and spent an extra day on that small island eating fish and rice and watching boats come and go, which turned out to be the best day of the trip. Gizo is laid-back in a way that feels earned rather than performed — a market town, a dive hub, a place where people are genuinely curious about you without wanting anything from you. That last part is rarer than it should be.

Near Gizo, Kennedy Island is the tiny islet where John F. Kennedy and the crew of PT-109 swam ashore in 1943 after their boat was cut in half. In the Roviana Lagoon, Skull Island holds a shrine of ancestral skulls from the headhunting era, visited with permission from the local community.

The Outer Islands

Malaita, the most populous island, is known for the artificial islands of the Lau Lagoon, built by hand from coral blocks, and for shell money, still made and used in ceremonies. Santa Isabel is long, mountainous and quiet, and Makira is remote enough that visitors are rare. Far to the south, Rennell Island holds East Rennell, a raised coral atoll around Lake Tegano, the largest lake in the insular Pacific and a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Malaria is present across the country, so take advice on prevention before you go, and carry cash: card payments and ATMs are limited outside Honiara and Gizo. Check current government travel advice, which has been shaped by periods of unrest in Honiara.

When to go: April through November is the dry season, with the best visibility for diving from June through September. December through March brings the northwest monsoon — heavy rain, rough seas, and some roads that become impassable. Avoid this window unless you don’t mind a certain level of unpredictability. The shoulder months (April, May, November) are often the sweet spot: fewer visitors and the landscape still vivid from the wet season rains.

What most guides get wrong: They pitch this place as an “undiscovered paradise,” which is both true and a bit lazy. The Solomons are undiscovered largely because getting here takes effort and the infrastructure is genuinely minimal. That’s not a drawback dressed up as a feature — it’s just reality. You need flexibility, patience, and the willingness to eat a lot of fish. What the guides also miss is that the cultural life of the islands — the kastom practices, the wood carving traditions around Marovo, the lingering weight of the Guadalcanal Campaign that still shapes how locals talk about outsiders — is as interesting as the water. Don’t come only for the reef.

Photography: Pexels contributors.