Lonely Planet™ · Thorn Tree Forum · 2020 |

# international ferry type service in the South Pacific region Country forums / Pacific Islands & Papua New Guinea
frisbee 06:07 UTC 16 Jul 2014 | In addition to the more well known ferry/commercial vessels that take passengers vessels that operate in the South Pacific (see below), I discovered some other information that might be of assistance to some of you. There are sporadic ferry type vessels that operate between Fiji and Tuvalu. Apparently, these are chartered by the Tuvalu Government and are used primarily to get Tuvalans who live on Fiji back to Tuvalu for various holidays, like Easter and Christmas. Apparently, there aren't enough flights to accommodate all of those who want to go, plus the airfares are crazy high anyway. The best way to get information on this is via the Tuvalan Embassy or High Commission in Nadi. There is a regular cargo/ferry service that operates between Apia in Samoa and Tokelau. It goes about once a fortnight and the return fare is 280 New Zealand dollars for non-Tokelauns and 100 New Zealand Dollars for Tokelau people. It takes about 24 hours to travel to Fakaofo, about 28 hours to Nukunonu, and about 32 hours to Atafu. The office that handles this is Apia is just a few minutes walk south of the bus terminal in Apia. I can't remember the name of the road it's on. The visitor centre will have that information though. I have an e-mail address for someone in the ferry/cargo office. It is: tss@tesamoa.net (it might be tss@lesamoa.net. I can't read her writing properly). Also, check out the following website: http://tokelau.org.nz/Tokelau+Government/Boat+Schedule.html Someone said that some sort of permit is needed to enter Tokelau, but I never did find anyone who knew anything about that. Here's a list of other international ferry type services in that part of the world. There's a weekly ferry between Samoa and American Samoa. Solomons to PNG. There is (was?) a fairly regular New Caledonia to Vanuatu. Irregular ships take passengers from Fiji to Tuvalu and Kiribati. |