Lonely Planet™ · Thorn Tree Forum · 2020 |

# Solomon, Vanuatu, New Caledonia - all three? Really? Country forums / Pacific Islands & Papua New Guinea
svenues 08:55 UTC 22 May 2012 | Hi I will be in Australia in November and originally planned visiting new caledonia, vanuatu and solomon islands, all in all for 3 weeks. Main purpose is diving. The question here, is it worth to see all these three countries, or are those comparable and very similiar in its scenery and contrast above water and under water, so that it doesnt make sense in effort to see all three? Thanks |
bec0071 06:26 UTC 23 May 2012 | You could do it by, for example, flying Brisbane > Port Vila > Honiara > Noumea > Brisbane, but it would be an extremely tight schedule and probably extremely expensive (flying within the Pacific is not cheap). I don't dive so I'm not sure how different the scenery is below the water, but I've travelled a lot in the Sols and quite a bit in Vanuatu, and yes, the scenery is very diverse (they must have always been so, but there are also differing levels and kinds of development - Port Vila can't be compared to Honiara, and Vanuatu doesn't seem to have much if any logging, whereas it's devastating many parts of Solomon Islands). | 1
ozziegiraffe 15:06 UTC 23 May 2012 | All of these countries are considerably bigger than the Polynesian countries, such as Tonga or Samoa, and ou could easily spend 3 weeks in any one of them. I am not a diver, but have lived for several years in Solomon Islands, which has a very good reputation for dive sites, including reef and wreck dives. ou could choose to go to one or two resorts (eg Uepi) or a liveaboard boat, which accesses places you can't otherwise get to, like Bilikiki. | 2