Solomon Islands to PNG

Gday all.Me and my wife are planning to travel from Solomon islands to PNG island hopping through Bougaiville, Gizo, ect. this june. i have 5 or so weeks to get from Honiara to Lae in PNG. Has anyone done this??
It would be great if i could get just a bit of info on how hard it was...Is there heaps of ferries..safety...Whats the border crossing like..just stuff like that. Any help would be appreciated.
Cheers

Unless something has changed in the last 8 months or so, you cannot go from the Solomon Islands to PNG through Bougainville. There is no immigration on Bougainville on the PNG side. The police will probably turn you back. You can go the other way, but you won't get your PNG exit stamp and you'll have to track down the immigration guy in the Solomons yourself.

And there are basically NO "ferries", let alone heaps - only tiny local boats (totally open ones carrying a few people taking fish to the markets) tend to do the run to Bougainville.

Good point Lazlo. They only run on market days.

This also reminds me that there are virtually no small boats going between the Shortlands and Gizo anymore. The nearest bank used to be in Gizo, so the locals used to have to go there for their banking. Recently, a bank opened in Choiseul and since its a little closer, the locals are going there now. There is a cargo ship that runs to the shortlands once every three weeks and a flight once a week.

Solomons and PNG have been setting up an official border crossing point - I am pretty sure it works at the Solomon Islands end, but it would be worht checking with a Solomon Islands consular office, embassy, or High Commission in Australia before attempting this.

OG - please try and check on that one as it would be great news if that crossing finally became legal!

Thanxs guys. yeah i guess that means im stuck boring old flying around, which will limit my diving a bit..appreciate the info tho!!

Laszlo, I might be back in SI later this year, but at the moment I am stuck in Athens waiting for a seat on a plane to the UK.

zachleigh,

If you already have a visa for PNG and you arrive from Shortlands by local boat, do you still think the police on Bougainville will send you back? (I've been trying to get this info from Solomons representative in Sydney, but the published address no longer exists - the office building is being rebuilt - and no one answers the published phone number.)

BTW: anybody have new information on crossing from Solomons to PNG? ...PNG to West Papua? (Jayapura is a VOA port, so presumably there's sea travel to there from ...where?)

Thanks.

Of course they'd try and send you back.
Their problem is (or it it has finally changed, was) not whether or not you have a visa, but using an illegal border crossing!
Incidentally, I think you should ask a PNG, rather than a Solomons embassy about this issue, but then again, I doubt they'd know much about it anyway.

There is no regular sea transport from Vanimo to Jayapura as most people cross by land.
To do so, you need an Indonesian visa, which you should be able to get from the consulate in Vanimo. They will probably ask for an onward ticket, so get a cheap e-ticket online before turning up! If still keen on going by sea, keep asking around in Vanimo, especially on market days. Locals from Hamadi sometimes come over by small boats, but I think they avoid immigration altogether!
The fact that Jayapura is a VOA entry point has nothing to with the (non-)availability of passenger services running there - plenty of other ports in Indonesia are approved entry points despite having no international shipping services. I guess they are for yachts, cargo ships, fishing vessels and the like.

Joetoo, the Solomon Islands consul in Sydney is a volunteer Australian who used to work there. You would have more luck contacting the Solomon Islands High Commission in Canberra, which is a staffed consular office.

Laszlo and ozziegiraffe, Thanks for responding.

Laszlo, someone, I think it was ozziegiraffe but maybe not, had elswewhere mentioned hearing that border formalities were being set up at that Solomons-Bougainville crossing, and I was hoping somebody had found out that they had. I also read somwhere on TT that travelers were being denied passing by land at Vanimo-Jayapura (or vice versa?), and were being told they had to go by sea. Therefore, I thought there might be a regular service of some sort.

BTW: how did you get your visa, what transport did you use to West Papua on the most recent trip?

I'd like to get an Indonesian visa before arriving at the Jayapura border to avoid... or at least, lessen the hassles. I was a little bit concerned that showing up in Vanimo and applying there might be risky, but it looks like that's the only possibility. (I'm still hoping for a cheap (-er) flight to the Solomons and then going that way, but I'll see....)

Well, off to a consulate to give it a try.

Again, much thanks.

Joe Too

OG was the one mentioning that immgration facilities were being set up along the SI-PNG border, but until we hear confirmation these are complete and the border officially opened, we must assume the situation remains as it has/had been for years, I guess. This is a very slowly-changing part of the World...

The Jayapura-Vanimo border can be closed periodically, but is usually open.
If it is not, they tell you to charter ($$$!) not that there is regular service by sea.
There used to be one, but it stopped ca 10 years ago!
A bit more about this issue here.

On my most recent trip to West Papua, I used a huge Pelni ship - from Maluku on the Indonesian side, of course! ;-)

I think getting a visa in Vanimo is easy enough, but if you run into problems, you can always leave entering by sea for the last resort - chartering if you really have to. But that is just unlikely.