Cheap Hotels / Camping / Scubs Diving / Flights.

Hi Guys,
I am looking to travel to Wallis and Futuna in Sep / Oct and was wondering about any cheap hotels or the possibility of camping? Also, any possibilities to scuba dive!!!! I will fly from Brisbane to Noumea and then onto Wallis and Futuna. Do you know if it’s possible to buy air passes to get to these islands? What’s the cheapest way to buy these tickets?

Thanks for any info in advance?

JMF.

I don't know if it's late to share information.

I visited W&F in September; in Wallis there are one or two hotels but they are obviously super expensive. There are two Airbnb places, one of the two (I think the cheapest one) is my friend Bernard who is a really nice person, I strongly suggest to stay there.

In Futuna, there are only two hotels and no Airbnb. One (hotel Fiafia) costs 120.000 francs a night for one person, 150.000 for two. The other, which is the one where I stayed but I don't remember the name, is on the northern tip of the island and costs 90.000 francs one person, 120.000 francs two persons.

Unless you are rich, Futuna is a tough place to visit. It's comparable to the remote places of French Polynesia like Marquisas, Australes and Gambier. There is no infrastructure for visitors, except for a couple of family-managed hotels who will do anything they can to suck any money you have, until the very end. If you want to visit Futuna as a "normal tourist", without excessively thinking about money, consider at least 250 EUR a day for one person, 350 if you are in two.

There are good snorkelling places in Wallis, but you have to hire a boat to go to the motus. In Futuna, I read people complaining a lot about the lack of good snorkelling (it's one of those not-so common young islands, where the coast is volcanic, there are almost no corals, the water is very low for a 10-20 meters, and then it suddenly drops into the deep ocean). However, I personally found that, during high tide, there are some areas where it's possible to swim, and there are quite a lot of interesting fish, for instance on the north tip of the island. Nothing comparable to a real good snorkelling, but still, you see different types of colourful fish that you cannot find in calm waters.

Flights: internal flights Wallis - Futuna - Wallis are fixed price, 100 EUR one way. They are the only ones that cannot be purchased on the website of Aircalin, but you can still book them if you use one of the intermediary agencies that you find through SkyScanner (out of them, the one I found to be more reliable was mytrip.com, I used it a lot in French Polynesia too).

Ah, if you are interested about this, there are a lot of small archaeological spots in Futuna. You have to ask around about the well known professor of Archaeology who lives there, he can show you around.

As it happens on other expensive / remote French colonies, people not doing business with tourists are generally very helpful and friendly.

I don't know about camping. Both Wallis and Futuna are quite crowded, I think that the only way to camp would be to ask permission to do it in someone's garden, but probably, if you go as far as asking this, the house owner will directly invite you to stay at his house.

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