JBR - Honiara and Savo

Hi everyone

I spent a month in the Solomons in October and thought you might be interested in hearing about what we did and where we stayed. I travelled with 2 friends (all girls) to Honiara, Savo, the Morovo Lagoon and Malaita. I've split it into different posts, because it is quite long!

Honiara -
We flew from Brisbane to Honiara with Solomon Airlines. Waiting at baggage claim in Honiara, I had that sinking feeling as no more bags seemed to be appearing on the carousel. Yes, my bag was lost. In Brisbane perhaps, or maybe in Nauru... nobody really seemed too sure at the airport. Hopefully it would turn up soon, they said. So we headed into town.

A taxi took us to a few places to stay in Honiara, but most were full. In the end we found a room at the Bulia 2, run by a couple of guys called Joe and Kelly. They were really friendly, happy to have a drink with us in the evenings, showed us round the town and took us on a couple of fun nights out to a bar in town, the King Sol. The guest house isn't exactly the best organised in town (all of the cutlery kept going missing from the kitchen! A problem with the Wantok system apparently, haha) but it was walking distance from town and a fun and friendly place to stay for a reasonable price (100 solomon dollars a room I think).

Honiara was a bustling town - I hadn't expected much from it from reading reports before I went, but it wasn't a bad place to spend a couple of days, with a few shops and restaurants and a nice central market.

Savo -
We looked into when the ferries were running to the Western Province, but they weren't leaving for another 6 days. So Joe at the guesthouse suggested that we go to Savo for a few days. He walked us down to the harbour and arranged a boat to take us over. So the next day we were off. The boat was small and a little bit rough, but we were there in an hour and a half or so. It dropped us off at Sunset lodge, where we were to stay for the next three nights.

As we pulled in to the lodge, blonde haired children came running out into the sea to wave to us - it was nice to get away from the busyness of Honiara and to see some people living in a village for the first time. During our three days the lodge arranged for us to go dolphin spotting (we saw lots!), to see where the Megapode birds laid their eggs, and to visit and climb a nearby volcano. This last activity in particular was really great - our guide took us right to the top where boiling water was spouting out into a stream that ran all the way down the valley. I would recommend using trekking shoes rather than flip flops like us though - our toes got a bit burnt! The scenery was stunning and it felt like a real adventure.

The lodge restaurant was lovely, right by the waters edge, with hammocks to relax in outside. The rooms however were a bit of a disappointment, as they were in a massive concrete building behind the restaurant. It would have been a bit nicer if they had been less 'concrete' and a bit more traditional. But still, the rooms were clean (if a little hot when power cuts happened at night) and the food that they served was good (although it was a shame that the staff were expected to dress and behave so formally in front of us - we were the only people staying there, and it would have been nice to sit down with them and have a chat sometimes).

Overall, I enjoyed our stay in Save very much - we saw lots of things in a few days, it was easily accessible from Honiara and was a good introduction to the Solomons.