places to stay solomon islands

These are the places where we stayed on Solomon Islands :

1/ MAVO LODGE – 12 April 2008 for 01 night_ :
Due to the closure of Seghe Airport, we had to stay 1 night on Ramata Island.
When we arrived at Mavo Lodge, the woman (Betsy?) was “too friendly” and called us “darling & love” from the beginning she saw us. She even offered us coffee & tea (very nice, but we had to pay for it later !)

There was no price list anywhere at the lodge and we did not ask for the room rate as the Visitors Centre in Honiara informed us that the price should be around 150SBD/person/night.
We had a double room (no bungalow), dinner and breakfast for 2 people.
When we asked for the bill the next morning, we were very surprised :
280SBD/PERSON plus 180 SBD extra for all meals, plus a 10% Tax, plus 10SBD for one coffee each and an extra of 60SBD for Customer Service !
Total of 866 SBD for 1 night and some food !! Waaauuuuww
The reason for the Customer Service : “because she was always available” … We were not really happy with this bill, but paid it anyway. No sight of any pricelist yet !
Later that morning we got to see the pricelist of Mavo Lodge on the wall at the small airport of Ramata and
this was surely not the same as what we paid for ! The price of 280SBD/pers. should include dinner and breakfast !!
We felt not good about this and asked the lady of Mavo in a very friendly way to talk about the bill. She immediately asked me “do you think it is too much ?” , she then took the pricelist (!) and gave us back 180SBD for the meals.
However, she did not want to cancel the Customer Service fee although this is nowhere mentioned on her list !
We did not want any trouble and discussion, and where leaving anyway.

But, suddenly the “darling & love-thing” was history at once.
Then, the owner started badmouthing Charapoana warning about bad things that happened there in the past. And tried several times to keep us staying in Mavo ! We felt this was wrong attitude again !
We still had to wait at Mavo Lodge for our boat to Charapoana, but the whole family left already by boat and the man did not even say goodbye to us !!! They just left us totally alone at the Lodge.
We were really shocked by this whole attitude and would not ever recommend this place to any other traveller.

We are experienced travellers and were visiting Melanesia for almost 4 months. This was actually the only place where we felt cheated …

2/ CHARAPOANA – 13 April 2008 for 06 nights :
We were soooo happy to arrive with this lovely family and felt “home” at once. The welcoming here was “real” !!
The price we paid was much lower than on their Website (so the info should be adapted) :
120SBD/Double room plus meals per person : Bfst. 35SBD, Lunch : 45SBD and Dinner : 65SBD
We had an excellent time at Charapoana and loved their pets, the black tip reef sharks swimming around the jetty. Snorkelling there is just excellent and you absolutely don’t need any boat tours to see it all.
This is a very relaxed place to hang around and enjoy the Lagoon. Food was great and was always served with smiling faces of the whole family !
The only negative thing is the lack of good facilities :
Shower is a bucket and not very private, but as we were the only 2 guests staying there, this did not really matter. And the toilet, small house in the mangroves was actually too far away from the room.

However, the hardest part is to contact this place.

3/ TETEPARE – 19 April 2008 for 05 nights :
Excellent place to see animals on land & in the water !
Rooms are 250SBD/person/night : 3 meals a day, ranger and some excursions included.

Other excursions by boat are very reasonable priced.
As there was an Australian family at the same time, we even got a separate leaf house for the whole period.
Ambiance was very relaxed and food was pretty good.

4/ Agnes Lodge – MUNDA – 25 April 2008 for 01 night :
The reason we stayed in Munda was because we had to take an early flight and did not want to travel by boat on the same morning coming from Tetepare .
Double room, shared facilities : 220SBD/night. An okay room for an okay price.
Restaurant available at reasonable prices but rather small portions. Friendly & helpful staff.

If you would like to have more info, pls contact me : volkske@telenet.be

Hello all,

as we just came back from the Solomon Islands and having before researched everything possible for accommodation and transport possibilities, we would like to add our experience to this forum, because it helped us a lot to get a basic picture of the Solomon Islands. Just to list few places that stuck in our mind.

Gizo islands – check out Saeragi village, beautiful spot with many small islands around. There is a bungalow for quests, but also a guy called John at the very end of the village (by the church after the football field) can let you stay at his house for a very reasonable price.

Munda – a place called Queroviana (or something like this) opposite the Agnes lodge. Clean and spacious and third of the prices of Agnes Lodge).

Marovo Lagoon:

We would definitely recommend to stay at Matikuri lodge run by Ben, near Seghe. The lodge is beautiful and in addition you can use the lodge as a base for exploring other parts of the lagoon, Ben has very good and trustworthy knowledge about the whole lagoon.
Just please avoid Charopoana (sometimes written Charapoana).The new owners are what we call „milkers“. They try to get as much money from the few visitors they get as possible. Everything, accommodation, food, trips e.g. is overpriced and even the listed prices are subsequently inflated – e.g. by lying about fuel consumption. For example for two minute slow ride after the mantas with a four stroke engine they demanded payment of five liters of fuel; transport to Seghe was double of what you could usually get by hiring a local boat.

Hope you will find this advice helpful.