"The Back door route" - Bougainville to the Solomon Islands

For anyone who's interested, I just came back from a fantastic month long circular trip around PNG the Bismark Archipelago, Bougainville and the Solomon Islands with my wife and 2 teenage children. I'd searched this forum
extensively before I left for recent information on travelling through Bougainville to the Solomons but no one seems to have done it recently and everywhere else I looked or asked, the advise was don't do it. Well I'm glad to report it was an exceptionally rewarding travel experience, Bougainville is beautiful, the people we met were some of the warmest people we met all trip and the journey across to shortlands/Balalae was simple. We flew into Buka from Rabaul and spent five days travelling down the coast to Arawa, Pokpok island, the Panguna Mine and eventually Buin, where we got the boat to the Solomons. There are a number of decent guest houses along the way and a fantastic homestay on Pokpok island... in Buin there is just one guesthouse, hiding behind a hibiscus hedge by the communications town. Tommy who own it will sort out the boat over to Shortlands and The PNG imigration office is behind this guesthouse. There are now two places to stay on shortlands and there are 3 flights a week from Balalae to Gizo, Chioiseul and onto Honiara. If anyones planning a similar Journey please feel free to get in touch and I can supply more information.

Cheers

That is some great information. I was up in Choiseul a couple years ago and thought about taking the speed boat from there, but ended up enjoying Choiseul and spending my time there. I wrote this blog on the crocodile hunting there, that I thought you might enjoy. SoI is definitely still one of the undiscovered paradises.

http://www.nomadic-by-nature.com/modern-crocodile-hunting-in-solomon-islands-2/

Best,

Mike

Cheers Mike. Thats a fascinating story, worthy of more really, great stuff.

Yeah its a stunning group of Islands, In Sol we travelled Shortlands, Choiseul, Gizo, Munda, Seghe, Isabel and Honiara, out of the islands I'd like to spend more time on Choiseul and IsabelI but they are a long long way from Manchester and there's alot of world left to see. It's a shame that logging is happening so extensively accross the country though, we can only hope that government will realise that quickly before it becomes like the rest of the countries in region.

sounds great - how much did the boat cost ? how did immigration work in the shortlands?

We paid 250kina for 4 of us...I didn't try and negotiate.

Immigration worked by me walking to the Green house behind the guesthouse in Buin and trustingly handing over
our passports and going back a few hours later to pick them up, I think preferably he wanted the evening to do it. We had 3 days in Sol before getting to Gizo where we eventually went to the immigration office and got stamped
in. The lady in the office here said there was an Immigration office in Shortlands had we wanted to go but it
was no problem doing it the way we did it.

Nice to hear that one can now exit Buin legally.
When I made this crossing, entering the Solomons at Gizo was legal, but exiting PNG at Buin was not.

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Does anybody have recent news about the crossing?

I understand that at the time of the post crossing to Shortlands was legal and crossing to Choiseul was not. Has this changed? Or going directly to Choiseul is still risky due to the Australian policemen?

Also, what interesting things are to do / see between Shortlands and Honiara? Gizo seems to be a famous place, is there any other interesting island? At first instinct, reading your replies above, I would choose Choiseul, but if I have to go down to Gizo and fly back maybe it's not so convenient.

Thanks
Adriano

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