Tuvalu + outer islands travel report

We have recently visited Tuvalu for 3 weeks. We saw a big deal of the country, we managed to reach 6 of the 8 outer islands, and spent a lot of time in Funafala on the southern tip of Funafuti.

Afterwards, after having been there, I think there is a big inconsistency between how developed and visited the country is, and on the other side how few information you can find online, especially about the outer islands. I think it's because the only foreigners who visit the outer islands are UN workers, not tourists.

The outer islands

The good news are that it's becoming quite easy to visit them, since, two years ago, the Japanese government has donated a new shiny cargo ship to Tuvalu.

This makes it three ships going to the outer islands: usually there is a trip each week, and sometimes more.

There are three different trips:

Northern islands: Nanumea, Nanumanga, Niutao; it departs in the morning, reaches the first island after 24 hours, stays one day in each island, then back to Funafuti around lunch time of the fifth day

Central islands: Nukufetau, Nui, Vaitupu; it departs late in the evening, reaches the first island in the morning, stays one day on each island, back in the early morning of the fourth day.

Southern islands: Nukulaelae, Niulakita; I don't know the schedule of this one, we didn't do it; probably it's the same of the central islands trip but one day less.

We travelled both times on the newest Japanese boat, once in second class, once in first class. The central islands trip costs around 220 AUD for second class and 270 AUD for first class. The northern island trip costs around 320 AUD second class, 370 AUD first class (all prices per person, roundtrip). Both second and first class cabins are very comfortable.

Locals travel only on deck, which is super cheap, in the range of 20-30 AUD roundtrip. I am not sure about the exact price though.

From what I heard, in the two older ships cabins are in very bad conditions and super hot, so if you travel on those boats it's more comfortable to buy the deck ticket (you have to bring a mat and something light to cover yourself).

When you travel in the cabin food is included, but, except for breakfast (standard cereals with milk) the rest of the food is really bad. I never complain about food, this is probably the first time during my travels; a typical meal was corned beef mixed with some canned sweet sour sauce and canned pineapple, heated up in a pan with rice and a lot of salt. I suggest to bring some simple food for the dinners, and always have lunch ashore on the islands, which is really good. Drinkable water is always available on the ship.

The ships are very well organised and punctual. However, remember that you are in the South Pacific and unpredictable things happen: if you are about to leave on a trip always double check with locals if there are time changes.

Another thing, the amount of time spent on each island is usually a full day, but it can be more or less depending on the amount of cargo. For instance, in the northern islands trip we basically skipped Nanumanga because we arrived very early before sunset, and the morning after the ship was already almost unloaded: so we just went to the island on the launch in the morning, took a couple of pictures and back to the ship after 10 minutes on the same launch.

So, overall, in the current status of things, if you visit Tuvalu for two weeks I would say you have very good chances to get on at least one of the outer islands roundtrips. As soon as you land in Funafuti, cross the road in front of the airport and enter in the government building, there you can ask for timetables and buy tickets. You cannot know the schedule in advance because they only plan it for the following two months; also, I wasn't able to find out if there is any place where they put the schedule online, I personally don't think they do it at all.

These were the good news, now the bad ones: all the outer islands we visited (6 out of 8) were very, very far from being original and culturally unspoiled. There is a big UN business in Tuvalu, many UN projects are up in the whole country, and these projects have been affecting and they will quickly completely replace the island lifestyle.

As far as I know, in all the outer islands there is not even one of the traditional Tuvaluan houses left, only brick houses. Tons of solar panels, modern toilets, smartphones and wifi on every island, and I saw in some houses huge flat screen televisors that I myself couldn't afford in Europe.

Of course, this doesn't mean that the people are not interesting, and that it would be a boring experience to reach the islands. But, for what I saw, I now personally think that, at least if you have already visited a lot of other places in the Pacific, probably it's not worth the effort to visit a Tuvaluan outer island on the roundtrips we took: you just stay for a few hours, and walk around in a small village with nice beaches as you can find in many other places in the Pacific.

If you stay there longer and experience local life, then it's definitely worth visiting an outer island, and now that there are frequent ships this became much more doable: if you don't care about which specific island you want to visit, I think a visit of three weeks in Tuvalu is enough to catch two different roundtrips that visit twice the same region. You can go on the first trip, stay on the island for 7-10 days, and come back to Funafuti on the next ship.

On every island there is a cheap accommodation that includes food. For what we saw, the most beautiful islands are Nanumea and Vaitupu, and I also heard that Nukulaelae is beautiful too.

Funafuti (the town)

So, Tuvalu is not a country where you find original lifestyle (to find original lifestyle, as far as I know, the only countries left in Oceania are PNG, Solomon Islands, the FSM and Kiribati).

Knowing this fact, and arranging my expectations accordingly, I personally find Funafuti quite more interesting than the outer islands: the town is unique and charming, because of the lack of space, and how locals managed to live with it and "work around" the problems.

For instance, it's really a nice experience to visit the airport in the evenings, it becomes very crowded with people who do sports and generally relax; the airport is the main place of social gathering in town.

Another interesting thing is the king tide, that happens a few times a year, during which most of the city gets a few centimetres of water like Venice.

Then it's also nice to walk on the narrow strip of land that leads to the harbour north of town: it's not easy to find elsewhere an atoll where you can see so clearly and close both lagoon and ocean side (it's even thinner than corresponding strips in Majuro and South Tarawa).

Overall, we spent around 6 full days in town and they were very enjoyable, I don't think they were a waste of time at all.

Hotels: there are many but all expensive. The cheapest we found was for 70 AUD a night the double room, including aircon and shared kitchen. Unfortunately I didn't write down the name, it's something similar to Valiutao or Valuetelei (it starts with V and contains a lot of vowels). To find it, turn right from the airport, take the road that starts between the bank and Telecom, and follow it for 500 meters until you find the sign on the right side (it's adjacent to the Jehova's Witnesses' school).

Most other hotels cost 100 AUD a night for the double room. Among them, we found the Esfam Lodge to be best for quality (again, aircon and shared kitchen included). It's in the beginning of the same road you take to go to the cheaper hotel I mentioned above; it's very close to the airport. I think they even have cheaper rooms if you are only one person.

I heard of some UN workers who have been hosted by local families and paid less, but I don't know the details. If you want to try that, you can probably just ask around when you land.

Restaurants: there are some cheap and decent Chinese owned restaurants, you'll see them around. The better quality restaurants are a bit hidden, you have to ask one of the many expats where to find them, they'll know for sure. Overall, I think the best idea is to cook at home.

The library is worth visiting if you are interested in the South Pacific, they have quite a lot of rare and old books about the topic. You have to pay a small one-time fee in order to start borrowing.

To use internet, you have to purchase one of the expensive login credentials at the Telecom office. There are like 4-5 different wifi networks around town, their names change depending on the hotspot. It's often difficult to understand which wifi actually works, we found that the only place where it worked decently was the parking lot on northern side of the government building.

The town is packed with many foreigners, mostly UN workers and "country collectors".

UN workers usually stay for 3-4 weeks, forming a compact community of short term expats (there are usually at least 50 UN expats at any given time, which is a lot considering the size of the town, you basically see them everywhere).

About "country collectors", I almost consider them as an attraction of Tuvalu (due to the size of town and scarcity of flights, it is the only place I have been where you can see them consistently as a significant percentage of the foreigners present). They stay in the country exactly for 48 hours, they arrive on Tuesday's flight and leave on Thursday's flight; they blame Fiji Airways for not having a third flight that would allow them to stay in Tuvalu the three canonical days they spend in each of the other 192 UN country members (suggesting that, if only they had that third day, their visit to Tuvalu would be complete); then on their instagram accounts they write that in Tuvalu there is nothing. I find this unfair, overall Tuvalu is a very interesting country to visit.

Funafuti (rest of the island)

The main attractions are Funafala on the southern tip, and the Conservation Area in the north west.

The conservation area was too expensive for us, we didn't go. I don't remember the exact price they asked at the council, but it was definitely more than the 200 AUD it used to be in the past. I would say at least 300 AUD for the day trip.

We spent 5 nights in Funafala, and they were very well worth it. First of all, it's a small community were you find more of the old lifestyle than any outer island we have seen. Then, it's one of the most beautiful atoll locations I have seen in the Pacific (out of the places I visited, it's second only to Arno in the Marshalls).

To reach Funafala, you have to organise a boat in the Funafuti island council, which is near the hospital. You pay 150 dollars if you go and come back the same day, or 200 dollars if you want to stay in Funafala, in which case you have to tell the driver the day and time you want to be picked up. I suggest to go to the council and book the boat a day in advance.

The guest house in Funafala costs only 35 AUD a night for the double room. You pay at the council and show the receipt when you are there. Food is not included; you can cook yourself in the shared kitchen, but there is no food supply at all in Funafala, the only thing you can buy there is fresh fish from locals, so, if you want to cook, bring plenty of food with you.

If you want locals to cook for you, you can arrange it while you are there. The family we asked to cook for us had never done it before, so they didn't have a price, they just told us that we could pay whatever we found fair to pay. We offered them 20 dollars a day per person for all the food. Everything was delicious, they cooked a lot of shellfish, crabs in coconut milk, and at least one fried whole fish per meal.

Money

It's true, there are no ATMs in the country.

You can exchange the main foreign currencies (US, Canadian, Fijian and New Zealand dollars, Eur and British Pounds) in all the banks; there is a bank in every island except for Niulakita. However, exchange rates are terrible, I wouldn't suggest doing it for large sums of money.

What does have a good rate are traveler cheques, so it's definitely recommend to enter in Tuvalu with either Australian dollars cash or traveler cheques.

If, like us, you'll be visiting Tuvalu without passing through Australia to withdraw money beforehand, and need to get AUD cash on the way, we found that Vanuatu is by far the best country in the region to get them cheaply.

Flights

On both arrival and departure flights, the staff of Fiji Airways did whatever they could to prevent us from getting on the plane: in both cases the flight was either overloaded, or didn't have, or couldn't load enough fuel for its weight.

We found out afterwards that this happens very often, for various reasons out of Fiji Airways' control, especially on flights entering Funafuti.

The main reasons are two: lack of infrastructure in Funafuti airport, and crazy luggages brought in by locals who come back from abroad.

An example of infrastructure problem was some weeks before our visit, when a flight, because of a storm, couldn't land in Funafuti (I didn't understand if because of the length of the runway, or because there are houses all around it), so the plane had to give up, leave, and land in Wallis instead. It had just enough fuel to make it, so, since then, Fiji Airways became very cautious about fuel: every time there is the risk of a storm, they load much more fuel than necessary, and dump a bunch of passengers to lower the weight of the aircraft.

On our flight from Suva, there was exactly this problem. The staff kept everybody locked in the boarding room, AFTER immigration, and they kept repeating that they needed at least 6 volunteers who would not fly. Nobody gave up, so after two hours they let everyone on the plane and left on the ground randomly 600kg of luggage, that would be brought to Funafuti on the following flight.

On the way back, we experienced another problem: the pump to refuel the plane in Funafuti was broken, so the plane had to leave Suva with much more fuel, enough to go and come back. Which means again passengers to dump and fights to get on board.

On top of these problems, we had to refuse several attempts, via email, to reschedule our flight due to overbooking.

To avoid risks, first of all you have to refuse every reschedule (unless the flight has been actually cancelled, thing that they don't write explicitly in the reschedule emails, because they want to trick you into believing that the reschedule they are proposing is unavoidable). Besides this, you should be always one of the first to check in.

If you want to have even more chances to get on board, you can try to upgrade to business class.

First of October celebrations

From the first of October for almost a whole week, every year there are celebrations for independence. There are many dances and songs, plus the Miss Tuvalu contest (also known as Sepikana festival).

Surprisingly, we found Miss Tuvalu to be more interesting than the official traditional dances: it's not just a beauty contest, it actually consists of several single contests that have to be faced by the whole communities each girl comes from: for instance, one day they have to decorate trucks to host the girls, and go around town with many dancers and singers on them.

Among the official traditional dances, we found most interesting the singing contest of teams from different islands: the melody they repeat is monotonous, but they have to perform it louder and louder, dancing more and more crazily as the melody gets repeated. I personally didn't see similar contests in other parts of Polynesia (even though sounds and melodies do remind those of Tahiti, Hawaii, etc).

All the official dances are performed in the patio just in front of Filamona hotel.

Thanks,very interesting report!

Very good report....thank you for all the info. Dancing style sounds a bit like Tokelau.

Hi nakichick, have you been to Tokelau recently? I am curious to know if there are any updates about the entry requirements, and how difficult it is to get on the boat in Apia

Wow! Fabulous report. Thanks for sharing.

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