RTW - Solomon Islands
Door: Bart De Coster
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22 December 2017 | Solomon Eilanden, Honiara
As usual, when we arrived in Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, we went straight to our hotel.
We didn’t know much about the Solomon Islands in advance, and by the time we started to look for accommodation, some places were already sold out.
Luckily we found a nice offer for 1 of the more luxurious places, actually afair bit above our budget. But we decided to take it after all.
The first afernoon we stayed at the resort and enjoyed some more relaxing.
(We start getting pretty good at it ;) )
The next day we had a look around Honiara, which didn’t took us long.
Honiara is just a big town with just under 70.000 people.
And there is not much to see.
But the Solomon Islands played an important role during WWII.
Some of the most intense fighting of the war occurred in the Solomons. The Battle of Guadalcanal became an important and bloody campaign fought in the Pacific War as the Allies began to repulse Japanese expansion.
According to the National WWII-Museum statistics, the Solomon Islands Campaign cost the Allies approximately 7,100 men, 29 ships and 615 aircraft. The Japanese lost 31,000 men, 38 ships and 683 aircraft. After the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Japanese Imperial Navy wanted a buffer against attack from the United States and its Allies, and began occupying islands throughout the Pacific Ocean.
Because of all these battles, there a lot of Ship-wrecks and airplanes to be found in the waters around the Solomon Islands.
So there are a lot of really nice diving spots.
Unfortunately, there is only 1 Diving Centre in Honiara.
And the owner was pretty busy with treating a bent diver in the hyperbaric chamber for a few days. So it wasn’t that easy to agree on something.
In the end we were able to book 2 dives. (I-1 Japanese Submarine & B17-Bomber)
2 really nice dives. And especially that submarine played an important role in WWII. Worth looking it up online ;)
In the end we got our next Diving-Level here : Rescue Divers
And that’s about it for the Solomon Islands. Not much more to say...
Let’s go to Fiji !!
We didn’t know much about the Solomon Islands in advance, and by the time we started to look for accommodation, some places were already sold out.
Luckily we found a nice offer for 1 of the more luxurious places, actually afair bit above our budget. But we decided to take it after all.
The first afernoon we stayed at the resort and enjoyed some more relaxing.
(We start getting pretty good at it ;) )
The next day we had a look around Honiara, which didn’t took us long.
Honiara is just a big town with just under 70.000 people.
And there is not much to see.
But the Solomon Islands played an important role during WWII.
Some of the most intense fighting of the war occurred in the Solomons. The Battle of Guadalcanal became an important and bloody campaign fought in the Pacific War as the Allies began to repulse Japanese expansion.
According to the National WWII-Museum statistics, the Solomon Islands Campaign cost the Allies approximately 7,100 men, 29 ships and 615 aircraft. The Japanese lost 31,000 men, 38 ships and 683 aircraft. After the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Japanese Imperial Navy wanted a buffer against attack from the United States and its Allies, and began occupying islands throughout the Pacific Ocean.
Because of all these battles, there a lot of Ship-wrecks and airplanes to be found in the waters around the Solomon Islands.
So there are a lot of really nice diving spots.
Unfortunately, there is only 1 Diving Centre in Honiara.
And the owner was pretty busy with treating a bent diver in the hyperbaric chamber for a few days. So it wasn’t that easy to agree on something.
In the end we were able to book 2 dives. (I-1 Japanese Submarine & B17-Bomber)
2 really nice dives. And especially that submarine played an important role in WWII. Worth looking it up online ;)
In the end we got our next Diving-Level here : Rescue Divers
And that’s about it for the Solomon Islands. Not much more to say...
Let’s go to Fiji !!
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