Solomon Islands

The Solomon Islands is one of the Pacific's most extraordinary and least-visited destinations, an archipelago of nearly 1,000 islands scattered across the southwestern Pacific Ocean with a diversity of culture, marine life, and wartime history that rewards every curious traveller. When you first arrive in Honiara on the island of Guadalcanal, you'll sense immediately that this is a place that has not been smoothed and packaged for mass tourism. The markets bustle with locals trading betel nut, fresh fish, and tropical produce, and the city carries the energy of a community going about its daily life largely on its own terms.

Venture beyond the capital and you'll discover some of the world's most pristine coral reef systems, where manta rays glide over gardens of staghorn coral, schools of barracuda spiral in the blue, and World War II wrecks lie draped in soft coral just below the surface. The islands of the Western Province, particularly around Gizo and Munda, are regarded as among the Pacific's premier dive destinations, offering wall dives, drift dives, and wreck dives in remarkable visibility.

Life on the outer islands moves to a slower rhythm defined by the tides, village fishing schedules, and the Christian calendar. You'll be welcomed into communities where traditional customs, shell money, and song-and-dance ceremonies remain central to daily identity. The Solomon Islands demands patience and flexibility from its visitors, but those who commit to the journey are rewarded with experiences — a village feast, a remote reef at dawn, a conversation with a WWII survivor's descendant — that simply cannot be replicated anywhere else on earth.

The Solomon Islands has been inhabited for at least 30,000 years, with Melanesian peoples developing complex societies organised around clan systems, ceremonial exchange networks, and inter-island trade routes long before European contact. Spanish navigator Álvaro de Mendaña arrived in 1568, naming the islands after the biblical king in hopes of finding fabled riches. The islands were subsequently largely left alone by Europeans until the nineteenth century, when missionaries, traders, and blackbirders (who forcibly recruited islanders for plantation labour in Australia and Fiji) arrived in force.

The archipelago became a British Protectorate in 1893 and remained relatively quiet until World War II transformed it into one of the most fiercely contested battlegrounds of the Pacific. The Battle of Guadalcanal (1942–43) was a pivotal turning point — the first major Allied offensive against Japan — and the islands are littered with the physical and cultural memory of that conflict. The Solomons gained independence from Britain in 1978 and have navigated the challenges of nation-building across their remarkable cultural diversity, including a period of civil unrest (known locally as "The Tension") from 1998 to 2003.

The Solomon Islands is home to one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse populations on earth, with over 70 distinct languages and hundreds of clans, each with its own customs, dances, and artistic traditions. Melanesian culture is at the heart of island life, with a strong emphasis on community, kinship obligations, and the concept of kastom — the living framework of traditional laws and ceremonies that governs everything from land rights to marriage protocols. Shell money (tafuliae), made from tiny red shells strung into coils, is still used in bride-price payments and important ceremonial exchanges.

Music and dance are living traditions here, not performances staged for tourists. Villages hold kastom festivals where men in elaborate headdresses perform ancestral dances to the rhythm of panpipes and drums. Woodcarving is a revered craft, with artists producing beautifully detailed canoes, shields, and ceremonial objects. Christianity arrived in the nineteenth century and is now deeply embedded in daily life — Sunday services are major community events, and church choirs produce some of the most beautiful harmonies you'll hear anywhere in the Pacific.

Food in the Solomon Islands is honest, fresh, and deeply tied to the land and sea. The daily diet for most islanders revolves around staple root vegetables — taro, sweet potato, cassava, and yam — cooked in earthen ovens (umu) or boiled in coconut milk to produce rich, satisfying stews. Fresh fish is ubiquitous and prepared in wonderfully varied ways: grilled whole over coconut husks, simmered in coconut cream with chilli and lime, or simply eaten raw in the Japanese sashimi style introduced by the large fishing industry's Japanese workers.

In Honiara's markets and small restaurants you'll find unpretentious local cooking alongside Chinese-influenced dishes brought by the significant Chinese-Solomon Islander community, which has had a presence in the islands for over a century. Look out for pana (a starchy root similar to purple taro), laulau (a dish of leafy greens cooked in coconut milk), and fresh crayfish sold directly by fishermen at the Point Cruz waterfront. Kava, made from the dried roots of the pepper plant, is consumed at social gatherings and has a mildly sedating effect that makes evenings in village settings particularly relaxed.