Arrival Honiara

We had a short two and half hour flight from Brisbane to Honiara, on the island of Guadalcanal. We disembark and the heat hits us, mercifully it's a dry heat but the rainy season is about to arrive. We have a short drive to the port where our ship is docked. It isn't surprising that at first glance it is a very poor place, but that's something we already know. We are told, and there is evidence everywhere, that most of the larger retail shops and service businesses are owned by the Chinese, we pass a very large impressive sports stadium funded by the Chinese government. Of course, I recall the controversies that have arisen in recent times over Chinese influence in this part of the world.

The local shops and houses are very similar to those we have seen in places like Madagascar. Often they are very simple structures. Small huts with Palm leaves for a roof this is where locals sell produce to local buyers. Schooling is expensive, so I imagine that many of the children get only a very basic education. I can't imagine anybody wanting to be a tourist here. For us this is just the starting point, our journey will take us through the various Islands of The Solomons.

We go through the usual process for boarding, find our cabin, unpack our luggage and head to the first now very familiar briefing and life jacket drill. Once this is over we can continue unpacking and get to dinner. There was a mix-up with our booking, after we booked the first leg of the trip we decided we would do the second leg which has various advantages including the fact that we get off the ship in Cairns for the day but our luggage stays in our room. Although we had paid the deposit, there was no evidence that they knew we would be continuing on. The cabin we had originally booked on a lower deck was now no longer available, but because we are good customers they have given us a cabin on a deck higher up, we knew about this, what we didn't know was that in fact we were getting two rooms. There's a divider between them and they have simply opened that up, clearly the ship is not full. What luxury now we each have a dressing room.

We're not traveling with anyone this time, which means we take potluck at dinner with who we might be sitting with, we could sit by ourselves but that's not very interesting. Shortly after sitting down two French women ask if they could join us. One said they had intended to sit with other French passengers but they were rejected so that's a good start. They were great and I am sure we will eat with them again. We have found on previous cruises that the French are not inclined to mix with English speakers. Other nationalities will but the French tend to keep to themselves.

Apart from knowing all the protocols and the process of boarding another benefit of sailing with the same company is that you come across naturalists, staff etc. you have met before on previous ships. This trip is no exception, our evening entertainment is a very talented Ukrainian pianist. Our cruise director has been our cruise director on two other trips. One of the naturalists was with us in the sub-antarctic.

After dinner night cap with our favorite pianist and our day is done.Read more