Solomon Islands
Nendo
Red feather money still circulates on an island where Melanesian and Polynesian bloodlines converge.
Red feather coils change hands at the market in Lata while reef fish smoke over mangrove-wood fires nearby. The air is thick, equatorial, carrying the sound of Pijin and local languages that shift between Melanesian and Polynesian cadences within a single street. Nendo feels like a place where two Pacific worlds overlap and neither dominates.
Nendo is the largest island in the Solomon Islands' Temotu Province — also known as Santa Cruz — and its capital Lata serves as the administrative hub for one of the most remote provinces in the Pacific. Tevau, the red feather money made from tiny scarlet feathers bound to fibre belts, still circulates here as customary currency alongside Solomon dollars. The island sits at a cultural crossroads where Melanesian and Polynesian heritage intermingles, visible in everything from canoe designs to dance styles. Álvaro de Mendaña's 1595 expedition established a short-lived Spanish colony on Nendo before disease and conflict ended the settlement — remnants of that contact remain in local oral history. The island's interior is rugged volcanic terrain, while the coast offers reef-fringed bays and mangrove channels.
Solo
Nendo rewards the patient traveller willing to navigate infrequent flights and local boat schedules. Walking Lata's market, watching tevau exchange hands, and sitting in on conversations where Melanesian and Polynesian traditions merge — this is deep-culture travel with no tour group buffer.
Couple
Nendo offers a shared experience unlike anywhere else in the Pacific — the novelty of watching a currency system older than coinage still functioning, exploring a town that feels like the edge of the mapped world, and finding quiet reef bays along the coast.
Family
Families with older children will find Nendo's cultural layers endlessly engaging — the feather money, the blend of traditions, the market life in Lata. The island's coastal areas are calm enough for swimming, and village hospitality makes visitors with children especially welcome.
Friends
A group can split between reef snorkelling, market exploration in Lata, and inland treks to waterfalls and garden areas. Nendo has enough variety to keep a group occupied for days without anyone repeating a route.
- Red feather coils — made from the feathers of the scarlet honeyeater — function as ceremonial currency on Nendo; a single coil represents weeks of skilled labour and circulates at weddings, funerals, and disputes.
- Lata, Nendo's capital, sits at the meeting point of Melanesian and Polynesian cultural zones — the result is a local music tradition, dialect, and material culture unlike anywhere else in the Solomon Islands.
- Graciosa Bay beside Lata was the site of the first attempted Spanish colonial settlement in 1595, which failed after three months; the bay holds the earliest European footprint in the Pacific islands east of the Philippines.
- Nendo is the gateway to all of Temotu Province — the most remote and culturally distinct province in the country — reached by a direct flight from Honiara that takes under two hours.
Laplap — root vegetables pounded and baked in banana leaf — a Temotu staple with Polynesian roots.
Reef fish smoked over mangrove wood, sold at Lata's small waterfront market.
Assomada
Cape Verde
Tabanka drums echo slave resistance songs through a highland market that spills into every street.
Kondoa Rock Art Sites
Tanzania
Ten thousand years of ochre-painted hunting scenes hidden in sandstone overhangs across a forgotten valley.
Valparaíso
Chile
Forty-two hills of riotous street art where funiculars creak between graffiti-walled stairways.
Siena
Italy
A shell-shaped piazza where twice a year the city erupts into bareback horse chaos.
Tulagi
Solomon Islands
Japanese float planes still rest in the harbour shallows of a bombarded colonial capital.
Roviana Lagoon
Solomon Islands
Head-hunting shrines and coral petroglyphs line a lagoon that launched war canoe raids for centuries.
Marovo Lagoon
Solomon Islands
Turquoise corridors between coral walls where master carvers paddle ebony sculptures to your canoe.
Savo Island
Solomon Islands
Volcanic steam hisses through jungle where birds bury eggs in earth heated by magma.