Solomon Islands
Tulagi
The old capital's harbour still holds the flying boats the war left on its floor.
The harbour lies flat and quiet, flying boats resting on its floor where 1942 left them. Capital once, battlefield after, dive base now: Tulagi keeps all three inside a walkable mile.
Tulagi served as capital of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate until Japan took it in 1942, and the Allies bombed it hard to take it back. The Japanese seaplane base at Gavutu was caught at its moorings in the landings, and the anchorage still holds an American Catalina and three Mavis flying boats at twenty to thirty-five metres, divers' depths rather than snorkellers'. Ships and aircraft are scattered on through the Nggela Islands, some of them war graves, and operators match sites to certification and conditions. On land, the whole island can be walked in an afternoon.
Solo
Operators here take single divers out on shared boats, which is the cheapest way anyone gets onto these wrecks.
Couple
One of you can take the deeper wrecks while the other snorkels the reef off the same boat, then swap the following day.
Friends
Wreck diving with people of similar experience is both safer and cheaper, and the walk round the former capital fills the surface interval.
- Tulagi was the capital before Honiara, on an island small enough to walk in an afternoon.
- An American Catalina and three Mavis flying boats lie in the seaplane anchorage at twenty to thirty-five metres, dived on a single stay.
- Operators match sites to experience and conditions, because some of the wrecks are deep.
- The Nggela Islands around it make this a diving and history area rather than a single site.
Fish straight off the boats, which is what the kitchens here are built around.
Dinner is taken at the two small lodges above the water, where the dive boats tie up.
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Island (Ross Island)
India
A British colonial headquarters slowly being digested by ficus roots in the Andaman Sea.
Grímsey Island
Iceland
A wind-battered island where you step across the Arctic Circle among a million nesting seabirds.
Whitby
England
Gothic abbey ruins over a harbour where Dracula came ashore and jet jewellery gleams black.
Shetland
Scotland
Vikings set a longship ablaze in Europe's largest fire-festival tradition on these Norse islands.
Nendo
Solomon Islands
Money made from red feathers came from here, and the memory of it has not gone.
Taro Island
Solomon Islands
A provincial capital on an island low enough that the plan is to move it.
Vangunu Island
Solomon Islands
A giant rat known to Zaira's forest for generations, and to science only since 2017.