Solomon Islands
Wagina Island
Gilbertese families resettled here generations ago, and now farm seaweed off the lagoon.
The dancing is sharp, low-hipped and unmistakably Kiribati; the hardwood trees behind the dancers are Melanesian. Wagina holds a community carried across an ocean that has kept itself whole.
Wagina's families came from the Gilbert Islands by way of the Phoenix Islands, a route traced in published research. Tony Uro's Otin Tai enterprise runs two visitor bungalows, a restaurant, a sea taxi and lagoon-side services from the island. Flights reach Kagau from Honiara, and the boat leg is arranged from there. Seaweed farming, boats and island life run into one another here, and the host shapes any community encounter.
Solo
Two bungalows and a sea taxi is the whole infrastructure, which suits one traveller happy to eat where the family eats.
Couple
It pairs naturally with the Arnavons: bungalows and a boat here, ranger-led turtle beaches an hour away.
- Wagina's Gilbertese families arrived by way of the Phoenix Islands, a resettlement traced in published research.
- Otin Tai, Tony Uro's enterprise, runs two visitor bungalows, a restaurant and a sea-taxi service.
- Flights reach Kagau from Honiara, and the boat transfer is arranged locally from there.
- Sixty years on from the resettlement, the dancing here is still unmistakably Kiribati, sharp and low-hipped, a culture carried whole across the Pacific.
The bungalow host cooks fish from the lagoon with roots grown on the island.
Seaweed is farmed here rather than eaten here, so the plate stays fish, taro and whatever is ripe.
Manuel Antonio
Costa Rica
Capuchins patrol the sand beneath dozing sloths where rainforest walks into the ocean.
Tortuguero
Costa Rica
Jungle canals where green sea turtles haul onto black volcanic sand under a moonless sky.
Kadavu
Fiji
Manta rays circle the world's fourth-largest barrier reef, off villages the road barely reaches.
Monuriki
Fiji
The island from Cast Away truly belongs to crested iguanas brought back from the brink.
Mataniko Falls
Solomon Islands
A waterfall drops through pools into a cave, a day's walk out of the capital.
Laulasi Island
Solomon Islands
Seven tribes sealed peace with strands of shell money to reopen this hand-built island.
Skull Island
Solomon Islands
Coral platforms on a lagoon islet hold the skulls of Roviana chiefs, and permission comes first.
Roviana Lagoon
Solomon Islands
Villages still lived in and islands full of shrines sit in the same lagoon.