Sup
I'll have like 3 weeks free to travel around the Pacific islands. Specifically I want to see Palau, Niue, and one or two more small + easy ones to visit. Maybe Nauru and/or Samoa.
I guess I'm wondering what the best tool is to chart a trip from country to country. Do I just have to hop on skyscanner and try a bunch of different shit and see what works out best, or what?
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It's hard because a lot don't have direct flights between them.
I've figured out you can fly from Brisbane to Vanuatu to New Caledonia to Fiji to the US.
Nauru is one of the least visited countries in the world so you'd be among few people to go there but I think has flights to a couple other pacific island nations.
I think there's a good bit of flights from Hawai'i to a lot of the islands, since Hawai'i has a fair amount of diaspora from a lot of them
Idk about Palau or Niue but I've been to Vanuatu, I imagine it's similar to most pacific islands.
I did what the other anon said and flew from Brisbane. My flight was $300AUD return with Virgin.
Travelling between islands in Vanuatu is easy to organise but can be expensive and time consuming / awkward as the ships and planes may only run once or twice a week and the schedules change often due to weather conditions etc.
You can fly or take ferries. Or if you're brave try and get on a cargo ship or yacht. I met a girl who had "hitchhiked" on a boomer's yacht from New Zealand to Fiji to Vanuatu.
If you fly from Australia to Vanuatu with Vanuatu Air you get a discount on internal Vanuatu Air flights between the islands.
Some of the internal airlines are so small that they don't always show up on sites like skyscanner so do a bit of research on whch airlines operate where you're going and look at their websites directly.
There are a few different ferry companies but they'll all have an office you can buy tickets from in Port Vila. I recommend buying a bottle of Kava the night before and bringing it with you on the ferry. My ferry to Malekula was about 17 hours overnight and was hot, noisy, uncomfortable. Having some Kava made it easier, and made it easy to chat to the locals.
If you go to Vanuatu I recommend going to one of the smaller islands... the main island is the most developed but probably the least interesting. Malekula has dugongs and old cannibal tribes, Pentecost has land diving, Ambrym and Tanna have active volcanoes you can hike etc. The locals on some of the islands rarely see foreigners so are very friendly.
If you dont have breasts you're not going to be able to hitchhike on some boomer's yacht. This sort of bumming around pacific islands things is incredibly easy though if you have breasts and keep the fork out of your mouth long enough to look decent in a bikini.
cringe
Try flightconnections.com for a map overview and flightsfrom.com for more detailed tables of flights from and to whichever place you are interested in.
Thanks lads, this looks great. I'll try it out.
https://www.flightconnections.com/
If you need to look into flight options
frick, should have read
first
Alright, I have a bit of preliminary plan:
Palau - 3 days
Niue - 2.5 days
Nauru - 2 days
Kiribati - 3 days
Tuvalu - 2 days
With flights and everything, should take me a total of 13 days round-trip. Leave some extra time for waiting for flights here or there, and I should be able to get a 19-day holiday out of it.
I know it's a short time for many of these countries, but I can't imagine these pacific island countries are all that different or unique from each other. I mean, is there really THAT much to see in these places? Feedback welcome.
Have you accounted for travel time between these places? They aren't all directly connected and those that are don't always have super frequent flights, maybe only once or twice a week.
There's 3 "sphere's of influence" in the Pacific. US, Commonwealth (including NZ/Aus) and French. It's pretty straightfoward to get around each sphere, but not between them. For example, going from Guam or Manila to Palau is pretty straightforward, but going from Palau to Niue isn't.
As far as islands themselves, another pacific island thread (yours) brought up FSM as the best and most interesting country in that region to visit. I've also heard good things about Vanuatu and New Caledonia. You're skipping the best islands for places like Tarawa/Kiribati which I've heard (secondhand, sure) is a shithole. I'd skip some of the harder to get to ones like Niue which I doubt is really that different from Palau or Tuvalu. Do less islands, and better quality ones. Nauru looks absolutely post-apocalyptic on street view which might actually be an interesting visit.
Palau I want to do for the jellyfish lake. Nauru, Tuvalu, and Niue I want to do because they're rapidly disappearing. Places like FSM, Fiji, and Marshall Islands sound interesting -- but I'd want to give MORE time to those ones.
I accounted for the travel times between islands, sort of. I planned the routes out, I just have to make sure the days align. That's what the extra 5 buffer days are for, though.
Out of curiosity, what's so good about FSM?
>Out of curiosity, what's so good about FSM?
Great diving in some of the islands, WWII wrecks, each of 4 main islands is very different culture, one of them (Yap) has the "stone money" (they're huge wheels and aren't moved when "ownership" changes), archeological ruins of an ancient civilization, nature that looks the part of a "lost" tropical island, and the place hasn't been shitted up like some of the ones on your list by modern poverty (which basically look and act like US indian reservations) and Chinese influence.
Sounds pretty cool -- the sort of place my wife would like to travel to, too. Thanks for the recommendation, I'll suggest that next time we're in the mood for a tropical island beach vacation
I was there in November. Took a tour around the Rock Islands. All other tourists on the tour booked a trip to the jellyfish lake. They paid like 100 USD for the government visit permit and at least another 100 USD to the tour company to take them there.
I stayed behind on the boat and the captain drove me to another snorkeling spot to swim there by myself while the group went for jellyfish.
Had the best time. When the group came back, they said they had seen 3 jellyfish in total. Apparently they all died some years ago, but no one tells tourists when they buy those trips for literally hundreds of USD