It's been a while since my last post, the main reason being that I have been pretty busy but I also spent a significant amount of time here
View from the Oravae sundeck at sunset.
The trip was truly an amazing experience and our hosts Naomi and Pattson and their family, in particular their daughter Nangarita helped us to have a great time as well as teaching us a lot about the people and history of the Solomon Islands. The lifestyle there is so completely different to what I know having been brought up in Australia. Schooling isn't compulsory in the Solomons, in fact, Naomi and Pattson took their children out of school after they lost their house and the first Oravae in order to rebuild as they needed all hands on deck. In the end, having practical skills in the Solomons is much more important than spending years at school or University as, often, it is difficult to get a job once you have finished your studies. The high price of education and the low salaries also deter people from undertaking further education. I found this particularly interesting as I was on the complete opposite end of the spectrum and spent 20.5 years of my 26 years of life studying.
Everything is very relaxed in the Solomons and people are never running around trying to follow tight schedules, very different indeed. It did not take us long to adopt this and almost immediately we were relaxing and not worrying about time anymore. The only things that still remained on a time schedule were our stomachs. The food was great and we had different food almost every day. There was a lot of fish, banana, pineapple and mango-delish! The fruit tasted so amazing compared to what we get at home it was much, much more flavourful.
One of our first meals- curried vegetable wraps with a side of seaweed and tomato salad
Curry, I think it was curry, pretty sure it was curry. Curry? Yeah, curry. This is the conversation we had every time we ate something curried. When we got these wraps, we were wondering what it was and Laura said "I think it's curry" then she tasted it and said "yeah it's curry" and that's where it all started. The seaweed was amazing and burst in your mouth. It was very crunchy but once it burst it was really gooey, some of us couldn't handle it and ended up feeding it to the fish but it was pretty cool. Every meal we had at Oravae had a side of their delicious fruit which was awesome.
Curried chicken wings with roasted pumpkin and rice.
Another staple in our meals was rice, most meals were served with rice with the exception of breakfast of course! Curry was also a common food.
Mud crab cooked in coconut milk with sides of local cabbage, potatoes, rice and fried aubergine.
Lime juice was also a common accompaniment with dinner and lunch, it was very refreshing to go with the meal. The awesome thing about staying at Oravae was that our meals would just arrive (although we could smell them cooking before they came) and then the dishes were taken away, there was no worrying about meals.
One of our breakfasts (pancakes with fresh fruit and cooked bananas with toffee)
There was a lot of creatures living with us some welcome and some not so much. There were heaps of gekos around and they would always be laughing at us, they were very cute; one of the welcomed creatures. The other welcomed creatures were the hermit crabs- they are really cute and just like shells walking around all the time, the only problem is that there is so many that you might end up stepping on them! The last creatures were the spiders. The Solomons definitely knows how to breed spiders- they were huge. They lived in the bathroom and some came into the living area, some had egg sacks and some didn't. Because creepy crawlies are less scary when they have names, we named the non-egg sack ones Ronald and the egg sack ones Rogitta (photo of Rogitta below).
Pictures of the creatures that lived with us.
Oh! I nearly forgot the coconuts!! We kept hearing sporadic thuds like something falling from a great height and eventually we twigged that it was actually coconuts falling from the gigantic coconut trees behind our bungalow. I found a few and spent ages husking them and then finally cracking them open (the key is to hit them over the eyes). As we'd been having limes and then found coconuts our plan (and theme song) was to "put the lime in the coconut and drink it all up" so we did just that one night. As coconut water from dried coconuts isn't great tasting, we filled them with lime vodka and Sprite, yay!
We put the lime in the coconut....
...and we drank it all up
We were in formed that the coconuts are nicer to drink if they are green. Our hosts were nice enough to get us some green drinking coconuts to try on our last day. It was a very refreshing and filling drink but it was awesome to try. Apparently, the flesh from green coconuts is usually the first solid food that babies in the Solomons eat. Just a random fact for you to contemplate.
Cheers!
We took a couple of trips during our stay, one to Kennedy Island, Fat Boys resort and Sanbis Resort. We had lunch at Fat Boys which was pretty tasty all round. We got to go and visit The Lodge at Sanbis resort which you can stay at for around $1000 per night. It has a spa and your own private jetty over the crystal clear water. Kennedy Island was great for snorkeling and there was a lot of amazing looking fish. The water was crystal clear, it was beautiful.
Us at Kennedy Island before snorkeling.
Coral at Kennedy Island
The other trip we took as to see and old World War II wreck and to see the beach at the end of Gizo (one of the main islands of the Solomon islands) and to see the village. As we went on this trip after the earthquake at Santa Cruz, there was an unusually high tide so it was very difficult to see the wreck whilst snorkeling but as we swam back to the shore, there was a lot of really beautiful coral and fish. This trip was also good as we got to walk through the village and learn about life there. As they experienced a tsunami in 2007, it was interesting to learn how they rebuilt and regrew all of their crops. We also got to see the local canoe maker who was carving a new paddle. It was very cool.
Coral on the way back to shore at the WWII wreck.
There was a lot of Nemo fish (anemone fish) everywhere we went snorkeling.
For several of the days, Kylie and I got up at 5:45 so that we could try and see the sunrise over Kolumbangara. It was absolutely beautiful when there wasn't cloud cover over the mountain (which is actually a volcano). There is a lookout on the island that we climbed in our PJ's so that we could see the sunrise but when we finally caught it, it was well worth the climb.
There is so much more that we did and this is just a glimpse of what we got up to. It it a trip that I don't think I will ever forget. If you ever have the chance, I highly recommend visiting the Solomon Islands and Oravae cottage, it is a great experience and the perfect place for a relaxing holiday. I sho uld mention that not all the photos in this post were taken by me and were actually taken by my friends Kylie, so thanks for letting me use your photos Kylie!
Sunrise over Kolumbangara.
Where is your next holiday going to be?
