Gizo and Uepi Island, 1999
Author: Gordon

We stayed a week each at 2 different locations in the Solomon Islands; Gizo and Uepi Island (near Seghe).

My wife & I did the trip with another couple, their little boy, and
grandmom.  They flew in via LAX and Nadi , and we flew via LAX, Sydney, and Brisbane - and on the way home spent a week in Australia. 

The trip over was without incident for both groups.  The Gizo airport (as are most of them in the Solomon's) is left over from WWII, and is on a small island across from town itself.  We were met at the airport by the owner of the dive operation we were diving with (Danny Kennedy - Adventure Sports (www.divegizo.com)) and he saw that we were transported across and checked into the Gizo Hotel.  (Clean comfortable accommodations, nothing fancy, but they did have A/C and hot running water.)

Our week at Gizo was enjoyable, the diving was fantastic, though the visibility left a bit to be desired.  Seems that there had been a small typhoon that passed north of the islands a just before we arrived and we had a couple of rainy days right after we got there - plus supposedly there was coral spawning the previous full moon, and extreme high tides - all this lead to decreased visibility in the range of 50 to 80 feet.  Water temp. was 87-88 degrees F, air temp 88-92 and humid, it was nice that the Gizo Hotel had A/C while we tried to acclimate.

Danny and Kerrie (owners of the dive operation) took very good care of us. They were quite busy the week we were there, the Aggressor was in port for the week, plus they had a travel agent group from Australia visit, and the International Rotary, plus a couple of other things going on.  We had dinner a couple of nights at the PT109 (a restaurant near the dive shop) and saw the internationally famous local pan flute dancers put on an exceptional show for us one night.

As for the diving, I'm ready to go back and see more - maybe even spend a week on-board the Aggressor.  In all honesty, a week wasn't long enough to see everything, and dive the different sites that Danny has, I could have spent another day just on the Toa Maru.  The Toa Maru is a large Japanese freighter that was torpedoed and sunk during WWII.  It lies in about 130 feet water with access into a couple of the cargo holds, where we saw a small mini-tank, small courier motorcycle, sake bottles, ammunition and shells, plus thick coral growth - we even saw the original torpedo hole.

Other sites includes "Hot Spot", a nice shallow reef teaming with fish life and hard corals.  "Kennedy Reef" was another favorite, a nice current there brought in pygmy manta rays, spotted eagle rays, some small reef sharks and a turtle.  Lunch on Kennedy Island afterwards (yes the one next to Kennedy Island (aka Plum Island) of the PT109 fame) gave us a chance to reflect on the history of the area.

And then there was Uepi....  We landed on another left-over WWII airstrip, we boarded a small boat and then took a 45 minute boat ride to the resort. We knew it was going to be nice, and it was wonderful.  We arrived in the morning, unpacked, settled into our own cabin, had lunch while laying in the hammock on our own little beach, and then did the afternoon dive.  The days we wanted to do extra dives, the guides were there early, stayed late, whatever we wanted they made themselves available.  Two different mornings we did 6:45am dives before breakfast, and a night dive after dinner one night.  Normally, the scheduled dives were for 9:30am and 2:30pm, allowing
for a long lunch break/surface interval between dives.

Most of the dive sites were with-in a few minutes of the dive dock, one in particular that we did numerous times was "Uepi Point" on the ocean side of the island.  All of the dives were sheer wall dives, some undercut with cracks overhead (volcanic islands).  Most dives we would drop down to 90-100 feet and find some small point to hang out on for 5-10 minutes and just let the sharks, schools of barracudas, and the occasional ray swim by, then we would drift our way along the wall and work our way up to the shallows.  A number of the dives ended in small "bommie gardens" in 15-20 feet - giving us a chance to do very long safety stops.  Almost every dive was for 1 hour+, a computer is an absolute must.

Looking back, I wish we had planned ahead and on at least one day done a couple of morning dives and then a local cultural tour or waterfall visit in the afternoon.  Oh well....

Jim and Sunny were great hosts, they made sure we were well taken care of. Sunny even made us a pumpkin pie from scratch for "Thanksgiving" dinner dessert for us "yanks".

Again, the diving was everything we had hoped, and more - except for the vis.  We just loved the walls, sheer with overhangs.  Saw plenty of small sharks, some fairly close - and just had a great time.  Though we didn't get to do the airplane wreck off the end of the runway at Seghe - the two other dive sites they normally combine with that were "custom" dive locations and not available due to "local politics".

In both places there were hard corals beyond description, more creatures than I can even begin to describe... anemones, nudibranchs, anemone fish/clownfish, triggerfish, butterflyfish, angelfish, chromis, fairy bassellets, flat-head crocodile fish, lionfish, pipefish, blacktip whitetip & gray reef sharks, pygmy mantas, spotted eagle rays, blue spotted stingrays - I could go on & on - more types and varieties than we could find in any of our fish books.

All in all, we really enjoyed our trip to the Solomon Islands, both Gizo and Uepi were wonderful places to visit and dive.  We'd go back in an instance! - I would recommend them to anybody, especially somebody who wants some great diving, and something a little different and off the beaten track.

Australia was great place to visit on our way home, though a week isn't nearly long enough to even get a good flavor of such a large country, guess we'll just have to go back again some day, soon.  As always the trip home was long (ended up being 32 hours because of a cancel flight once we got back to the states).  Jetlag has definitely been a problem this past week at work.  But I'm ready to go again.

We booked our trip through Jenny w/ Dive Discovery (www.divediscovery.com)
I highly recommend them - it pays to use a dedicated dive travel agent
when you're traveling so far off the beaten track.

Any questions feel free to e-mail me directly : gwreed@gci.net

Gordon
AK Diver

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