Island hopping through Oceania has been a dream, years in the making

Island Hopping Through Oceania

Oceania comprises 14 countries and many smaller dependent territories strewn across the vast Pacific Ocean. Most of the islands of this watery continent are barely visible on a world map, if at all. It’s only when you zoom in that the constellations of tiny islands begin to appear.

We hope to do some island hopping by boat, but mostly we'll be flying between destinations

Oceania has some of the least-visited countries on earth

Of course, you can’t miss Australia’s continental mass or plucky New Zealand to its southeast, where we’ve lived for the past six and a half years. There are also the tourist hot spots of French Polynesia and Fiji.

And then there’s the rest. Remote, little-visited, and poorly connected, many Pacific Island nations receive few visitors. They include some of the least visited countries in the world. One of them, Nauru, recently celebrated receiving 50 tourists per month (it’s target to increase tourist numbers) for two months in a row!

Island hopping through Oceania is not straightforward

It’s taken years of research and planning to devise a route linking all the island nations of the Pacific (bar Samoa, which we’ve visited previously). We quickly scrapped our initial idea of sailing through the Pacific when we realised we knew next to nothing about sailing and didn’t have a boat.

So that left us with flights—a lot of flights—with unreliable airlines most people have never heard of. On routes many fly only weekly, across vast swathes of the Pacific Ocean.

In the end, we came up with the vaguely sensible route below, starting in the South Pacific and working our way north, before making an arc across Micronesia and finishing up in Papua New Guinea for a highland sing-sing or tribal festival.

Our route island hopping through Oceania

Island hopping through Oceania:
The Route

Our route will take us through 11 countries and three dependent territories. Some stops will be short (16 hours in New Caledonia for a layover), and some will be much longer (two weeks in Kiribati to allow us time to reach the outlying atolls). But mostly, we’ll be staying in each country for roughly a week, to give us time to get a reasonable taste of each country without blowing our budget in the first three stops.

We’ll depart from New Zealand on June 7th and start our journey in French Polynesia. From there, we’ll continue to New Caledonia, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and Fiji. Fiji will act as our base for a couple of round trips to Tuvalu and Tonga before we continue north to Nauru, Kiribati, and the Marshall Islands.

From the Marshall Islands, we will fly to the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), stopping in three of the four states (Kosrae, Pohnpei, and Chuuk) before spending a few days in Guam. From there, we’ll hit the final state in FSM, Yap.

What is possibly the world’s most minor international flight (a nine-seater prop plane, booked via email with the chief pilot) will ferry us from Yap to Palau. From there, we’ll head south again to Papua New Guinea before leaving Oceania for the Philippines on September 18th.

Planning our island hopping route has taken many hours over multiple years

Island hopping through Oceania isn’t cheap

It’s a mammoth trip, and with many airlines having a monopoly on their routes, the flights can be pricey. The islands’ small populations and relative lack of resources and tourist numbers also mean that food and accommodation can be expensive, especially compared to more popular tourist destinations like Southeast Asia.

We’ve used points to book flights where we can and hope to camp or use locally-run budget accommodation as much as possible. It won’t be a luxury trip, but it will be one hell of an adventure.

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OUR trip

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Before We Began

Cancelled flights, altered schedules, civil unrest, and liquidation

Island hopping through Oceania is a logistical challenge at best. Coming up with a feasible route took multiple attempts. But once we had the route nailed down, the next question was how much to book in advance.

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French Polynesia

When it Rains in Bora Bora, it Pours

It was the perfect start to four months of island hopping through Oceania. Tropical heat, the jagged peaks of Mo’orea lit up orange in the early morning, an exotic island city slowly waking up around us as we waited for the Apetahi Express to Bora Bora.

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French Polynesia

Papeete and Mo’orea

As we finally stepped off the seven-hour ferry from Bora Bora back to Papeete, the capital of French Polynesia, I silently congratulated myself on my victory in keeping my lunch down.

Vanuatu

Volcanoes, land-diving and snorkelling in Vanuatu

Our plans for Vanuatu had been royally torpedoed by the liquidation of Air Vanuatu and the cancellation of our Air Calin flights to Port Vila, Vanuatu’s sleepy capital.

Solomon Islands

Savo Island

It was dark by the time we cleared customs, collected our bags, and climbed into a taxi bound for the city. After sleepy Port Vila, Honiara (capital of the Solomon Islands) seemed hectic, almost like an actual city.

Solomon Islands

Roderick Bay

We had wanted to set off promptly at 7 am for the roughly 40 km crossing from Savo Island to Roderick Bay, the final resting place of the wrecked 87-metre-long World Discoverer cruise ship. Yet, after our tumultuous journey to Savo Island, we should’ve known it wouldn’t be so simple.

Tuvalu

We landed in Funafuti, the pocket-sized capital of Tuvalu, with no plans and nowhere to stay. However, there was a method to this madness: We needed extreme flexibility to have any hope of reaching Tuvalu's outer islands. So, after passing through the diminutive airport with the other passengers, we crossed the road to the government building to see about a boat.