Things to Do in Solomon Islands in November

The water between Honiara and Tulagi swallowed dozens of warships and aircraft during the 1942-43 Guadalcanal campaign. It remains one of the planet's most concentrated wreck-diving grounds. November's pre-deluge clarity is good for descending on the Bonegi I and Bonegi II Japanese transports. You swim through cargo holds while soldierfish hover and steel ticks with the current. Low season means no queues.

Marovo is the largest saltwater lagoon on earth, a maze of double-barrier reef and forested islands in the Western Province. November's warm, glassy mornings suit drifting over coral gardens ahead of afternoon squalls. The lagoon's carvers, famed for nguzunguzu figureheads and kerosene-wood bowls, stay home instead of traveling to dry-season events. You hear birdsong, paddle strokes, water slapping dugout canoes.

Gizo, the laid-back capital of the Western Province, launches trips to Kennedy Island, the speck where a young John F. Kennedy swam his PT-109 crew to safety in 1943. November's thin crowds leave the white-sand cay and its reef often empty. Snorkeling drop-offs metres from shore teem with parrotfish over coral that crackles audibly when you float still. Short, warm showers pass between swims.

Near Munda, Skull Island is a tiny coral shrine stacked with the skulls of chiefs and the trophies of the region's pre-colonial headhunting era. It is guarded by custom and reached only with a local guide's permission. November's quiet season lets you feel the place as solemn, not crowded. The boat ride threads mangrove channels where the air smells of brine and wet leaves and kingfishers flash electric blue overhead.

Behind Honiara, the ridges and rivers that decided the Pacific war, Bloody Ridge, the Matanikau River, the American and Japanese memorials above the city, lie within half-day land tours. November works best in cooler, brighter mornings before rain slicks the red-clay tracks. Rusted artillery sits among kunai grass. Cicadas drone. The view from the memorial down to the Sound frames the wreck diving.

Tetepare stands alone as the largest uninhabited island in the South Pacific, a community-run conservation reserve in the Western Province where leatherback turtles nest, dugongs graze the seagrass, and the reef has been protected from commercial fishing for decades. November sits in the low-visitor window, so ranger-led reef snorkels and forest walks feel like a private expedition. Just the rustle of megapodes in the leaf litter. The hush of an unlogged rainforest.