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 The coral reefs are at your door step and the sea is always calm.
Resident schools of barracuda and electric blue fusileers are a fixture on the points and walls, and the thousand-foot deep channel between Peava and MaleMale Island has a resident school of spinner dolphins.
The reef and rainforest scenery represents a photographers dream. Hornbills,eclectus parrots and megapodes coexist with frigate birds, terns, herons, and sea eagles.
The surrounding reefs and islands have provided unique opportunities to the world's best underwater photographers and appeared in leading journals and books.
Local footpaths and old logging roads provide incredible scope for the hardcore mountainbiker - all never ridden before.
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The area is completely UNTOUCHED and UNEXPLORED by sportfishermen
Here are some suggestions......
trolling for Skipjack, Yellowfin and Bigeye Tuna, Narrow-barred Spanish Mackerel, Wahoo, several Trevally species, Barracuda, Rainbow Runner, Mahi Mahi, Red Bass, Green Jobfish, shark, Sailfish, Dogtooth tuna, Coral Trout, Blue, Black and Striped Marlin and many other species around the islands just offshore......
bluewater trolling the FADs [the closest of which is just 5 n.m. from the Lodge], Matikai ocean reef, seamounts, and Kavachi submarine volcano for Blue, Black, and Striped Marlin and big yellowfin tuna. The Solomons has the most intact tuna stocks on Earth and gamefish numbers are commensurate with this food supply......
polaroiding on the sand and coral flats in Marovo Lagoon for bonefish, tarpon, milkfish, barracuda, queenfish, GTs, blue, golden, Papuan and diamond trevally (jacks)......
hunting Spot-tail Bass and Mangrove Jack on the upper reaches of the Varea and Gevala Rivers......
bottom fishing for all kinds of reef fish......
casting lures for Blue, Lowly, and Bigeye trevally, queenfish, and coral trout off the lodge jetty. We even catch Spanish Mackerel up to 30lb live baiting from the jetty......
And who knows what else is out there.
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THE BOATS
The lodge currently has two boats available for charter.
23 foot Haines Hunter centre console sportfisher with 225HP Honda four-stroke outboard fully setup for offshore trolling - suitable for up to 80lb standup gear. All safety gear, auxillary outboard and liferaft
19 foot Yamaha open skiff with 40hp Honda four-stroke outboard, with rodholders, rodbuckets, gaff, GPS, EPIRB,and flares, suitable for lagoon and river casting, and trolling and diving around the offshore islands - suitable for up to 50lb standup gear.
We will be basing a modern 30 foot gamefishing boat at the lodge in the near future to further assess the incredible bluewater potential, looking for large blue and black marlin, giant tuna, and compiling data to establish a catch & release sportfishery in the offshore waters of the Western Province.
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| Jobfish |
Marlin |
Malagori |
Spanish Mackrell |
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Solomon Dive Adventures
Solomon Islands Scuba Diving rises to a new level.
Solomon Dive Adventures officially begins operations on June 1, 2007
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After 30 years of owning and operating Dive Makai Charters in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii,
Lisa Choquette is off on a new adventure in the Solomon Islands. She has been taking groups of divers to the Solomons since 1990 where she has fallen in love with the country, the diving, and especially the people. " I have had dive guides in the Solomons from Canada, Switzerland, Lebanon, Germany, the US and Australia.
It bothered me that there were no Solomon Islanders guides. The reefs belong to the Solomon Islanders. They should be the ones sharing their underwater world with visitors. As I begin this adventure, I have already introduced 22 villagers from Peava to SCUBA. Taking them down and introducing them to their underwater world is one of the more moving experiences I have had in my life".
With all the knowledge she has gained about marine animals and their behaviors in her 30 years of diving in Hawaii, the Solomons and the Galapagos, Lisa plans to train residents of the village of Peava, in Marovo Lagoon --- At Wildernes Lodge -- as excellent divemasters in the world-renowned Dive Makai style. Lisa will guide them in the ownership and operation of their own SCUBA charter business -- sharing the wonders of the southern end of Marovo Lagoon with small groups of visitors.
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Bird Watching
The Solomon Island hosts one of the highest rates of avian endemism on Earth, with individual species and races unique to individual small islands. At Wilderness you have rainforest, coastal and oceanic habitats overlapping, providing a vast array of species in a very concentrated area. Every inch of land is covered with forest.
From walking the adjoining lowland rainforests and coastal zones to following tuna schools just offshore from the Lodge, from walking the untouched Kavolavata River Valley to hiking the cloud forests of Mt Mariu, from visiting the seabird roosting sites on Malemale and Bulo Islands to boating up the mangrove and rainforest reaches of the Varea and Kumabusi Rivers, from early morning and evening stakeouts of the subsistence gardens to visiting the Karubelama Islands where thousands of frigate birds roost every night - there are so many birdwatching options at Wilderness, many within walking distance, and dozens of species visible from the Lodge.
Given the lack of scientific [or amateur] scrutiny and the high degree of endemism, it is likely undocumented races and perhaps species exist on Gatokae and elsewhere in Marovo, with several variations in the Solomons archipelago already proving contentious in definitions of species vs. race and serving to illustrate the difficulties in applying arbitrary scientific categorisation in areas of such subtle and extremely localised diversity. The Myzomela and White-eyes are textbook examples of this cutting-edge of scientific categorisation.
Wilderness has had very few [two at the time of writing] bird enthusiasts visit to date, and our local guides are still learning the English names of our birds. Our guides do, however, possess excellent bushcraft skills, and are very enthusiastic, with good English skills and we already have several prime birdwatching spots. They can take you as far and as long as you want to go, and we have a number of foot trails leading through all of the many different habitats on Gatokae, and where you can't reach by foot, they can take you by boat in most any weather.
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