Bikepacking in the Solomon Islands

Well it has been a long time since we last updated everyone. So, what have we been up to? Well, since mid October 2021 both of us were working and living in the Solomon Islands, and, of course we took our bikes with us! The Solomon Islands is actually a chain of approximately 1500 islands located north east of Australia. Because of its close proximity to the equator temperatures range between 25 – mid 30 degrees centigrade with humidity usually around 90 percent! We lived in Honiara which is a small city with a population of around 90,000 people and growing!

Outside of work Honiara offered us plenty of single and vehicle tracks to explore. All the land around Honiara is owned by a local families, but there were no fences or boundaries and it is acceptable to cross someones land without causing offence, sometimes this meant passing through someone’s back yard or kitchen. In fact when we were unsure which direction to take, usually an occupant of a house would direct us to the right place. An example of this was when COVID was ripping through Honiara a wonderful lady showed us the way through a steep bit of single track (while we were on a bike ride). Social distancing meant nothing to her as she insisted a young boy from the family help us carry our bikes down the hill.

We soon learned that the heat and humidity played a big factor in how long we rode our bikes for. Even a two hour Mtb ride without carrying any weight was enough to have us retreating to the air-conditioning for the rest of the day, too spent to do any more physical activity. Because of this we were careful to keep any bike packing trips too relatively short. Then there was some of the terrain to negotiate, sometimes in the pouring rain.

So despite the heat, humidity and crocodiles we did a four day bike-packing adventure on the island of Malaita. Here are some of the pictures and ride description below.