Oceania
The Pacific is known to be one of the most challenging regions of the world to travel in — not because of entry requirements, but because of the logistics. Flights may only go once per week, get cancelled often, might get bumped to the next flight (which may be the following week!) if overbooked, and is extremely expensive.
There are fourteen countries in the continent of Oceania, but in this blog we’ll be discussing the hard-to-reach Pacific Island nations; countries like Australia and New Zealand are probably the most accessible, so will not be discussed in-depth here.
How do you go about trying to figure out the best route for the Pacific?
The route you plan will vary depending on your needs and constantly changing flight schedules, but I’ll explain the process in which I mapped out the logistics to visit every country in the Pacific.
Since the Mt. Hagen Festival in Papua New Guinea was on specific dates, that was the starting point. From there, I analyzed the most remote countries and what airlines flew into each one; only Nauru Airlines and Fiji Airways flew into Kiribati, and Fiji Airways was the only airline that flew into Tuvalu, for example.
So I organized two loops:
The Nauru Airlines loop — Kiribati & Nauru
The Fiji Airways loop — Tonga, Samoa, Tuvalu, Fiji
This left the following countries: Solomon Islands & Vanuatu. There were direct flights to Solomon Islands from Papua New Guinea, which was my original plan before I had some unfortunate flight delays with Air Niugini and ended up missing the flight. Fortunately I was able to rearrange things to add Solomon Islands to the end of my trip with the Fiji Airways loop.
Vanuatu, on the other hand, is touristy enough where you can easily find a connection from most hubs. Therefore, it made the most sense to start and end the Nauru loops in Brisbane, Australia to connect the Solomon Islands, the Nauru loop, and Vanuatu.
Tips for planning a logistically challenging trip
The most important thing is to stay flexible. I left extra days at the end of the journey just in case something went wrong. This worked out great because of the hiccup with delayed flights in Papua New Guinea to the Solomon Islands. I rebooked a new flight for the end of the trip, but if everything had gone smoothly I would have just spent more time exploring Australia!
Rather than booking a bunch of one-way separate flights, I recommend doing the “multi-city” option with a single airline so if a flight gets delayed, the airline will automatically rebook you and your whole schedule doesn’t get messed up. Besides Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, all our flights were with Nauru Airlines or Fiji Airways.
