Dive Review of Bilikiki Cruises in
Solomon Islands

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Bilikiki Cruises: "Diving, History and Culture", Aug, 2023, by Gary & Robin Schiendelman, PA, US ( Top Contributor 42 reports with 56 Helpful votes). Report 12526 has 3 Helpful votes.
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Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Accommodations		Food
Service and Attitude		Environmental Sensitivity
Dive Operation		Shore Diving	N/A
Snorkeling	N/A
Overall Rating
Value for $$
Beginners
Advanced
Comments	Our first trip to the Solomon’s on board the Bilikiki was in 2006 so it’s been a long time! We have wonderful memories of our first trip so we were not sure 2023 would live up to our expectations. Fortunately, not much has changed! The boat is exactly as we remembered with only a couple of differences. The rooms are fairly spacious with a decent bathroom, enough shelving and hooks to make it easy to store your stuff. All of the cabins are on the lower deck. Most of the cabins have a double bed on bottom with a single bunk on top. That made for great extra storage space for couples. Especially good for us as our bags didn’t fit under the bed. There are a couple of cabins with 2 single beds. The only negative is the air conditioning. There are no individual controls and the room was too cold for us. We wound up covering the ac vent with duct tape. There is a fan in each room that we did use to keep air flow going. The bed was comfortable, linens decent. The sheets were changed once and the towels were changed every 3 or 4 days. The main deck includes a salon where the buffet meals were laid out, a small bar and a camera table. A coffee station and fridge were available to guests at all times. There is a bartender but soft drinks and beer were on the honor system. Wine and liquor were also available with the assistance of the bartender. Payment for all drinks was at the end of the trip. In front of the salon was the outdoor dining area. This area is covered and there are vinyl curtains that were raised or lowered depending on weather. The dive deck was pretty standard. Everyone is assigned a station with a basket underneath for bits and pieces. Tanks are filled in place. Nitrox was strongly encouraged and fills were consistently 31 or 32%. A crew member would analyze while you watched and then recorded on a log sheet. Rinse tanks (2 for cameras, 1 for wetsuits) were large and the water was changed every day. A hanging area for wetsuits is in the middle. Two hot water showers. No bathroom. A decent size camera table. The top deck consisted of a charging room where everyone had to charge all of their electronics (this is new since our previous trip), a spacious sundeck where “nibbles” were served before dinner and crew areas. This is also where you can hang swimsuits to dry. There are few clips to secure your garments so it is helpful to bring your own. Safety briefing included warnings not to charge anything in your room, the location of muster stations and life vests (under the bed). There were no Covid protocols and we had no issues with anyone becoming ill. The food was all buffet style. Breakfast served at 6am, cookies after the first dive, lunch around 12, nibbles at 5:30 and dinner at 7pm. Food was plentiful and varied enough but nothing extraordinary. One of the guests was gluten free and there was always a plate on the buffet table with this option. Fresh fruit was available all day. Dinner always featured 2 entrees, veggies, tossed salad most days. Lunch always included a delicious soup. Most of the diving is from 2 “tinnies” that shuttle divers to and from the dive sites which were all only a couple of minutes away. On occasion, there was an “open pool’ where you could jump from the back of the boat. There is a board on the dive deck with name tags for each diver. Prior to the briefing, move your tag down to your preferred tinny. Depending on how many people were doing the dive, they would run 1, 2 or 3 tinnies to shuttle you to the site. Once you return from the dive, move your tag back up to the “on board” area. Dive briefings were thorough and they still hand draw the dive sites on a chalk board! There were some impressive drawings! The crew loads gear and camera on the tinnies so you only need to carry fins and mask. An easy step from the boat to the tinny with plenty of helping hands. Once at the site, crew help you into your gear and it’s an easy back roll into the water. There were a couple of people with back issues who needed to gear up in the water and they were accommodated with no problems. At the end of the dive, you can either hand up your gear or just remove your fins and climb back on to the tinny. Decent ladder and a helping hand made it pretty easy. They constantly shuttle the tinnies so there was rarely a need to sit and wait for other divers. No one ever needed to float an SMB as the tinny drivers are amazing at watching bubbles. Of course, they still require everyone to have an SMB as a safety precaution. We were fortunate to have “double” boat managers on this trip. There are 2 sets of managers that each work half the year and this was their turnover trip. In addition to managers, they also serve as the dive guides. So while there are usually only one or two dive guides in the water, we generally had 2 or 3. It was great for critter spotting! We enjoyed all of them and they (along with the crew) work really hard to ensure a safe and pleasant trip for all the guests. There is no requirement to stay with the dive guide. You are only asked to be safe and understand that you are a long way from medical help if things go wrong. The Bilikiki generally does 5 dives per day (including a night dive after dinner). In 2006, that meant we did 56 dives during a 2 week trip!! Well, that is one other thing that changed, we just don’t have that stamina anymore. This trip was organized & run by Tanya Burnett at Island Exposure. Tanya is a great trip leader and she knows her clients and knows what makes for a great trip. After the first day of trying to do 5 dives and feeling like we were constantly rushed, Tanya talked to the managers and we cut back to 4 dives a day. It was WAY better and we still managed to do 44 dives plus 4 village visits. The diving was very good. We would rank it just below Indonesia mainly due to biodiversity. Coral was overall in good shape. Some sites showed evidence of bleaching and we did see crown of thorns. The dive guides would remove and kill them if they were seen. There were plenty of fish of many species. We saw a fair amount of sharks, mostly black tip. More sharks than we remembered from 2006 so that is a good sign. There were eagle rays and stingrays seen but no mantas this trip. Dolphins only at the surface. Schools of barracuda and jacks as well as some tuna were frequent. There is a lot of diversity in the dive sites giving opportunity for macro as well as wide angle photos. There are a few dive sites that are really unique and make a visit to the Solomons worthwhile. Top of this list are the WWII sites. Most of the wrecks are too deep for recreational diving but we did visit a Japanese Seaplane that sits in about 95’. One wing is broken off but other than that, the plane is intact. The other site was White Beach. It is one of the beaches where the Allies dumped everything when they abandoned the base. Lots of cool stuff to see at this site. In addition, there are a couple of sites that are memorable for the topography. Twin tunnels features 2 lava tubes you can swim through and Leru Cut is a gorgeous site where you swim into the island and surface into a jungle pool. With sunlight streaming into the water from various openings it is awe inspiring. There are also some areas where you can hear the Kavachi volcano providing a soundtrack of rumbles and crackling while you are diving. Very cool! Since she began sailing the waters of the Solomon Islands, the Bilikiki has partnered with the locals in a variety of ways. All of the crew, with the exception of the managers, are locals. The boat must pay the local land owner or village chief at every dive site for permission to dive. An excellent way to encourage preservation of the reefs. Years ago, the Bilikiki provided local villages with seeds to plant and grow fruits and vegetables to sell to the boat. Often, these were not items they were familiar with but deemed to be suitable for growing and for the boat to use in meals. As a result, many days you will see dugout canoes filled with people bringing their wares to sell. It is a partnership that has proven beneficial to everyone. The locals make some extra money and have expanded their diet. The boat has a ready supply of fresh items and the guests love it! We visited 3 carving villages in Morovo Lagoon during our trip. The local wood carvers displayed their wares for the guests to purchase. Bargaining is a gentle affair and guests are offered advice before arriving at the villages. The craftsmanship is amazing! The final village visit gave us the opportunity to see how the locals live. We were greeted by the chief and each of us was given a lei by one of the children. Dancing and music was followed by a village tour. While the dancing was clearly put on for the benefit of the guests, this was in no way a “staged” re-enactment like you find in so many other places. In summary, if you have not had the opportunity to visit the Solomon’s we would highly recommend it. Can you get better diving elsewhere? Maybe. But it would be hard to find the combination of really good diving with the history and culture of this place. The Bilikiki may not be the most luxurious of boats but she is very comfortable and well run with an excellent crew. Spend an extra day in Honiara to take advantage of a WWII land tour on Guadalcanal.
Websites	Bilikiki Cruises
Reporter and Travel
Dive Experience	Over 1000 dives
Where else diving	Indonesia, PNG, Solomon Isl, Red Sea, Maldives, South Africa, Mozambique, Cocos Isl, Galapagos, Socorro, Palau, Var Caribbean locations, New Jersey, Florida, No Carolina, Philippines, Fiji
Closest Airport	Honiara	Getting There	Philadelphia to LA to Fiji to Honiara We over nighted in Fiji and Honiara
Dive Conditions
Weather	windy, rainy, cloudy	Seas
Water Temp	83-85°F / 28-29°C	Wetsuit Thickness
Water Visibility	40-100 Ft/ 12-30 M
Dive Policy
Dive own profile	yes
Enforced diving restrictions	No deco
Liveaboard?	yes	Nitrox Available?	yes
What I Saw
Sharks	Lots	Mantas	None
Dolphins	1 or 2	Whale Sharks	None
Turtles	1 or 2	Whales	None
Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):
Corals		Tropical Fish
Small Critters		Large Fish
Large Pelagics
Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):
Subject Matter		Boat Facilities
Overall rating for UWP's		Shore Facilities	N/A
UW Photo Comments	Cameras were carefully transferred to and from the tinnies. There are two large rinse tanks on the dive deck. Camera table in the salon to work on your camera. Charging room upstairs was a but inconvenient but not bad.

Report currently has 3 Helpful votes

Subscriber's Comments

By Mary McCombie in CT, US at Sep 15, 2023 17:11 EST

Just back from there, and your report is really thorough, not to mention nicely written. A real resource.

By report author: Gary & Robin Schiendelman in PA, US at Sep 16, 2023 08:54 EST

Thank you for your kind words!

By report author: Gary & Robin Schiendelman in PA, US at Sep 16, 2023 08:54 EST

Thank you for your kind words!

By Beth Gregory in NC, US at Nov 09, 2023 15:50 EST

Thank for the thorough trip report. It helps deciding on where to dive next!

By report author: Gary & Robin Schiendelman in PA, US at Nov 10, 2023 09:03 EST

So many places and so little time! Thanks for your nice comment.

By report author: Gary & Robin Schiendelman in PA, US at Nov 10, 2023 09:03 EST

So many places and so little time! Thanks for your nice comment.

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Dive Review of Bilikiki Cruises in Solomon Islands

Bilikiki Cruises: "Diving, History and Culture", Aug, 2023,

Photos Submitted with this Report

Ratings and Overall Comments 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Overall Rating

Reporter and Travel

Dive Conditions

Dive Policy

What I Saw

Ratings 1(worst) - 5 (best):

Underwater Photography 1 (worst) - 5 (best):

Subscriber's Comments

Dive Review of Bilikiki Cruises in
Solomon Islands