In the New Georgia Islands of the Solomons, west of where the liveaboards usually reach, is a gorgeous area called 

. Protected from the New Georgia Sound ("the slot") by not one but two rows of small barrier islands, the lagoon is a haven for sea life seeking a calmer environment. Two deep channels between these islands ensure that the tides and big creatures can come in, a combination that is ideal for scuba diving. Most of these barrier islands have no freshwater so are uninhabited, but a few hold structures from copra plantation days.

Similar lagoon / island structures nearby. We didn't overfly Uepi directly.

In 1982 a young, restless Australian couple decided to travel the world to find someplace different to raise their son (then 3 months old). They stumbled upon Uepi Island where an old planation building held a one-bedroom lodge. When they showed up the previous lodgers hadn’t left yet (their boat out hadn’t bothered to show up) so the family slept outside on the porch. Waking up to a beautiful sunrise, they decided that was their place.

The lodge owners were happy to sell, and the couple slowly turned the area into a homestead and small resort with basic cabins plumbed with rain water. They discovered favored sites to dive, built relationships with the three local villages, and slowly built up a clientele of Australian divers. Their son enrolled in correspondence school from Australia conducted via radio (designed for farmer’s kids in the outback), and learned the local pidgin on afternoons and weekends spent with local kids. He now runs the resort with his parents (soon to retire) and his 3 adorable kids are learning in the same way (via Zoom instead of radio).

Today the islands has 6 guest cabins, a dive shop, a common area for meals, laundry facilities, an engine-repair workshop, a carpentry workshop, and living quarters for the owners and staff. The cabins are modern and beautiful, but sparse. They have electricity but all the water is still filtered rainwater (the customer can have any temperature they want as long as it’s “storage-tank cool”).

When you step out of your cabin, feel like a part of the island habitat. Uepi has preserved or replanted the rainforest so your 7-10 minute walk to dinner or diving is through a narrow trail covered surrounded by greenery (epiphyte heaven), orchids and hibiscus, native birds, lizards, etc etc. We saw at least 7 bird species without trying - Pacific pigeon, Pacific reef heron, frigate, brahmin kite, Solomons cockatoo, the Australasian swamp hen with beautiful blue-purple breast feathers, and the megapode. The megapode is famous for its laziness - it loves to use geothermal heat from volcanos to warm its eggs rather than incubate them with body heat. This works well on Savo island, but on Uepi there’s no such free heat.

The path through the woods looks wide and bright in places during the day, but is quite narrow in others and dark at night! Most afternoons it rained hard for a short while, so our walks to dinner were full of unavoidable puddles. Very much worth it for the excellent food and diverse conversation.

Uepi was great fun to visit because it’s a family establishment so far off the beaten path (see “getting there”) that there aren’t any other dive operators within miles and miles of islands. There are only 6 cabins, and everyone eats breakfast and dinner together with the host family. If a guest wants to fish and catches something, everyone partakes. Much of the produce is grown on site. The resort builds almost all its own furniture and structures, fixes its own boat engines, and runs on filtered rainwater (customer can have any temperature water they want as long as it’s holding tank temperature). All the staff are from the local villages, though they stay on the island for fortnight-long shifts. Everyone was trained on site - there are no external dive schools or mechanics workshops. Many of the staff have been there for decades, several met their spouses at Uepi - everyone knows of Uepi. Even our cab driver in Honiara had family at Uepi - as soon as he heard we were flying west he said “oh you must be going to Uepi! That’s next to my home village. My big brother and sister work there. You will love it.”

The owners treat you like extended family, teasing you, sharing frustrations and tales of past guests with you. They’ll also answer any question about local politics and customs. 

We learned that the three closest villages each have different governing systems due to their different histories and economies - but in each one the most important asset is land. Land owned by women only and passed matrilineally. In villages that vote for a chief, both men and women can vote, but only men can be chiefs. Once a chief is elected they serve for life, but when they die another prominent family might vie to take over the chiefhood even if none of their men is particularly keen on the job. Chiefs responsibilities differ by village - in some they decide exactly what buildings are constructed, where and by whom. In others they resolve serious disputes but stay out of everyday affairs, leaving those to a council of elders.

As we had heard in the Russell Islands, a common problem in the Solomons is school funding. The national government pays teacher salaries but assigns teachers to schools often far away from their home islands, leaving their housing to each community. Villages struggle to provide adequate housing for these outsiders and a cycle of high teacher turnover ensues. Often there just aren’t enough teachers to go around, and a whole class will go without a teacher for a year or more.

According to the Uepi owners, foreign aid has mostly been a huge waste in their area, with the exception of a sturdy school building funded by the World Bank but built by the locals. In their view, expensive consultants fly in from Australia, don’t spend time to understand the local laws and norms, ignore suggestions to incorporate those factors, and publish report after report after report about how to manage logging or fisheries or agriculture that are completely unimplementable. Others bring in funding, eager aid workers and technology and set up example businesses like environmentally friendly coffee plantations, but don’t engage with the communities about how to sustain them after the aid dries up and the workers go home - e.g. how to save and budget for ruined harvests, or their technology is not suitable to the situation (fancy motorboats from brands that don’t supply replacement parts to the country and can’t be repaired with local knowledge).

This is an area we’d love to learn more about - we know that foreign aid can do a lot of good in the world when implemented correctly, but we aren’t sure how to evaluate this negative view without more knowledge of the local context. Unfortunately language and etiquette barriers kept us from hearing the perspectives of the indigenous Solomon Islanders we met this trip.

Compared to the rigid schedule of a live-a-board or a traditional dive resort, Uepi is incredibly flexible. With two boats for only 4 divers and 7 total guests, we basically had a dive boat and guide to ourselves. Most days the visibility was poor (<40 feet) so we focused on small creatures on the reef - corals, nudibranchs, gobies, clownfish, eels, shrimp, crabs. Vera stumbled upon an uncommon fish that she fell in love with - a shy polka dotted critter that flits in and out of rock holes, the 

. Unfortunately they are almost impossible to photograph.

The topography of some of the sites was absolutely gorgeous. Despite not having a wide-angle lens, Andrew got some excellent photos of the morning light streaming in through narrow channels underwater.

The "twin spot goby", "crab eye goby" or "signal goby". When most of it's body is obscured by sand and silt, the two eye-spots on top resemble a crab scuttling along sideways.

Anemonefish (including the clownfish) are excellent photography subjects. They aren't too shy - they like to defend their territory from other anemone fish and creatures as big as humans! More anemone fish photos in the 

The gorgeous "Persian carpet flatworm" was sedately crawling across the underside of a dark underwater cavern, then went for a vertical swim downwards (swim? dance? graceful tumble?).

On our last day of diving, the visibility magically opened up and we had an amazing current dive with a dozen reef sharks. On our final dive we suddenly heard clicking - dolphins were nearby! Minutes later we were awestruck as one emerged into view, quickly swimming past us. Half an our later we were treated to a group of 8 weaving and gliding. Seeing dolphins underwater is a real bucket list item, we couldn't have asked for a better goodbye.

While the diving was gorgeous, the most memorable experience was snorkeling first thing in the mornings. A five minute boat drive brings you to a seemingly unremarkable spot in the lagoon. Most of the bottom there is sand just 15-20 feet deep. But if you look in the right spot you’ll find a small collection of coral heads brimming with tiny fish waiting for their breakfast - parasites they clean off of Manta  rays! First one 15-foot manta glides in, then another, then another, until five are swimming together in tight circles, their wing tips breaching the surface when they turn vertical. Captivated, we watched the show for almost an hour two days in a row.

We mostly keep the manta rays in our memory, but a fellow guest did get a few videos and photos on their iPhone!

More photos and videos (under and above water): 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/yLho858jU14LoryU9

 Solomon Airlines, or as we've dubbed it "Buddy's casual ride service with a few planes".

Uepi Island - Solomons