Into the Red Zone

Readers’ cruising destinations, near and far

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The word on the street is that there are several island groups in the Solomons that are deemed unsafe to visit. They say, ‘Steer clear of the Floridas, you’ll get boarded by aggressive machete-wielding locals and lose your tonsils;’ ‘Don’t think of going to the Russells, your dingy and outboard will be nicked along with the panties drying on the safety rail;’ ‘Malita is definitely in the Red Zone…. pirates galore… the kind that’ll empty you of all your worldly possessions, abduct your wife and enslave your first-born!’

Just like a child prohibited from wandering into a deserted farmhouse or warned against touching a live wire on an electric fence, we followed temptation into that so-called god-forsaken red zone… the comments were all just too suggestive to oblige. As two curious children venturing into forbidden territory, we drew an X on the chart for the Floridas, pulled out the dividers and marked a route.

In 1999 the Solomons Islands had an ethnic war that nearly crashed the civil infrastructure