In 1990 I visited Solomon Islands for the first time, staying in Honiara on Guadalcanal, with a quick trip to Savo Island and a ferry ride to Auki on Malaita thrown in for good measure. The stay was brief, but the friendly people, with their rich cultural diversity, won me over.

I travelled around a bit more on the second visit in 1991, this time to Ghizo, Munda, and Seghe in Western Provinces, and back to Auki on Malaita. In 1994, the latter part of an extended RTW took me back to Solomon Islands for four months. Using Honiara as a base, I made several extended trips to Malaita and a short visit to Bellona Island, one of the Polynesian outliers. Still besotted with the islands, I made yet another, shorter trip there in 1995, doing the Honiara, Malaita, Bellona circuit again.

My plans to spend three months in the country in 2000 were squashed by the ongoing ethnic tension that erupted in 1998 and the subsequent coup in June 2000, and all I ended up with was a whistle-wind six-day stop in Honiara in early December 2000, at the tail end of a trip to New Zealand and Australia. But this visit had a purpose - a mission to bring a friend, who had never been out of the islands before, back home for Christmas.

In 2002, I spent another four months in the country, catching up with old friends and visiting a local rural training centre. Again, Honiara was my base, but due to the lack of transportation, I was only able to side-trip to Bellona Island, Munda in the Western Provinces, and, for the first time, E. Kwaio on Malaita. However, if things go my way this will not be the last, I have invitations to catch up on, to Temotu Province, and Isabel and Choiseul Islands ... I'm already planning another long stay – which will only fire me up for yet another trip, and another ...