| Company description
| Bilikiki Cruises Ltd. is the premier dive operator in the Solomon Islands. Operating two live-aboard ships, MV Bilikiki and MV Spirit of Solomons, divers are offered superb diving opportunities, from ships consistently rated among the best live-aboards in the world.
Both MV Bilikiki and MV Spirit of Solomons are 125 ft long, and have a 24 ft beam, making them very large and stable ships designed for South Pacific conditions. Both ships offer immense sundecks, plenty of covered areas and airconditioned accommodations.
Bilikiki offers 10 deluxe cabins with a full double bed and a single above, and all cabins have private showers and toilets.
Spirit of Solomons offers 7 cabins like Bilikiki`s, and 6 additional cabins which have 2 single bunks, and share 3 showers and 2 toilets. These smaller cabins are often booked on a single occupancy basis. Both MV Bilikiki and MV Spirit of Solomons operate from Honiara, on Guadalcanal Island, to dive sites in the Florida Islands, the Russell Islands, Mborokua (Mary) Island and Marovo Lagoon in the New Georgia Islands.
The North American staff of Bilikiki Cruises Ltd. are knowledgeable and experienced Solomon Island divers. They can answer your Solomon Islands questions, help you plan your dive trip, including transportation queries, and make and confirm your reservation.
Available accomodation:
*All accommodations are air-conditioned.
*Deluxe Cabins have a double bed plus a single bed above, and have private shower, toilet and hand basin.
*Single Cabins have two single bunks and an in-cabin hand basin, and are booked on a single occupancy basis only.The six cabins share two toilets and three showers.
*Rates include hotel or airport transfers in Honiara, onboard accommodation, meals and snacks, unlimited diving, weights and belt, tanks and air fills. Rates do not include USD $10.00 per person, per night Gov`t tax, bar drinks, Nitrox, film processing or personal purchases.
Bilikiki Cruises Ltd. requires that all Divers carry Divers Alert Network Evacuation Insurance (or equivalent), and strongly recommends that customers purchase comprehensive accident, medical, baggage and trip cancellation insurance. Bilikiki Cruises does not offer such insurance and any compensation for trip cancellation or reduction, for any reason, must be claimed against the customers insurance carrier.
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| Location description:
| The walls, reefs, pinnacles and coral gardens of Solomon Islands support an amazing variety and quantity of sea creatures. The varieties of fish are staggering. Within a few yards of each other, individually or in schools can be seen anemone fish, angel fish, butterfly fish, humphead parrot fish and other reef dwellers while just a short distance away schools of barracuda, big-eye trevally and other pelagics cruise in the blue waters.
Popular with underwater photographers and those with a keen eye for the small and unusual critters are ``muck dives``. The amount and variety of sealife is astounding. Manta shrimp, ghost pipefish, and pygmy seahorses are only a few examples of what you may find.
The Solomon Island waters are very nutrient rich, and they support the entire food chain from microscopic creatures to major predators. You`ll have a good opportunity to see a variety of sharks, mantas, dolphins, and turtles, and barracuda in uncountable numbers. In shallower waters you`ll see almost every tropical imaginable, and some that will stretch your imagination. Cuttlefish, octopus, schooling lionfish, and amazing numbers and varieties of anemonefish, not to mention amazing varieties of anemones. You`ll see more varieties of coral than almost anywhere, and all this in 82 - 85ºF waters. Underwater terrain varies from walls to reefs, to passages to ``bommies``. You`ll visit caverns with shafts of sunlight illuminating the interior. You`ll swim 200 feet into a split in an island, and when you surface you`ll be under a jungle canopy listening to the parrots and cockatoos. You`ll enter a tunnel on a pinnacle and exit minutes later in the deep blue ocean. In the shallows around almost every island you`ll find channels, cracks and fissures stocked with an unbelievable variety of shells, fish, plants and corals that you could explore for hours. Wreck dives are offered on every cruise, and the number we do depends on the interests of the people on board. We don`t have that many wrecks to choose from, as most of them are far too deep, even for well experienced divers. Those we do dive include The Ann in the Russell Islands (a more recent wreck, not W.W.II) and Japanese transports in Marovo Lagoon. Divers still find ample evidence of the war action that sunk these vessels, lots of ammunition and machinery in the holds, as well as dishes, bottles and other evidence of ship board activities.
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