Things to Do in Banks Islands

Water Music Performance on Gaua

On the western side of Gaua, near Lake Letas, village women wade waist-deep into a freshwater pool and beat the surface with cupped hands and forearms. The sound is uncannily like drums echoing through a concert hall. Layered, percussive, alive. The performance lasts about twenty minutes. Stand close and you'll feel the bass vibrate up through the water. The setup is half the memory: women in pandanus skirts, kids watching from the bank, as striking as the music itself.

Climbing Mount Suretamatai

Gaua's active volcano rises out of the centre of the island like a smoking shoulder. The climb takes you through dripping cloud forest, past steaming fumaroles, and out onto a moonscape rim. That rim overlooks Lake Letas, the largest crater lake in Vanuatu. You'll smell sulphur sharpening the air around 800 metres up. Mist often wraps the summit ridge. It parts suddenly. The whole northern Banks chain reveals itself laid out below.

Snorkelling Ureparapara's Sunken Crater

Ureparapara is essentially a drowned volcano. You can swim straight off Divers Bay into what feels like the inside of a flooded amphitheatre. Visibility runs 25 metres or more on a calm day. The reef slopes are dense with sea fans, parrotfish grazing audibly on coral, and the occasional reef shark cruising the deeper edge. The water is bath-warm. It tastes faintly metallic, which gives away the volcanic geology under your fins.

Mota Lava Snake Dance

The Nasara on Mota Lava hosts one of the most striking custom dances in Vanuatu. Men in tall conical headdresses and pandanus skirts move in coiled, serpentine formations to the rhythm of slit-gong drums. The earth underfoot is packed. It's warm too. Firelight catches the white face paint. You can hear the drummers' palms slapping the hollow logs from a long way off in the bush.

Waterfall Hike on Vanua Lava

The Sasara twin waterfalls, locally called Waterfall of the Devils, drop in tandem about 120 metres into a fern-lined pool. The spray reaches you first. The water comes into view later. The walk in from the coast takes about two hours through cocoa plantations and bush gardens. You'll pass villagers carrying taro. The smell of woodsmoke drifts between the trees from cooking fires.

Sola township sits on Vanua Lava. It's the only place with anything resembling infrastructure, walking distance to the airstrip and market.

Namasari village on Gaua. Guesthouse-style accommodation near the volcano trailhead, run by host families.

Divers Bay on Ureparapara. Simple beach bungalows inside the flooded crater, exceptionally quiet.

Ar village on Mota Lava. Cultural-stay accommodation close to the snake dance Nasara.

Lembot on Gaua. Small bush homestays, useful for the western waterfalls and water music sites.

Vureas Bay on Vanua Lava. Remote coastal hamlet with one or two homestays, for travellers who want true isolation.