The archive is not meant to be read in order of publication. The pieces below are stacked by decision: pick the month, understand the island, then work out what the week costs and what goes in the bag. Nothing here needs reading twice, and everything here assumes a calendar is open on the other half of the screen.
- Dry season or wet season - the month decides prices, closures and how many afternoons you lose to rain, so it comes first.
- Espiritu Santo FAQ - flights into Luganville, cash machines, daily costs in vatu and the water question.
- Wrecks, beaches and trails - what the island holds and how far each sight sits from town.
- Island escape on a budget - the version of the trip that survives a thin account and still gets you in the water.
- What to pack for an island week - salt, rain, one bag, and the three things people wish they had brought.
- A week unplugged - what the place looks like when nothing is being posted about it.
Read them in that order and the expensive decisions get made before the cheap ones: month, then island, then budget, then bag. Skipping to the packing list is allowed, but it is the page that changes least when the season changes.
If you have three days
Read the season piece and the FAQ, then stop reading and book. Three days here is one day in town and on the water, one day for the SS Coolidge and Million Dollar Point, and one day driving east for the beach. The weather window decides those three days more than any list does, which is exactly what the first two pages are for.
If you are already going
Jump to the sights and the FAQ. Between them sit the distances, the entry prices and the cash advice needed in the week before departure, when the flight is booked and the bag is still empty. Packing can wait until the night before; the answer about cash machines outside town cannot.
If your dates are open
Start with the season comparison and treat everything else as optional reading. The last week of April and the first week of November carry dry-season services at wet-season prices, which is the closest thing this island has to a free upgrade, and they are the two windows worth moving a holiday for.
What the site will not tell you
There are no rankings here paid for by anyone, no hotel described from a press release and no promise that a fare will still exist on Friday. Where a page leans on a timetable it names the operator that owns it, and where a number has aged, the page says when it was last checked. Questions about anything that has changed belong on the contact page, where they get read before the compliments.