"Going to Butaritari" a Gilbert Islands Travel Page by Rusket

Butaritari is 1 hour by air from Tarawa. You can get there by boat, by I would not recommend it. I heard horrifying stories about puking for 17 hours going by those relatively small freight boats in rough weather. Tickets can be obtained at a travelling agency in Bairiki.

While waiting at Bonriki Airport, you can buy food and fresh coconut milk in this "restaurant" :-)

Air Kiribati's plane has 17 passenger seats. On our trip to Butaritari, there were 18 of us. That was not a problem, since the youngest child could sit in it's mother's lap. The problem was that three seats were occupied by luggage! But they managed to get us all on board :-) The door could not be properly closed, and we had at least one stalling alarm. But the pilots are experienced (one of them is female, but she did not fly this time) and we did not fly very high. Thus we got there safe and sound :-)

We could see a lot of atolls from the air.

Flying in over the Butaritari lagoon, we could see these shipwrecks. There are lots of them, as well as planewrecks. Many of them are remnants from world war II, when there were several large battles between the americans and the japanese. But some of the wrecks are cargoships too.

Lagune on one side, the ocean on the other. Where is the runway?

and parked. A lot of people spend some hours at the airport waiting to see the plane come and go.

Inside the terminal building.

The building is an abandoned Pepis Cola factory, that was once donated from New Zealand. How on earth did they come up with that idea? Why produce an unhealthy softdrink on an island where water is scarce and sugar must be imported, but where they have as much fresh cocnut milk as they want?!!

But the building has come to use as an airport terminal, gym and a cool place to hide from the sun :-)

Take a look at the vegetation, isn't it beautiful?! Butaritari has better soil and watersupply than many of the other islands, which is easily seen on the vegetation.