Things to Do in Kiribati in January

Kiritimati's interior lagoon draws most international visitors to Kiribati. January's warm water keeps bonefish cruising the shallow flats in schools large enough to spot from 30 metres (100 feet) away. You wade knee-deep across sand so white it hurts your eyes without polarized lenses. The water feels like bathwater against your shins. The silence out on the flats breaks only when your fly line whispers or a golden plover flushes. The fish average 1.4 to 2.7 kg (3 to 6 pounds). Larger specimens roam nearby. The catch-and-release ethic runs deep here. January's rain squalls can push across the flats with ten minutes of warning. They soak everything, then vanish. You steam gently in the returning sun. The tradeoff is real. You will lose an hour or two of fishing time to weather on maybe half of your days. The drier months of September and October do not impose this. But reduced angler traffic in January means your guide likely has a rotation of flats that see almost no fishing pressure. The bonefish are correspondingly less spooky.

The Battle of Tarawa in November 1943 was one of the bloodiest seventy-six hours in Pacific War history. Betio islet, barely 1.2 km (0.75 miles) long, still carries the physical evidence. It is quietly devastating. Japanese coastal defence guns sit rusting in their original emplacements. Their barrels point seaward at an invasion beach you can walk in under five minutes. Concrete pillboxes with walls 1.5 metres (5 feet) thick are half-swallowed by pandanus roots. The remains of a Japanese command bunker sit near the airstrip. Its reinforced roof collapsed inward. January's overcast skies and occasional warm rain lend the walk a solemnity that brighter dry-season months do not quite produce. The humidity is thick enough that your shirt soaks through within twenty minutes. This keeps you moving slowly. That is exactly the pace this place deserves. The coral seawall where Marines died in the hundreds trying to cross the reef remains there, tide-washed and crusted with barnacles. You will have it to yourself.

Kiritimati hosts one of the largest tropical seabird populations in the Pacific. January falls within the nesting season for several species, including red-footed boobies, great frigatebirds, and white terns. The interior of the atoll, away from the few settlements clustered near London and the old port areas, is a low scrub landscape of Tournefortia and Scaevola bushes. The noise of thousands of nesting birds hits you before the smell does. The smell is sharp: ammonia and salt. Frigatebirds with their scarlet throat pouches inflated sit motionless in the scrub, unperturbed by your presence. Boobies crash-land on branches with a gracelessness that seems impossible for a bird that flies so elegantly. The wet season means the ponds and interior lagoon areas hold more water, which concentrates wading birds and shorebirds along the margins. Bring binoculars. Bring a hat with a brim wide enough to shade your neck. The UV at the equator, reflected off the white coral substrate, will burn unprotected skin in under fifteen minutes.

The lagoon systems of Tarawa and the southern Gilberts hold coral formations that have recovered notably since the bleaching events of the late 2010s. January's warmer water brings visibility that, on calm mornings between rain squalls, can stretch to 25 metres (80 feet) or more. The reef drops off the atoll edge into deep blue within a few fin strokes. The transition zone is where the action is. Blacktip reef sharks patrol the channels. Giant trevally flash silver in the current cuts. The hard corals in the shallows are dense enough to create an underwater architecture of overhangs and swim-throughs. The snorkeling is not resort-style. There are no marked buoy trails. There are no rental shops on the beach. You bring your own mask and fins. You enter from coral rubble shores that require reef shoes. You read the current direction before you get in. The reward is reef that has not been loved to death by tourism. This is becoming rare in the Pacific. January's occasional rain on the surface, seen from below as a stippled silver ceiling, is one of the more surreal underwater experiences available anywhere.

The te maneaba, the open-sided thatched meeting house at the centre of every I-Kiribati community, is where the real social life of the islands happens. January, after the new year gatherings, often sees communities hosting inter-village dance competitions that visitors can attend if properly introduced. The dances, te buki and te kaimatoa, are percussive and hypnotic. They are performed seated or standing, with rhythmic hand and body movements synchronised across dozens of dancers. The audience claps a complex polyrhythmic pattern that reverberates under the pandanus-leaf roof. The smell inside a maneaba during a gathering is coconut oil, pandanus fruit, and the salt breeze off the lagoon cutting through the thatched walls. You sit cross-legged on woven mats. If food is shared, which it often is, you will be offered te ika mata, raw fish cured in lime juice and folded into fresh coconut cream, served on a breadfruit leaf. The texture is silken. The coconut is rich. The lime is sharp enough to make your eyes water. This is not a performance staged for tourists. It is community life that you have been invited into. The etiquette matters: sit lower than the unimane (elders), accept what is offered, and do not photograph without asking.