Things to Do in Tarawa in August

The Battle of Tarawa in November 1943 was one of the Pacific theater's bloodiest amphibious assaults. Betio islet, barely 1.2 km (0.75 miles) long, still carries the physical evidence. Japanese coastal defense guns remain. Their barrels are salt-pitted and hot under the equatorial sun. They sit exactly where Admiral Shibasaki's garrison positioned them. Concrete bunkers crumble into the coral on the ocean side. At low tide along Red Beach, rusted metal fragments still work out of the sand. August's lower rainfall and steady light make this the best month for extended time outdoors on Betio. Sudden downpours turn unpaved paths to mud during the wet season. The heat is real. Start early. Ideally by 7 AM, when the concrete is still cool enough to touch. The light rakes sideways across the fortifications then. It reveals details the midday glare flattens out. Allow a full morning. Bring more water than you think you need.

The crossing from South Tarawa to North Tarawa happens by outrigger canoe or small boat. It crosses the lagoon channel near Buariki. This drops you into atoll life that South Tarawa's density and causeways have long since overwritten. North Tarawa's islets are thinner. They are quieter. Coconut palms lean over water so clear you can count individual coral heads from 3 meters (10 feet) down. August's calm lagoon conditions make the crossing comfortable rather than white-knuckled. The trade wind keeps mosquitoes manageable on the far shore. Villages here still center on the maneaba. This open-sided thatched meeting house hosts community decisions. Stories get told there. Visitors are welcomed with genuine ceremonial formality. You will be offered toddy. This sap is tapped fresh from coconut palms each morning. It is sweet and slightly fizzy before fermentation turns it sour. Refusing it is not an option. Plan for a full day. The return crossing depends on tide and weather, not a fixed schedule.

Tarawa's lagoon reef supports a density of marine life that owes everything to the atoll's remoteness and the relative absence of industrial fishing pressure. August's reduced rainfall means less freshwater runoff clouding the shallows, and visibility along the reef edge near Ambo and the stretch south of Bonriki regularly reaches 15 to 20 meters (50 to 65 feet). The coral is not the manicured postcard variety of a managed marine park. It is raw, uneven, sharp in places, and alive with parrotfish grinding it audibly into sand, reef sharks patrolling the drop-off with the indifference of animals that have never been hunted, and the sudden electric blue of giant clams wedged into the substrate. The water temperature hovers around 28 to 29 degrees Celsius (82 to 84 degrees Fahrenheit) year-round, so a rash guard for sun protection is more useful than any wetsuit. Mornings before 10 AM offer the calmest surface conditions and the best light penetration. The reef is accessible by wading from shore in several spots, no boat required.

Tarawa's lagoon flats, the shallow sand-and-coral expanses on the lee side of North Tarawa and near the Buariki channel, hold bonefish populations that serious fly anglers cross oceans for. August's steady southeast trades complicate casting slightly but keep the flats cool enough to wade for hours without the heat exhaustion risk that the calmer, hotter months bring. The bonefish here are not pressured. They tail in ankle-deep water with the confidence of animals that rarely see a fly line, and the take, when it comes, is the same electric run it is everywhere, except here you are standing on a coral flat so remote that the only sound is wind, water, and the occasional screech of a frigatebird overhead. The flats are wadeable. But the coral is unforgiving on bare feet and will cut through cheap water shoes without effort. This is not a manicured lodge fishery with guides in branded shirts. It is raw, self-directed, and enormously rewarding if you arrive prepared.

The causeways linking South Tarawa's islets, from Betio in the west through Bairiki to Bikenibeu in the east, stretch roughly 30 km (19 miles) and offer what might be the most unusual urban walk in the Pacific. The atoll is so narrow in places, sometimes barely 50 meters (165 feet) across, that you can see the lagoon on one side and the open ocean on the other simultaneously, the turquoise stillness of the first a different planet from the white-capped swells of the second. August evenings are the time to do this. The trade wind drops after 5 PM, the heat softens, and the western sky over the lagoon turns the kind of copper-pink that no photograph quite captures because the light is reflecting off water in both directions at once. You will walk past families cooking over coconut-husk fires, the smoke sweet and slightly acrid, past children swimming in the lagoon shallows, past the low concrete seawalls that mark the atoll's ongoing negotiation with rising tides. Start from Bairiki heading west toward Betio for the best light angle, and allow two to three hours at a pace that lets you stop.