Things to Do in Tarawa in May

Betio islet is where roughly 6,000 people died in 76 hours during November 1943. The evidence is everywhere you look. Japanese coastal defence guns, their barrels still pointed seaward, sit rusting among coconut palms. Concrete pillboxes with walls over a metre (3.3 feet) thick line beaches where US Marines landed at Red Beach One and Red Beach Two. At low tide you can still make out remains of amphibious tractors on the reef flat where they were knocked out by Japanese fire. May's drier mornings give you the best conditions for spending three or four hours walking the full perimeter of Betio without getting caught in a downpour. The heat remains fierce. Start before 7 AM when concrete fortifications are cool enough to touch and light rakes sideways across gun emplacements in a way that reveals their true scale. The smell of the place at dawn is salt air and rusted iron, with copra drying somewhere nearby. Many of the most significant sites have no signage. They sit in people's backyards or behind copra sheds. A local guide who knows the battlefield's story is the difference between seeing concrete blocks and understanding what happened here.

The lagoon side of South Tarawa drops from white coral sand into reef flats alive with parrotfish, surgeonfish, and occasional blacktip reef sharks cruising the shallows. The stretch between Bikenibeu and Bonriki is where the reef is healthiest. May's improving water clarity means you can float in waist-deep water over coral heads and see detail that wet season turbidity hides. Water temperature sits at a constant 29°C (84°F). You will not need a wetsuit. Mid-morning, after tide has pushed clean oceanic water into the lagoon for a few hours, tends to give the best visibility. You will hear the crunch of parrotfish feeding on coral before you see them. The reef makes a constant low popping and crackling sound that most people never expect. The smell of the lagoon at low tide is sharp and mineral, a mix of sun-baked coral and seaweed that hits you before you even get your feet wet. This is snorkeling stripped to its essentials. No boat. No guide rope. No other tourists. Just you and an atoll reef that has been growing for thousands of years.

Cross the lagoon by open boat from Buota to reach North Tarawa. Within twenty minutes you have left the concrete causeways and crowded islets of South Tarawa for a chain of villages where daily life still revolves around the maneaba. This open-sided meeting house is where community decisions are made, disputes settled, and dances performed. The air smells different on North Tarawa. Copra dries in the sun. Wood smoke rises from cooking fires. The sweet fermented tang of toddy being collected from coconut palms at dawn hangs everywhere. May is a comfortable month for the crossing. The lagoon is typically calmer than in the wet season, with swells under half a metre (1.6 feet) on most days. You will eat fish caught that morning, cooked over an open fire and served with rice and sliced pandanus. Sit cross-legged on pandanus mats in the maneaba while your hosts explain how the building's architecture encodes the social hierarchy of the village. The thatched roof above you smells of dried pandanus leaf and smoke. The breeze through the open sides carries the sound of waves on the outer reef. This is not a cultural performance. It is a Tuesday.

Tarawa's lagoon flats are quietly among the better bonefish grounds in the Pacific. In May the receding rains leave the sand flats cleaner and the fish easier to spot. Bonefish here run large, commonly in the 3 to 5 kilogram (7 to 11 pound) range, tailing on the flats in ankle-deep water that is warm enough to wade barefoot if your soles can handle it. The experience is nothing like a guided bonefishing lodge on Christmas Island or the Bahamas. You wade the flats with a local fisherman who points and you cast. The silence is broken only by the slap of your fly line on the water and the occasional shriek of a frigate bird wheeling overhead. Early morning gives you the best sight-fishing conditions. The light is low. The trade wind has not yet picked up. The flats off the southern end of Bairiki and around the edges of Bonriki produce consistently. May's strengthening trade winds push baitfish into the shallows, drawing the bones in behind them. The sensation of a bonefish taking a fly in six inches of water and running fifty metres (164 feet) of backing off your reel while you stand barefoot on warm sand is, to be fair, one of the more electric things a fishing rod can deliver.

The wa, the traditional outrigger sailing canoe, is still a working vessel on Tarawa rather than a museum piece. Fishermen paddle and sail them daily across the lagoon. Arranging a ride is as simple as asking at the waterfront near Bairiki or Betio. In May, the lagoon is calm enough most mornings for a crossing that would be uncomfortable in the wet season's chop. Sit low in the hull. The water is close enough to trail your fingers through. You feel every ripple and current shift in a way that a motorboat obliterates. The pandanus sail, if your skipper rigs one, catches the trade wind with a sound like a bedsheet snapping on a clothesline. The canoe heels gently and picks up speed in a way that feels impossibly smooth for something carved from a breadfruit trunk. The light on the lagoon in the early morning is flat silver. By mid-morning it turns to a green so saturated it looks artificial. Salt water, sun-warmed wood, and the faint sweetness of the pandanus rigging: the smell stays with you long after Tarawa itself has become a memory.