Kiribati travel guide

The next island up from Agatao Island is Tabiteuea. There is a broken concrete bridge between those two, else you can always just walk on the sandy lagoon at low tide. Tabiteuea is covered in palms, mangroves and scrubs, and the only infrastructure (beside the lagoon) is a narrow trail, just wide enough for a bicycle, through the dense vegetation. Like on Agatao, the friendly locals lives in traditional thatched huts with semi-open sides.

Tarawa Lagoon is a strange sight at low tide. Totally drained for water with the whitest sandy bottom exposed (and trash at some place). The sea will be visible as a bright azure blue stripe in the horizon. Kids will gather shellfish on the dry bottom, while fishermen will come walking in with their catch from the sea. At high tide, the lagoon is flooded in emarals water. It can look very tempting, but the South Tarawa side is too polluted for swimming - unless you're a local kid. Keep in mind the locals use the lagoon as a community toilet bowl, and much of the lagoon beach in the south is sadly covered in trash.

When you live on an atoll like Tarawa, anything that gets there, stays there. So sadly, Kiribati is notorious known for their trash problem. But believe it or not, it used to be way worse than today. Sure, the people still use the lagoon as a trash bin, but a lot of projects funded by international organisations are in progress to put Kiribati up to standard with fresh water, waste water, trash handling, energy, etc.. So a smelly landfill is actually an improvement.

When the Americans captured Tarawa from the Japanese in 1943, one of their Sherman tanks got bugged in the sand at Red Beach. To this day, it's still bugged there. However, it's slowly rusting away as it gets covered in sea water every time at high tide. Another tank should be in the lagoon behind the Japanese bunker.