Things to Do in Funafuti in May

The Funafuti Conservation Area covers roughly 33 square kilometres (12.7 square miles) of reef, lagoon, and six uninhabited islets on the western rim of the atoll. May's calmer seas and improving visibility make this the month the area starts opening up after the rougher wet season. The coral gardens in the shallows off Tepuka and Fualopa are dense with staghorn and brain coral, and the fish life is absurdly concentrated for the Pacific: parrotfish, surgeonfish, blacktip reef sharks cruising the passes, and the occasional green turtle surfacing in the channels between islets. The water is warm enough, around 29°C (84°F), that you can snorkel for hours without a rash guard for warmth, though you will want one for sun protection. The sand on the uninhabited islets is the blinding white of crushed coral, and the silence when you sit on Tepuka's windward shore with nothing but reef noise and frigatebirds overhead is the kind of quiet that takes a full day to settle into. Arrange a boat and guide through your guesthouse or the Funafuti kaupule (island council) office, and expect to spend a full day out. Bring all your own water and food because there is nothing on the islets.

Fongafale islet, where nearly all of Funafuti's population lives, stretches about 12 km (7.5 miles) from tip to tip but is rarely wider than 400 metres (1,300 feet). Walking the full length is the single best way to understand how an atoll community works. Start early, before 7 AM, when the air still carries the cool edge of the night and the ocean side of the island smells like salt spray and frangipani rather than midday diesel. You will pass the government buildings near the airstrip, the coral-block churches, the World War II ammunition bunkers half-swallowed by pandanus roots near the old American base, and the fish-drying racks where women lay out skipjack tuna on coconut-frond mats. The lagoon side is calm and turquoise. The ocean side pounds the seawall with enough force to send spray across the road during higher swells. By mid-morning you will have seen most of the built environment. But the real texture is in the people you meet along the way, the kids chasing each other across the airstrip between flights, and the way the entire island narrows to a footpath-thin spit at certain points where the Pacific and the lagoon are separated by nothing more than a strip of gravel and a few coconut palms.

Funafuti's lagoon dwarfs the land that holds it. Roughly 18 km (11 miles) long and up to 14 km (8.7 miles) wide, the water shifts from pale jade in the shallows to deep indigo where the bottom falls away. May's lighter winds make paddling to the outer islets feasible. You will not fight a stiff headwind the entire return trip. That exhaustion belongs to the windier months. Some guesthouse operators arrange outrigger canoe sessions with local fishermen who still use the paopao design. This single-outrigger hull is carved from breadfruit wood. It sits low in the water and moves with a directness fibreglass kayaks cannot match. Crossing open lagoon water in a paopao, with nothing between you and the surface but a hand-span of hull, the slap of small waves against the outrigger float, and the smell of sun-warmed wood and dried fish, justifies the difficulty of getting here.

Fishing is not recreation on Funafuti. It is the economic and nutritional backbone of the atoll. Joining a trip means participating in something real, not watching a performance. The reef passes concentrate pelagic fish: yellowfin tuna, skipjack, and wahoo. The handline technique is simpler and more physical than rod-and-reel sport fishing. A heavy monofilament line, a feathered jig, and your bare hands do the work when something hits. May's calmer ocean conditions let the small aluminium dinghies reach outer reef passes that are too rough in the wet season. The pull of a skipjack on a handline, the copper taste of salt spray, the diesel-and-brine smell of a working boat, and the lagoon turning gold behind you as the sun drops: this is Funafuti at its most unmediated. The catch goes home with the fisherman's family. You will almost certainly be invited to share the meal.

The United States built an airstrip and garrison on Funafuti in 1942 as a staging base for the assault on the Gilbert Islands. The physical evidence still scatters across Fongafale. It feels less like a museum and more like archaeology you stumbled into. Concrete ammunition bunkers sit half-buried under pandanus trees near the south end of the airstrip. Their walls still bear the marks of Japanese bombing raids that hit the island in April 1943 and killed dozens of Tuvaluan civilians sheltering inside. Rusted fuel drums and equipment fragments surface after heavy rains. The airstrip itself, the one your plane lands on, is the same runway the Americans graded from coral rubble eighty years ago. The old command post foundations near the lagoon shore are overgrown but findable with local guidance. The story they tell about a tiny atoll caught in the middle of a Pacific war it had no part in starting is sobering. Polished war museums rarely manage this. The heat and humidity in May mean you will want to explore in the early morning. The concrete is still cool enough to touch then. The light rakes across the bunker walls at an angle that reveals the shrapnel pitting.