Reflections on the road in Majuro

There are sensible ways of travelling, and then there’s arriving in the Marshall Islands without a hotel reservation.
I chose the latter.

It wasn’t entirely my fault. Finding a place to stay was a challenge. As far as I could work out, there were two hotels on Majuro, the main island. Getting replies from them, though? I sent the emails. The universe sent back silence.

So I decided to take my chances and just turn up. This seemed reasonable enough. After all, that’s how the world worked before the Internet. My world, anyway.

And I had a fallback plan: sleeping on the beach. It wouldn’t be the first time, and there’s something delightfully adventurous about it. A chilly night on Pirotan Island in India comes to mind, waking up to a murder of crows – a collective noun that felt quite literal right then. They were lined up at the foot of our sleeping bags, staring us down. Uncomfortable? Yes. Memorable? Also yes.

The trouble here, though, wasn’t crows, but dogs. On most Pacific islands, strays roam freely, and some look as though they have spent their entire lives rehearsing for a low-budget horror film. Most of the time, the locals say not to worry, just leave them alone.

Here on Majuro, not so much. I asked about it when arriving at the airport, and the advice was simple: find a stick, and don’t be afraid to use it!

Hmm, yeah… not all that keen on waking up at three in the morning with a snarling dog staring me in the face.

Surely I’ll find a bed, I thought. Surely…

Is there room at the inn?

Arriving in Majuro, I found a taxi and asked the driver to take me to Marshall Islands Resort. Simple enough, you’d think.

Marshall Islands Resort

But when I got there, there was no room at the inn.

I briefly wondered if I had made a slight strategic error, then quickly asked the reception staff if they could contact the other hotel for me, to see if they had a room available. Or a dorm bed. Or a hammock. A mat would work, too. Anything, really.

Robert Reimers Hotel

Robert Reimers had a room! And a nice one at that.

My masterfully calculated “turn up and hope” accommodation tactic actually paid off. I had a bed. Phew!

Once that minor logistical headache was out of the way, I could finally concentrate on where I was. Or so I thought. Minutes later, the news blew up.

The king had died. It was 28 August. A sad day. He was an all-round decent human being.

Welcome to the Marshall Islands

My first impression was that Majuro is very, very narrow. There’s a strip of land, there’s water, and then there’s more water. Majuro is a coral atoll, and in places the land feels like someone has drawn a line in the ocean and then built a road on it.

Facing the lagoon, the Pacific is in front of you, then you spin around and notice it’s also right behind you.

Trapped in the blue. Surreal!

Life along the road

Majuro doesn’t feel like an island that exists primarily for tourists. I like that.

There are cars and taxis along the main road, small shops, houses, people chatting, children playing and all the ordinary things that make a place feel lived in. Nothing particularly glamorous.

Which is precisely what makes it interesting.

People aren’t performing “island life” for visitors. They’re just getting on with it. I’m the one wandering around snapping photos of things that are completely ordinary to everyone else, probably looking slightly ridiculous.

But that’s one of the privileges of being a tourist.

The harbour has its own industrial decoration: stacks of old tyres lining the quay, ready to soften the blow when ships come along.

It’s hot in the Marshall Islands.

I realise this is not exactly a groundbreaking observation here in the Pacific, but still: it’s hot.
The sort of hot where you step outside and immediately start wondering whether you really need to walk all the way over there.

Eventually you stop trying to beat the heat and simply accept that everything is going to happen a little more slowly. Not a bad thing, really.

More than a postcard

Majuro is beautiful.

I have to remind myself that this is not just a tropical postcard, but a country with a complicated history, shaped by Japanese occupation during World War II, followed by decades of American administration, and the devastating legacy of nuclear testing in the islands, particularly in the Bikini Atoll. Then there is the present-day reality of climate change and rising sea levels. Like Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands is one of the countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate shift.

Standing beside the lagoon, it’s difficult not to think about it. The same ocean that makes the place so beautiful is also part of the reason the country’s future is so uncertain. The postcard doesn’t really tell you that part.

The things I remember

Oddly enough, my strongest memories aren’t the spectacular ones.

I remember the heat. The road. Sitting somewhere with a drink and having nowhere particularly urgent to go.

One evening, I walked down to the harbour as the sun set, watching as the light softened, the heat began to ease, and the water gradually darkened.

Nothing dramatic happened. No dolphins appeared. No sensational tropical storm rolled in. Nobody handed me a cocktail and said Welcome to Paradise.

I just stood there for a while. And it was lovely.

Those are often the moments I remember most from travelling – the ones where absolutely nothing happens. You stop, look around, and think about, well… nothing in particular.

Travel memories are funny like that. You can spend months imagining all the extraordinary things you’re going to see once you arrive, and then what you remember is something completely mundane.

Sometimes it’s the colour of the light. Sometimes it’s a conversation or a meal. And occasionally it’s the fact that you thankfully avoided sleeping on a beach populated by potentially hostile dogs.

Will I go back to the Marshall Islands?

Yes, I think I will.

Not because the islands have a long list of attractions I failed to get through. It doesn’t really work that way. That said, I would like to visit Bikini Atoll. Its history makes it a difficult place to think about, but also somewhere I’d like to see for myself.

I liked Majuro because it made me slow down. There wasn’t a constant sense that I needed to be somewhere else, seeing something else, taking another photo.

I would sit by the water and simply sit by the water, without doing anything else. Sounds rather obvious. But that’s the point, isn’t it? We spend so much time trying to make our trips interesting that sometimes we forget to actually be there. Majuro reminded me of that.

It also reminded me that, when travelling to remote places, it’s probably a good idea to book lodgings in advance. I may have learned that lesson. Although… can’t promise I won’t do it again.

Utirik, Wotje, Namdrik – loving all these unfamiliar names appearing on the flight map as we hop between atolls in the Marshall Islands.