How to actually visit Tuvalu: flights, a bed, and a Sunday boat

Tuvalu rewards the effort to get there, but it takes planning, because almost nothing about a visit works the way it does elsewhere.

Start with the flights. There are only a couple a week, from Fiji, and once you land you are there until the next one leaves, whether that suits you or not. Build the trip around the flight schedule, not the other way round, and treat a few days as the minimum, because there is no shortening it.

Then a bed. In town there is essentially one hotel and one guesthouse, and they do fill, so book before you fly rather than on arrival. Food is the same story: one restaurant, in the hotel, mostly grilled chicken, because almost everything edible comes in frozen on a supply ship and little grows on the coral. The best meal we had was one we asked our guesthouse host to cook for us, well worth arranging if you can.

The thing that catches people out is Sunday. Tuvalu keeps it strictly: nobody works, and nobody will take your money however much you offer, because the day belongs to church. We ran straight into this trying to hire a boat out to the empty atolls across the lagoon. The workaround came from a local tip, find someone who does not keep the same Sunday, and a Jehovah's Witness couple happily took us across, on two plastic chairs in an open boat, to islands we had entirely to ourselves. So plan anything that needs hiring or arranging for a weekday, and keep that trick in reserve if a Sunday traps you.