Luganville: Markets, Culture and Wartime History

Luganville offers a glimpse of everyday life alongside culture and history: at the market, you’ll find local foods and crafts, while the South Pacific WWII Museum displays artefacts related to the Pacific War and Espiritu Santo. The wider Sanma destination also offers distinctive nature and cultural experiences.

Market Life and Local Specialties

Luganville’s main market offers tropical fruits and vegetables, local dishes and handcrafted products. The Luganville Market street food selection also includes grilled meat skewers, fresh coconuts, coconut or taro pastries, and Simboro. A visit to the market therefore focuses on both ingredients and products, as well as prepared foods. The goods and dishes on offer may vary.

Luganville is also an important trading hub for handicrafts from the northern provinces, including Pentecost, Ambae and the Banks Islands. This gives the crafts a regional dimension: the items on offer represent not just one place, but different islands in the north. If you’re interested in local design and products, the market is a practical place to start.

Culture and History Around Luganville

The South Pacific WWII Museum in Luganville displays a collection of artefacts related to the Pacific War and Espiritu Santo. If this part of history interests you, you can make a museum visit a focus of your itinerary. Check the current visiting arrangements before your trip.

Nearby, the Beterihi Cultural Activity Park offers traditional dances and demonstrations of food and kava preparation, weaving, wood carving and sand drawing. This brings living cultural practices into view alongside the museum’s collections. Check the current arrangements before visiting.

Another trace of history lies out at sea: the SS Coolidge struck a mine in the Segond Channel off Espiritu Santo on 26 October 1942 and later sank. The wreck of the SS President Coolidge off Espiritu Santo is almost completely intact; wartime relics there include guns, cannons, jeeps, helmets and trucks. Within the wider Sanma destination, the wreck dive is accessible directly from shore. At the wreck, you can discover the ship’s history and its preserved wartime relics together.

Discover More of Sanma

Beyond Luganville, Sanma encompasses varied landscapes and cultural experiences. The Vatthe Conservation Area lies in Bay Bay on Santo’s north coast. This 2,720-hectare area preserves extensive alluvial and calcareous forest, considered the only large tract of this type of forest in Vanuatu. Forty-eight land and freshwater bird species have been recorded there; six of Vanuatu’s nine endemic bird species are known to use the forest. Nature lovers will find a different perspective here than at the market or museum.

Culture can also be experienced in different places across Sanma. At Leweton Cultural Village on Santo, traditional dances, wood carving and the unique-to-Vanuatu art of sand drawing are part of the experience. On Malo Island, visitors can experience traditional dances, local music and ni-Vanuatu crafts; offerings may vary by community and season. The Millennium Cave Tour combines jungle hikes with exploring a cave, crossing rocky gorges and travelling downstream back to the village. Guests are welcomed in Funaspef village; traditional face painting is part of the programme before entering the cave. Tour details may change.

For those considering a longer undertaking, Sanma also offers a six-day expedition to climb Mount Tabwemasana through dense rainforests and remote villages on Espiritu Santo. At 1,879 metres, the mountain is Vanuatu’s highest and the highest point in the South Pacific. When choosing your holiday rental, consider which experiences matter most to you: markets, the museum and local culture in Luganville offer a different focus from nature and multi-day tours elsewhere in Sanma.

Boat services run from Luganville to Aore Island, with a journey time of about 10 minutes, and to Malo Island, with a journey time of about 30 minutes; actual travel times may vary. If these island destinations are part of your plans, check connections in advance. Discover more destinations: Hog Harbour.

For the main travel overview: Sanma.