Espiritu Santo

The SS President Coolidge began its working life as a luxury ocean liner before being converted into a US troopship during WWII, and in October 1942 it struck two American mines while entering Espiritu Santo's harbor, mines placed to protect the base that the ship's own captain hadn't been informed about. Rather than risk the ship sinking in deep water, the captain deliberately ran it aground, an emergency decision that let nearly the entire complement of more than 5,000 people evacuate safely, with only two lives lost.

That wreck now rests on a steep underwater slope close enough to shore that divers can enter directly from the beach, making it one of the largest and most accessible wreck dives anywhere in the world. Its cargo holds, still containing jeeps, helmets, and rifles loaded for the war effort, along with officers' quarters and a swimming pool built for its cruise-liner days, give divers a genuinely rare look inside a fully intact troopship rather than scattered wreckage.

A short distance away, Million Dollar Point tells a related but different story. Rather than ship home the enormous stockpile of surplus military equipment, jeeps, bulldozers, and construction machinery, accumulated on Espiritu Santo by the war's end, US forces dumped much of it directly into the sea, a decision that still lets snorkelers explore a shallow underwater graveyard of rusted WWII-era vehicles.

Away from the wartime history, Espiritu Santo holds a series of naturally formed Blue Holes, freshwater swimming spots fed by underground springs and known for a saturated, almost impossibly vivid blue color produced by their mineral content and exceptional clarity. Several sit within easy reach of Luganville, the island's main town, and remain some of the most consistently recommended swimming spots in the South Pacific.

Vanuatu's largest island runs at a noticeably slower, less developed pace than more built-up Pacific destinations, and much of its infrastructure still centers directly around the wreck-diving and natural-swimming draws that define its reputation. For visitors specifically seeking those experiences, that lack of polish reads less as a limitation than as part of the appeal.