There are soooo many blogs out there about the country you can walk around in a day (or run around in even less) – Nauru. We get it – Nauru is small, and you can get around it in a few hours. Whilst we’re not against walking or running it, I personally prefer going by motorbike, and I definitely prefer doing a pub crawl. That’s right – pub-crawl a whole country in a day!

The Nauru Pub Crawl!

Before anyone gets too excited, let’s put this in perspective: Nauru basically only has four bars. But we’ll cover that in more detail later…

There are also four hotels in Nauru, and two of them double up as bars. We started at the legendary Od’n Aiwo Restaurant (which serves beer) before moving onto their bar proper. How do I explain the bar at the Od’n Aiwo? It’s a bit like an Australian bar, with fruit machines/pokeys and a pool table. It mattered not; we had drinks, and thus completed 25% of our 2019 Nauru pub crawl.

Bar #2 was to be a bit more interesting, and is, in fact, one of my favourite bars in Nauru (I’m not being sarcastic). Funnily enough, we had to ask the owner (who now works at Hotel Menen) to open up for us, to which she luckily assented. ‘Jules on Deck’, as the bar is named, is great for the ‘Nauru Sunset’ cocktail, as well as an actual Nauru sunset.

Cocktails drained, bar #2 was ticked off.

Bar #3, Bayview, is also the best restaurant in Nauru, so we headed there for dinner and drinks. And when I say ‘best restaurant’, nothing else on the island even comes close. Tuna sashimi and pizza – perfect New Year’s Eve fare!

Our stomachs filled, we headed to the last bar of our pub crawl – located, as luck/planning would have it, in our hotel – where there would be a big New Year’s Eve party. We drank, sang, danced, and indulged in the Nauru New Year’s tradition of jumping in the pool (fully clothed) at midnight.

We had succeeded in seeing in 2020 in Nauru, and pub-crawling an entire country in a day. If you were wondering “how do they celebrate New Year’s in Nauru?” then this has been a partial answer.

And what about those who don’t go to the bars? Well, it seems that private house parties are the way to go, with locals partying all the way through ‘til January 2^nd. I managed to gatecrash one such party near the lagoon, and that is all I have to say on the matter.

If you want a New Year’s Eve with a difference, join us for our next Least Visited Countries tour!