Vanuatu - 13 August -16 August
The volcano as we approached Tanna |
Our biggest fish yet! |
On route to Tanna from Aneityum Catherine caught our biggest fish so far - a Mahi Mahi which took some effort. Otherwise an uneventful journey but as we approached Tanna you could see the Volcano which was one of the main attractions to come to Tanna.
Tanna 13-15 August
The attraction of going to Tanna is the active volcano which
is one of the few places you can go and
Remains of the guest houses |
The Yacht Club |
A coffee shop and not bad coffee! |
In the morning a number of the boats came ashore to deliver
some of the aid we had brought from Fiji – mainly rice, flour and sugar. The
plan had been to take it to the school but this was closed so we found the
community centre where we could leave it for them to distribute. We were
surprised to see a coffee shop in the village which served very good coffee
grown in Tanna. There we met a French trio who were staying in the village, on
holiday from New Caledonia, who wanted to experience village life. This is
something that the village offers to bring in tourists but you would need to be
seasoned travellers as it is very basic living with no mod cons just earth toilets
and buckets for washing.
In the afternoon we were getting ready to leave for the
volcano when we got a call on the VHF to say that we all had to clear
immigration before we could go back on the island. Immigration officials
happened to be in the bay and they decided that we must clear immigration
immediately, despite being told in Aneityum that we did not need to do this
until we reached Port Vila which is the capital. It was clear that the Immigration Officer would
not let us on the island until he had gone through the clearance of all the
boats with 30 minutes before the trucks were due to leave to go the
volcano and he had 10 boats to clear.
Despite his earlier somewhat hard-line approach, he cleared all boats within 30
minutes and we went to get in the trucks.
In the back of the truck |
Getting 10 people into each truck which was designed to
carry four people was an experience with six of us sitting in the open back of
the truck. They did provide some cushions which were needed for the 90 minute
ride along pot holed tracks through the jungle. All part of the experience but
I was glad when we arrived at the foot of the volcano.
The final 300 metres was
on foot to the rim of the volcano where we were greeted with explosions of
magna shot high into the sky as we walked along the rim just feet away from a
drop into the volcano. You could see the orange magma boiling in the centre of
the volcano with huge explosions every few minutes. It was even more
spectacular as it started to get dark with the orange magma showing up clearly
as it fell back to earth still molten. The noise of the explosions and the
tremor of the ground added to the effect and it was a fantastic sight. Worth a
few hours of being shaken to bits on bumpy tracks wondering just how well
maintained these vehicles were.
Erromango 15-16
August
In conversation with the other boats we decided to stop off
at Erromango – we had cleared immigration now so getting to Port Vila was less
pressing. It was 80 miles so we started
off early in the morning to arrive just as it was getting dark.
Children wathcing us come in |
Erromango was one of the worst hit islands by Cyclone Pam
and is not visited by tourists (unlike Tanna and Aneityum) so we decided that
we should take most of the aid there. Food aid from Port Vila had stopped two
months ago David was their spokesman (as he spoke very good English) and
arranged a trade – they would not accept the aid as a gift but wanted to trade
for it. So the next morning we were all invited to the village community centre
where we greeted with the children from the village singing traditional songs.
The women had got up as 4am to cook us some traditional food so as to be able
to offer some hospitality. We were all taken back by this as food was still in
short supply as the trees had no fruit and their crops were only just starting
to bear fruit, but this is their nature.
In return for the aid, all the villagers brought something
from their gardens – tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, taro and kava. We felt bad
about taking anything but it would have been very rude not to so most people
just took a few things and left the aid that we had brought. We were then taken
on a tour of the village and you could see the devastation still with trees
still having no leaves where the Cyclone had stripped them bare. Such warm and
friendly people and so generous despite everything.
Yacht Club in progress |
In the afternoon, David took us to see the Yacht Club he is
building to attract more yachts to stop at the island. It is work in progress
and he is funding it by donations and buying material from Port Vila when he
can. It will help bring in more people to the island and with it some much
needed currency for the village to buy staple foods such as rice.
We were taken in the afternoon to the Cave of skulls which
is a burial site of the chiefs of the island (until the missionaries stopped
this practice along with throwing the dead in the sea). We took a 30 minute
boat ride along the coast before negotiation a very tricky reef to get to the
beach. A walk up to the first cave was
steep but walkable whereupon we climbed into the cave to see the bones of the
bodies placed there.
The second cave was a climb up a sheer wall, using the tree
roots
Climbing up to the cave |
The Chiefs looking out |
The next night we left for Port Vila with the aim of an easy
sail overnight so that we would arrive in the early morning and have the day
free. One of the yachts took a father and his son to Port Vila from the village
to visit the hospital as the son was ill and there is very limited medical care
on the island. There is an airstrip on the island (courtesy of the Americans
from WWII) but the cost of flying to Port Vila where the hospital is located is
prohibitive. The alternative is to wait for the weekly supply ship but again
the cost is too much for most of the villagers so it was fortunate that we were
there.
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ReplyDeletetanna