Seaduced's Web Diary - Part two - The weather improves and we get to see the fireworks!

Part two - The weather improves and we get to see the fireworks!

Seaduced

John & Jane Craven

Wed 9 Jul 2014 20:01

As the weather had dramatically improved by this morning, the wind had died down, the swell had almost stopped throwing us out of bed and the rain had stopped, we decided to take a look at the headsails. Both jobs should have been fairly simple, we just needed some decent weather. You can't take a furler motor to bits at sea in 15 foot waves without loosing something overboard, neither is it a pleasant job to go up the mast to retrieve the doughnut that you need to re-hoist the other sail!
Ivan was keen to get to the top of the mast and take some pictures so off he went. Getting the doughnut down was straightforward, and now all we needed was some calm weather to get the sail back up. As the whole fleet were in the anchorage, there wasn't a lot of room, so we decided to leave hoisting the sail for now and, while John and Ivan busied themselves taking the furler motor apart and replacing the drive belt, which is what we hoped was the problem, I got on with the more mundane housework, at least I get to cook and clean in nice places!
For lunch we went to Lea's restaurant. This was in one of the small huts surrounded by the huts of her family. The view was great. We could sit in the hut, looking out on village life and not feel as though we were gawking. We were right in the middle of children playing, and adults generally going about their family business, washing, cooking, cleaning, etc.

Lunch today was a variety of local vegetables cooked in coconut cream, such as yams, taro, manioc and cassava, with rice and omelettes stuffed with local vegetables with a sort of sweet and sour sauce. Lea apologised that she wasn't able to do chicken, but as she had to go to the plantation to get the vegetables, she had no time to kill and prepare the chicken! That said the omelettes were light and delicious, with all three coming out hot together which is no mean feat bearing in mind she probably cooked the whole lot on one or two gas rings, the kitchen area wasn't big enough for anything else!

The view from the restaurant

John and I with Lea

After lunch, we stayed and chatted with Lea about the village and local life. She sent us away with a bag of cassava, taro and shou shou, a local vegetable. The food here is very simple. Having no, or very limited access to, herbs, spices or other flavourings, most vegetables are simply peeled, boiled and dressed with homemade coconut cream. They are however very tasty.
On the way home, we passed the bakery and enquired about buying bread. The problem at the bakery was that they had no yeast, cooking oil or sugar, so no bread was being prepared. When we got back to the boat, we explained this to the fleet and then went boat to boat collecting stuff from people's stores and returned to stock up the bakery. That done, we ordered our bread for tomorrow.

Ivan was a big hit with the local children everywhere he went!

This afternoon was one of the highlights of the while World ARC, the trip to the volcano Mount Yasur. This is the most accessible active volcano in the world, you can drive to within 150m of the crater and stand about 50m away from the edge. This is the only place in the world you can get this close to a volcano, most likely for good reason, and we are probably in one of the least likely places in the world to have heard of and bother about health and safety.
We left the yacht club late afternoon and as we drove up through the forests and plantations, we could start to see the steam vents spouting at the side of the road. The level of activity is measured on a local scale of 0-4. Zero, no activity is incredibly rare. At present it is described as level 2 'exciting but safe'. The excitement level amongst the group was high and climbing as we neared the site of the volcano.

Our group ready to head to the volcano

Driving up you could see the steam vents along the road

We parked the truck and set off up the short hike to the crater edge. As we climbed we heard the first deep rumblings of the volcano on the other side which only served to ramp up the excitement to the next level. When we reached the top we were standing about 50m away from 3 huge vents in the dark crater which take turns to send up rockets of red molten rocks and smoke. Following more rumbles, fountains of fiery lava shoot up into the sky and rain down rocks the size of trucks into the boiling fire below. This happens again and again, each time making you jump a little and wonder exactly why you are standing so close to the edge........
The whole experience was absolutely amazing, terrifying and wonderful, showing the raw power of nature at her very best. By far the most fabulous and potentially very dangerous experience we have had in ages. Totally awesome!!