Sunday 15th  July South Pacific Ocean 22 03.7S  167 39.4E  

Today’s Blog by David (Time zone BST+10.00; UTC +11.00 )

Position report

Another day in which we logged more than 200 miles puts us about 25 miles off the coast of  New Caledonia as I write.  The winds have now moderated and the seas are much more benign – we are having a pleasant sail with the wind on our port quarter as the sun rises!  A fitting end to our last sail for more than two months.

Volcanic ashes

If you had told me that, one day, I would walk up to the rim of the crater of an active volcano I would have said you were (or I was) mad.  In fact though, avid readers may recall that we did a horse riding expedition to an active volcano in Isabella, Galapagos (Blog: 24^th February).  The caldera was solid and it steamed when it rained – it was the second largest “active” volcano caldera in the world.  Well, it depends what you mean by “active”.

In  Tanna, Vanuatu, “active” looks like this:

And it is going off in front of you – at eye level – showering hot particles of ash on your head. Been there done that: thanks.

Handbag Polka

I have commented before about the way the dancing has been changing as we moved west from the Marquesas Islands. At frits the men did most of the jumping around and the women were singing – relatively inactive.  By Tonga the women stole the show with exquisite lyrical movements of the arms hands and upper body – similar to some Indian dancing – with an enticing smile all along – the men took a back seat. 

In Vanuatu, we saw traditional “Kastom” dancing (I think put on for the benefit of we tourists)  in which the men stood round in a circle, facing inward– much as disco bunnies would dance around their handbags in my youth -    jumping up and down then running round in a circle and then jumping again, in an apparently  random fashion.

The Kastom dancing was performed at a Kastom Village:

This tree house is built in a Banyan tree.  These have had special significance throughout the Pacific;  in some cases being a meeting place for the elders, in others somewhere to store the proposed victims before they were sacrificed.

In this place it was the doorway though which the dance troop emerged for and departed from their Handbag Polka:

It took some people (but not all) a while to understand the significance of the straw brush tied in front of their naughty bits:

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Footnote

We have been sending blogs to both Serendipity’s Blog Page and also to the World ARC Blog. Now that we have left the rally, once we get to New Caledonia,  our blogs will no longer be available on the World Cruising  site. 

If  you want to continue to follow our progress (even if it is in the hope that we one day will be ship wrecked!) you will need to go to our Blog Page:

www.blog.mailasail.com/serendipity

And to find out where we are right now:

http://live.adventuretracking.com/serendipity