Naked Dancing and Volcano Tour w/ pictures - Port Resolution, Tanna Island, Vanuatu
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Wed 23 Jul 2008 01:51
|
19:31.549S 169:29.694E
Note: This version has pictures
attached.
It's Wednesday, July 23rd and we are anchored
outside of Luganville, the second largest town in Vanuatu, on the island of
Espritu Santo. The rally has left us and we are now in slow down mode (we
realize most of you think we've been in slow down mode since we retired, but
honestly we don't feel like we have been). All the good-byes have been
said and all the parties are over, so it's a good time to catch the blog
up. Sorry, no pictures for now. We'll resend all the latest updates
when we get back to Port Vila in a couple of weeks or so.
Ok, now back to Port Resolution and the island of
Tanna. Where was I? Right, naked dancing and the volcano
tour.
Naked dancing you ask? Yup. Naked
dancing. Or, mostly naked. Not exactly the full Monty, but pretty darn
close. Sorry guys, it was only the men and the boys. We didn't
realize it at the time, but our volcano tour included a stop in one of the even
more remote villages on the island of Tanna to watch the men and boys perform
traditional dance wearing nothing but traditional penis sheaths. Yes, that is
really what the costume is called. A penis sheath. It consists
of some grass attached to a leaf or two placed strategically and
held there g-string style with a thin rope made from the pandanu
plant. Very effective. There was lots of stomping and moving about
and not a one penis sheath shifted out of place.
The dance itself was similar to what we had seen
earlier that day during the village's welcome ceremony. There were no
women, but the young boys with their high voices made up for the lack of women
and the singing was again that haunting African-like chant sing-song accompanied
only by foot stomping and the jingle of some kind of dried nut shells that
encircled the men's ankles. Most of the dancing was performed in a circle
with the men and boys facing inwards. This meant that our view was mostly
naked butts, with the exception of the little boys. All of the little
boys, ranging in age from four or five to ten or eleven, seemed to find us
tourists a heck of a lot more interesting than the dance they were
performing. They faced mostly inwards towards the center of the circle,
but kept twisting around to get a good look at us. Picture 1 catches one
of the little guys (far right) doing just that. Who could blame them for
being just as fascinated with us as we were with them?
After the dancing was over, the dancers receded
back to the giant banyan tree that stood on the edge of the clearing looking
majestic. One of the dancers climbed up in the tree and started playing a
traditional pan flute. The scene was completely surreal like something out
of a movie. The sun was fading and the dancers seemed to fade into the
banyan tree with just the flute music wafting through the air. Jackie and
Michael caught the scene in picture 2 - the light is dim and the picture a
little blurry, but if you look closely, you will see the flute player up in the
tree.
While most of the dancers faded into the
banyan tree, some of the elders and a couple of the boys demonstrated the art of
starting a fire by rubbing two sticks together. Of course it looked rather
effortless when they did it, but I don't think we would be able to repeat the
feat. The people that live in Tanna may not have much, but they most
certainly do have two sticks to rub together.
After the dancing and demonstrations, we piled back
into the 'tourist truck' - which was a small four-wheel drive pick-up truck with
narrow benches along the sides and back of the truck bed. The road was no
more than two dirt ruts and the terrain was a challenge for the truck filled
with eleven tourists, one driver and one boy to look after us in the back.
On the way up to the volcano, there were times when we would have gladly offered
to get out and walk - the sideways tilt and/or the feeling that we were going to
slide backwards down the steep hill was a little overwhelming and we
clung to the sides of the truck bed wishing we were back on the boat in 40 knots
of wind and 12 foot seas.
We knew we were getting close to the volcano when
we saw the earth on the sides of the road steaming. We had never really
asked what exactly we would see on this volcano tour, and had just assumed
that we would be taken where we could look up at the
volcano from below and if we were lucky, see the sky glowing red above it.
We realized as the truck struggled up the steaming ash road that we were being
taken literally to the volcano. We wouldn't be looking up at it, no, we
would be looking down into it from the edge of the cone. Wow. The
sun was setting as the truck pulled into the ash clearing at the base of the
volcano cone and we gladly jumped out. After a ten minute hike up the
cinder cone with lava rocks strewn everywhere, we were on the edge, looking down
into the fiery maw of Mount Yassur. And I mean on the edge. This was
no US national park with paved walkways, warning signs and safety
railings. This was the edge of the volcano with nothing between us and the
lava and gasses spewing up and out into the night sky. What an awesome
sight. Every few minutes a giant plume of noxious sulfur-smelling gas
would escape from one of the fissures below with a giant hiss. Shortly
thereafter, molten, fiery-red rocks would explode out from the core and fly
hundreds of feet into the air. It was an incredible display of natural
fireworks (picture 3). What we saw was one thing, but the sound and the
vibration under our feet was something else. With each lava explosion, it
sounded like a hundred hot air balloon gas jets going off all at once.
Truly terrifying. I started to wonder how closely the geologists were
watching Mount Yassur and if a really big blow might be coming soon - like while
we were standing there on the edge. No wonder the native people made
sacrifices to the volcanoes in the past. It's hard to imagine living that
close to a boiling cauldron and not feeling like a gift now and then to the
volcano god would be a good move.
We all stood, mesmerized, on the edge looking down
into the red abyss. I'm not sure for how long. James, from Cleone,
caught Don and I in exactly that state (picture 4). I was hanging on
to Don so he wouldn't fall off the edge. I figured if he went, I would go
too.
After a while, we all peeled ourselves away from
the draw of the volcano and we made our way back down the cinder cone in the
dark to our truck chariot. The 45 minute trip back to Port Resolution was
thankfully uneventful. No overturned tourist trucks, no tourists lost over
the side. Our respect for our driver increased as he successfully
navigated the cinder and dirt ruts in the pitch dark - a new definition of
instrument navigation.
When we got back to the village, a feast was
waiting for us, complete with roast pig (did I mention that one of the gifts
given to us as part of the welcome and gift giving ceremony was a live pig?) and
many other dishes that were somewhat unidentifiable. We ate off of woven
palm frond plates with our fingers in the darkness lit only by a few
small fluorescent bulbs (set up with strings of extension cords from
some distant generator just for the occasion).
On our way back to our bouncing boat (the
wind was still ferocious at that point, which made for a very bouncy and
uncomfortable anchorage) in the dark, we stopped off at Lady Kay for a
glass of wine. Their catamaran was dealing with the churned up water much
better than the rest of us mono-hulls were. We sat, still exhausted from
the Fiji to Vanuatu sail and in awe of what we had seen and experienced in
a single day (welcome ceremony, curious natives, naked dancing, tourist truck,
volcano, feast), and decided that it was all worth it. Tough sail,
bouncy anchorage, unidentifiable feast food, scary tourist truck, volcano edge,
everything - well worth it.
Anne |
