Harmonie - Re-Entry into Civilization - Port Vila, Efate Island, Vanuatu

Re-Entry into Civilization - Port Vila, Efate Island, Vanuatu

Harmonie

Don and Anne Myers

Sat 26 Sep 2009 02:24

17:44.601S 168:18.815E

We arrived in Port Vila on September 16th after a very short motor in from Mele Island. Even though it had been over a year since we last saw the Port Vila harbor, it was all very familiar and somehow felt comforting as we motored by the anchored freighters and sailboats in the quarantine area, through the narrowly placed buoys marking the shallow channel into the inner harbor, past the array of moored sailboats and approached the place we loved most during our three-week stay last year, the marina wall. It doesn't sound like much, but after spending months detached from land with only a few days of respite in two marinas in Fiji, we were really looking forward to being tied to the Port Vila harbor wall. Besides, it's cheap. For only the equivalent of $14 US per night, we get unlimited electricity and water. That and a security guard to watch over the boats, a land-based toilet and shower and most importantly, the ability to walk on and off the boat at will. No climbing into and out of dinghies, no fighting with surf on the beach, and above all, no saltwater drenching or wet butts. It's the little things that we appreciate most.

We spent ten days tied to the wall and during that time, thoroughly immersed ourselves in Port Vila's version of civilization. Which, by the way, seemed to us to be even more vibrant than it was last year. The 'city', which is really an overgrown two-road town with a population of 38,000, was positively hopping. Monday through Friday the main road was bumper to bumper van and ni-Van truck traffic. Many of the buildings had been spruced up. Construction projects had been completed and new renovation projects were underway. There were several new, very chic restaurants. The streets were filled with Mother Hubbard (the traditional muumuu-style dress most of the women wear as a result of missionary influence in the 1900's) clad matrons, Australian, Kiwi, Asian, French and English ex-pats, boat people like us, and ni-Van men walking, for the most part, with a purpose. I say 'with a purpose' because in some major Pacific town/cities we've visited, the native men seem to drift about with no apparent purpose. Tonga, for example, comes to mind. The Port Vila market was larger, more colorful, more stuffed with a larger assortment of produce and busier than we remembered too. We weren't sure whether everything in Port Vila looked spiffier to us because we had spent so much time in the sometimes drab-looking remote Vanuatu island villages, or whether everything was really that much spiffier. Either way it looked good to us.

We went about things in the normal boater re-entry into civilization priority order.

Day 1:

First - Washed the salt off the boat.

Second - Ditched the big black bag of trash (mostly plastic - everything else goes over the side) that had been sitting in the back locker for the previous two weeks.

Second - Purchased a block of wifi internet time.

Third - Had cocktail hour.

Fourth - Went out to dinner.

Day 2:

First - Got hair cuts.

Second - Got other optional beauty treatments (usually reserved for women only, but men, if they so desire, can take part).

Third - Strolled through the town/city to see what was happening.

Fourth - Visited the market to gaze at the wide array of produce.

Fifth - Visited the supermarket to bask in the air conditioning and gaze at the wide array of goods.

Sixth - Had cocktail hour.

Seventh - Went out to dinner.

And so it went. Until we felt that we had exhausted all the civilization Port Vila had to offer. Then we got antsy to leave. In Port Vila this year, the whole re-entry into civilization / antsy-to-leave process took about ten days. Last year it took about three weeks, but back then we had the whole of the Pacific Ocean crossing to recover from. This year our relaxed slow pace through only three countries meant only ten days of re-entry into Port Vila civilization were required.

A bit about haircuts. Don had his hair cut for the first time since leaving New Zealand in April. For anyone who's counting, that's five months of uncontrolled hair growth. Well ok, five months if you don't count the massacre that occurred on Don's head when I attempted to use a pair of borrowed clippers to trim his hair while we were anchored in a lovely Fijian anchorage back in July. By the time we arrived in Port Vila, Don's hair was just about getting to ponytail stage. Unfortunately for Don, the hair stage that precedes the ponytail is the dust mop. Even our usually more than polite English and Australian friends were commenting on the sorry state of Don's dust mop by the time we arrived. So it was with great relief that Don got what we boaters refer to as 'a proper hair cut' on Day 2 of our re-entry into civilization in Port Vila. He's been happier (not to mention cuter) ever since.

We completely enjoyed our stay in Port Vila - it is by far our favorite Pacific island nation town/city. In the course of our ten day stay, we blew our out-to-dinner budget (but had a good time doing it) and visited some of the surrounding area that we didn't get to see last year. We look forward to going back to Port Vila some day - maybe it will be part of our itinerary for our second trip around the world.

Picture 1 - The Port Vila harbor wall. The only trick here was dealing with the five foot tide. As you can see, like Storyteller, most opted for the wooden plank tied at both ends solution to solve the transport from boat-to-land and vice-versa dilemma at all tide levels.

Pictures 2 and 3 - The Port Vila market. Note the women in their Mother Hubbard's and the kids sitting on woven mats on the floor behind and sometimes under the market tables. It was more than once that after choosing some fruit and paying the woman standing or sitting behind the table that my change appeared from under the table - usually offered by a little hand attached to the waving skinny arm of a piccaninny sitting under there. We noticed that with the exception of Saturday afternoon and Sunday when the market was completely cleared out and empty, there were always ni-Vans at the market with their produce. This was true even after dark when the market was closed and the lights were off. We finally decided that because transportation is so expensive and difficult, the ni-Vans must bring a load to the Port Vila market and simply stay there, with their goods, for as long as it takes to sell everything. Which means most of them probably come to the market on Monday morning and don't leave until noon on Saturday, sleeping on their woven mats behind the market tables at night. Amazing. Picture 3 shows just a few of the woven baskets full of kumara (a cross between a yam and a potato) and stalks of bananas for sale at the market. For a mere $5 US you could buy a basket of kumara. It would take a year to eat them all, so we found that investing in a basket of kumara between three boats worked well - can't beat the price, anyway.

Pictures 4 and 5 - A beach wedding. Nope, we don't know these people, but we happened to have lunch at the fancy French-owned boutique resort on the day their wedding occurred. We were there with John and Sue and their friends Ray and Helen. We three women decided we had to stay well past the time we finished lunch just so we could see the bride arrive and the wedding start. The men indulged us. After some intense interrogation of the resort owner by Sue, we discovered that it was a local wedding - the daughter of the Chinese supermarket chain owner to a Lithuanian? Czech? ex-pat. The wedding ceremony itself was for family only, but the real party was to take place at the Chinese Club back in Port Vila later that day. The real kick came when the bride arrived. In a Hummer with a Barbie doll bride affixed to the hood. Those of you associated with Fisher-Price might enjoy that little tidbit. Completely politically incorrect we thought though - driving a Hummer around a third-world Pacific island - but hey, the guy owns the best chain of supermarkets in Vanuatu, so we didn't feel like we could really criticize. It turns out that Vanuatu is the place for weddings. Not just the local ones, but those trendy 'destination' type weddings. The local paper reported that there are 200 destination weddings held in Vanuatu per month. Brides and grooms come from all over to tie the knot on a lovely Vanuatu beach. We believe it. When Sue and I went to a salon for optional beauty treatments, there were no less than two visiting wedding parties getting their hair/nails/feet/make-up done while we were there.

Pictures 6, 7 and 8 - The Cascades. This is a park that encompasses a string of incredible waterfalls. A well maintained path follows, and sometimes becomes one and the same with, a picturesque stream up a series of waterfalls. The waterfalls start small and get larger as you go along. In the end, the path winds through a series of rock pools and up a few small, but steep waterfalls to a large natural pool that sits below three or four cascading streams that tumble down from about 100 feet above. Gorgeous - and not a single warning/caution/beware sign to be found in the whole park, not even in the parts where the path went through/up a waterfall. How refreshing. Picture 8 shows Don and Ray next to a giant stand of bamboo we ran into on the way up the path.

Anne