17.45S 164.17E
JENNY
Alan Franklin/ Lynne Gane
Sat 2 Aug 2008 00:13
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Hi all
It may seem that we are slow with our blog and I am
but its a bit difficult when the boat is rolling about at sea,in port we have a
mass of other things to do,so please be patient.
Vanuatu formally the New Hebridies is the jewel in
the crown as far as our trip across the Pacific in has everything,from sandy
beeches to hide away coves to communities which only seemed to have emerged from
the stone age a few decades ago.
Every island seems to be different from
the modern hub of Port Vila to the emerging world of Tanna where we
went to see the very active volcano,can you just imagine arriving from a
town that has the modern trappings of banks and shops and taxi's and arriving at
an island airport awaiting your taxi which happens to be a pick up truck with no
seats in the back only wooden planks.Being taken to the very edge of a volcano
that is erupting every few seconds with molten rock flying in the
air.
Its a long time since the earth moved for me but it
was certainly moving that day.The road from the airport to the main village was
earth and so were all the other roads you cannot believe what a throw back in
time it is many of us suffered with bad backs after that trip but it was worth
it.
On our arrival by plane in Tanna an island
south of Port Vila we were taken by pick up (taxi) to our Hotel ?? which
consisted of a series of bamboo and palm thatch huts in a village,the dining
area was like a sort of village Long Hut with windows of sorts but no
glass,don't ask about the food,it was very basic,but I suspect it was a
fest compared with what the locals eat.
Unfortunately by the time it came to our
accommodation all that was on offer was a room behind the kitchen I refused to
share my bed with the army of cockroaches that would be lying in wait for
fresh meat so we transferred to another village down the road to a Tree
House.This was built in the same way as the rest but as the name implies in a
tree but it had its own loo which flushed somewhere at the bottom of the tree,we
did not inspect.
We were in the early morning arrivals from our BWR
group the later group were also billeted in the same complex so we had company
for dinner which was meat.The way it was declared to us implied that meat was a
rarity .I was aware that the last case of cannibalism in the islands was not so
long ago.
If I am painting a very tribal primitive sort of
place you may be getting the idea modern roads,hotels,restaurants and made up
roads do not appear on the smaller islands,mind you they don't appear much on
the larger ones.The people are very poor but happy.
After a very fretful night in our tree house
protected from the bugs by our 1920's style mossi nets I was outside on our
veranda (branch with plank across) watching some native children playing and
taking some video pictures of them.I went down to show them the pictures and
some of the dancers we had seen the day before,they were both fascinated and
delighted to see on film people that they knew.I had them in fits of laughter
when I speeded up the film of the dancers.It was great to see them happy and to
hear there laughter.
The dancing that we saw in another village was
performed with great ceremony and gusto by the men of the village sporting bare
bottoms and a sort of small brush at the front to cover their assets.The day
after the volcano trip we travelled through the jungle by pick up to another
part of the island to see the hot springs which just come up through the rocks
on the shore ,its hot enough to cook bananas.The fishing is done by natives with
bows and arrows.Lunch was provided in a local Long House in bowels made from
palm leaves it was Rice with chicken plus fruit.
Everywhere we went the people were happy being
largely unaffected by the world of tourism but know doubt it will come and spoil
everything,still at least we could see their way of life for what it was.After
this it was back in the trucks for a mad dash to get the plane 50mph plus on
unmade roads was madness but we survived.
One not so little incident.Whilst we were doing our
trip to the springs part of our group (Ellie and Alan Included ) decided to
go back to the summit of the volcano,while they were looking down into it there
was such a violent eruption that it spewed out boulders as big as cars straight
over the top of them with all of the smaller molten rocks falling around
them,some of them were shaken for a while Ellie thought it was
cool.
Vanuatu was indeed a place to visit even with its
dangers the people were very friendly it would be nice to visit more of the
islands before its destroyed by tourism.
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