Volcanoes - active and extinct, hot springs, and a birthday on board

On the edge of Mount Yasur Volcano, Tanna, Vanuatu

Position: at anchor in Gaspard Bay, Malakula Island, 16 28.5S  167 49.1E

Places visited since previous post:

Port Vila, Efate Island, 17 44.1S  168 18.4E

Mele Bay, Efate Island, 17 41.4S  168 15.4E

Lamen Bay, Epi Island, 16 36.5S  168 08.7E

Port Resolution, Tanna 19 31.5S  169 29.7E

Almost every day we have to pinch ourselves to check that this is all real.  Each day seems more amazing than the one before, and we can safely say that George has forgotten all about his thoughts of becoming Fijian.  It’s Vanuatu all the way now!  I have left it so long since writing the previous update that this one has become something of a mountain to climb.  From a tourist point of view, Vanuatu is a wonderful country – with volcanoes, hot springs, turtles, whales, dolphins, dugongs and fabulous snorkelling.  But even more importantly, the people are incredible.  They are consistently friendly and generous to us; sharing their time and friendship, and giving us food.  Their stories are amazing, so I am going to try and tell you what we have been up to for the last couple of weeks through the local people we have met.

We’ll start with Geordie, a French-speaking man in his early twenties, and now the proud owner of my New York City Football Club baseball cap.  We met Geordie yesterday when we landed our dinghy on a little sandy beach between dense mangrove bushes, on one of the Maskelyne Islands, reported to be uninhabited.  He was one of several men and women there, each equipped with customary large knives, and also tightly knotted hessian sacks.  A couple of young girls soon appeared, Joanna and Zaza, and despite no common language with Eloise and George, they all climbed high up into the tangle of the mangroves and were playing together in a matter of minutes.  The day progressed and the kids got into their favourite beach game of “survivor”, setting up a sundial and a compass, chasing fish in the shallows, scavenging for food, and using palm leaves to make shelters.  Geordie’s day progressed, too, and his hessian sack became more bulgy and wriggly, as he and his friends caught more coconut crabs.  Coconut crabs dig their holes on dry land, and have one claw much larger than the other.  We missed seeing the hunting technique, but these guys were obviously good at it.  Jack and Angus went to have a look in the writhing bag, Angus wowed Geordie with a few French phrases (they don’t speak English on this island), and before we knew it Jack was devouring his first ever freshly cooked crab’s claw.  He loved it, and Geordie proceeded to tie up four crabs with dried palm leaves, and present them to us.

It is normal practice for yachties to trade goods for food with the locals here.  We have a supply of clothes, school books, reading glasses and fish hooks for this purpose, and usually take a selection when we go ashore.  Yesterday, however, we had taken nothing as we were not expecting to meet anyone.  We scoured the dinghy, and offered Geordie a pretty decent length of rope for the crabs, but he declined, saying he had no use for it.  We settled on a baseball cap and a bag of crisps, which he seemed delighted with, and we came back to Victoria for a dinner of “Fruits de Mer”.  As we launched our dinghy, Geordie and three of his friends were just heading out to walk on the reef in search of fish, armed with bamboo bows and arrows.  Dinner for us was a tuna steak from our friends on Amphitreete, who are having better fishing luck than us, a modest bowl of tiny cockles that the kids dug up on the beach, and four delicious coconut crabs.  We toasted Geordie and his generosity as we tucked into our feast.

Reef fishing with a bow and arrow sounds tricky, but we were shown how it is done by John, who we met on the beach at Port Resolution, in Tanna.  He made it look pretty easy, to be honest.  We’d been messing about in the sea in dinghies and kayaks for much of the day, and hadn’t noticed many fish at all.  John arrived on the beach with his bow and arrows; George was agog and didn’t take his eyes off him.  John crept softly into the shallows, watched, waited, walked a few more steps and took aim.  He drew back his arrow and fired it quickly into the water.  No luck.. Drawing another arrow from his waistband, he lined up and shot again.  Second time lucky!  John bent forward and picked up a very long, thin fish, and retrieved both of his arrows.  George followed him up the beach to inspect both the weapon and the catch.  The arrows had several wire spikes splayed out at the end to increase the chance of hitting the target.  The name of the fish got lost in translation, but George settled on calling it a “crocodile needle fish”, and showed it proudly to everyone who passed, as if he himself had caught it.  To us, fishing with a bow and arrow seems like a sport, but for every John in a rural village here, it is an essential survival skill to feed the family.

John is married to Faina, who became a firm friend while we were in Tanna.  Faina was our main source of fresh fruit and vegetables for several days.  We traded a cotton sheet, a coat that was too small for Jack, some school supplies for her children, and reading glasses for her father, in return for masses of pawpaws, sweet potatoes, spring onions, taros, lemons and bananas.  Faina had two boys the same age as George and Jack, and the children all played together near a hot spring on the beach.  The hot spring created rock pools as warm as baths, which the children adored, and at low tide it was possible to cook in the hottest part.  Faina and John helped us to lay our mesh bag filled with eggs and sweet potato in the rocky cauldron of steaming water bubbling out of the ground, and hey presto, when we retrieved it ten minutes later, lunch was ready!  The locals came down to the beach with buckets to fetch hot water to wash their clothes, their dishes and themselves.  Hot spring water on tap is one of the benefits of living on the side of a volcano; Tanna is home to Mount Yasur, an active volcano.  The downside of living near an active volcano is that everything is black.  The sand is black; the ash and dust that falls from the sky is black; even the dried earth of the paths between the villages is almost black.  Our children, dinghy and entire boat were filthy after five days in Tanna; I would find it hard to live there, but that’s probably just because we’re not used to it.

We visited the volcano on our second day in Tanna.  Our driver was Kenny.  There were 10 of us in Kenny’s 4x4 pick-up truck, most of us hanging on for dear life in the open-air rear section, as we bounced along steep unmade roads with huge potholes.  We checked in at the Mount Yasur Visitor Centre, where we were treated to a wonderful show of traditional dancing, before being divided into groups, and given our briefing.  We were told that the volcano was at level 2 and therefore safe for us to visit, and we were reminded that there are no barriers and not to fall into the lava.  It was a ten-minute drive up the mountain from there, and this time we were inside the car.  Kenny chatted away in near perfect English, with a slight American twang, about his life so far.  Kicked out of school at fourteen for skipping classes and not working hard enough, he headed to the capital, Port Vila, where he found employment on fishing boats.  Learning on the job, he worked his way up to managing the inter-island ferry company, then moved on to high end yacht charters, fishing trips and motor yacht deliveries.  Now living in a village back in Tanna, married with four children, he drives guests to the sunrise volcano tour at 0430, and the sunset tour at 1630, as well as helping develop an “ashboarding” adventure company, and working towards starting his own tour to visit an extinct volcano, plus some yacht deliveries.  His phone rang every five minutes.  We left Kenny in the 4x4 as we made the final ascent on foot to see Mount Yasur in action.  Hopefully he was able to have a quick nap in our absence..

We climbed the steps up the side of the mountain in daylight, to the rim of the volcano, stopping to put on extra layers of clothing against the wind and cold.  The rim was huge, and we knew it was a long walk to the best (and most exposed) viewpoint.  George was very sure from the outset that volcano viewing was not for him.  Convinced that Mount Yasur would spew lava all over us at any moment, he wanted to go back to the car as soon as we reached the top.  Jack and Eloise were quite at ease and they watched, fascinated, as the volcano threw huge globules of fiery lava high into the air every few minutes.  Each firework eruption was accompanied with a pressure wave which made our ears pulsate and our chests thump.  It was powerful and exciting, but it didn’t feel dangerous yet.  We had imagined, before our visit, that the lava would be bubbling just inside the rim where we walked, as it is in a diagram of a volcano.  In fact, the lava was hundreds of metres below, so although it spewed high into the air, the lava fireworks were still well below where we stood.  I think on more “active” days the lava might be thrown up much higher; luckily for us our hard hats felt unnecessary, and looking down on the spectacle was more than enough for us.  

We watched the sun set, and were glad that the wind direction carried most of the sulphurous fumes and smoke away from where we were.  Only for a few minutes were we all coughing and spluttering and reaching for our scarves to put over our mouths.  The walk to Viewpoint 8 was the really nerve-wracking bit.  Viewpoint 8 enabled a view directly down to the bubbling lava below, with no barrier or railing.  George flatly refused to go.  Eloise and Angus set off, and when they returned, safe and exuberant, Jack and I went to look.  I can only say it made me feel very small to stare down a precipitous slope into a cauldron of molten lava hundreds of metres below.  I held Jack’s hand very tightly, and was hyper-aware of the people around us.  Mount Yasur really was awesome – the power of nature right before our eyes.  Jack and I returned to the rest of the family, and we walked back down to Kenny’s car by the light of our headtorches, with George leading the way as fast as his legs would carry him.

We didn’t see Kenny again for a few days after that, but having heard about his extinct volcano, we were really keen to visit it.  We asked everyone we met about it, but no-one was sure of its whereabouts, or how to contact Kenny.  A couple of days later, a man named Werry was driving us to the main city on other side of the island, Lanakal, to buy SIMs for our phones, get cash, and visit the market.  He told us to meet him at 7am, which we did.  It was an action-packed journey and we stopped numerous times on the way; to shoehorn more passengers into the open back of the truck, to inspect a burst water pipe in a field, for his passengers to try and catch a wild chicken (!) and clear plastic rubbish from the roadside (plastic bags are banned in Vanuatu).  Finally, we got lucky when we stopped beside a car driving the other way.  The other driver reached through his window and gave Werry some official looking papers to sign – and there in the passenger seat was our friend Kenny.  “Hi Kenny, can we see your extinct volcano?” we called.  “Sure,” Kenny said, “ask Werry to drop you at my house this afternoon and I’ll take you.”

Our island tour was coming together at last.  With our plans finally in place, we began quizzing Werry on how things worked in the village of Port Resolution.  His younger brother, he told us, was the Chief of the village.  Succession is through male descendants, with the father choosing which son has the best leadership and dispute settlement qualities.  The Chief can settle most things in a village.  The police are rarely required.  A few years ago, some villagers boarded and robbed three yachts in the bay.  It took the Chief and elders some days to work out who had committed the crime, but the answer lay within the people of the village, and they figured it out.  Stolen goods were returned, but money had been stolen and the Chief was unable to recover it, so he repaid the yachtsmen himself.  The police were not involved.  The village now have a very strict rule that only two men from the village can visit the yachts at anchor; Werry and one other.  Everyone else is forbidden.  The Chief and elders recognise that visiting yachts are positive for the village, and they need yachts to know they are safe there.  It was amazing to hear how communities can manage their own crime and misdemeanours; simpler in a small village, harder in a big busy city.  The other fascinating thing that Werry described to us was how easily new villages can begin in Vanuatu.  When one gets too big, some families will move to a new area, so long as someone owns the land, and a new village starts.  “It doesn’t cost any money to build a new village.  All we need is a saw, a knife, and some nails to build a house.  The coconut trees give us all the materials we need.”  Astonishing.

In Lanakal we saw how a plastic-free market works.  Large bags are woven from palm leaves.  Fast food is wrapped in banana leaves.  People bring their own bags – fabric or woven leaves – when they come shopping.  It looks pretty easy – I think we could take a “leaf” out of their book..  After our visit to Lanakal, driving across the space-like volcano plain, Werry dropped us with Kenny, who had lined up some friends, children and even a horse to take us up his extinct volcano.  We hiked and climbed for a couple of hours (and the kids rode on the horse quite a lot!) through stunning countryside and jungle-like rainforest, eventually reaching a dried-up lava cave with spouts in the roof and hundreds of bats inside.  It was an afternoon we’ll never forget. 

Kenny walked us back to his house, and we met his wife, Lyn.  She emerged in a cloud of smoke from her kitchen – a reed hut, completely separate from the house, where she had coconut husks burning at one end, and a big parcel of freshly prepared food bundled up in banana leaves at the other, ready to cook once the fire died down.  Lyn’s English was absolutely immaculate.  We chatted as her four children, aged 4-10, played football with ours in the dust.  She has a university degree and teaches English at the local secondary school.  I struggled to understand how it could be possible to manage a full-time job and four children, plus this hugely labour-intensive village life.  She was the first village lady with a career that I had met.  At least at home we have dishwashers, washing machines, fridges, electricity and childcare to make the juggle a bit easier.  Lyn admitted that it was almost impossible and that she spent all evening catching up on domestic tasks, only managing to sit down to do marking and lesson preparation around midnight.  Interestingly, she also commented that in Melanesian culture, parents often view their children as extra workers, whereas she and Kenny believe they should be allowed to be children, so they don’t force them to help with household chores in the way that other families in Vanuatu typically do.  I was in awe of this amazing lady’s capacity, and felt rather inadequate in comparison!  

There are lots of other people whose stories I would like to share, but it will be too much to read.  Perhaps I will write People of Vanuatu Part 2...  The amazing little lady I can’t finish without dedicating a full paragraph to is our darling Eloise.  Eloise had her ninth birthday last week.  Last year in single figures / half-way to eighteen – whichever way you look at it, she’s growing up fast.  It was a very simple birthday, and she was happy that we timed it to be in Port Vila, the capital city, where they have electricity and supermarkets.  We had Nutella pancakes for breakfast, followed by homemade cards and a few simple presents.  Her party consisted of a “walking quiz”, with 20 questions along the waterfront and around the town.  There were eleven children, aged between one and thirteen, and several adults taking part.  It’s an unusual age-mix for a nine-year-old’s party, but it was great.  It’s really lovely to see how boat kids of very different ages are really good friends, and how the little ones really look up to the older ones.  After the quiz, we all met by the dinghy dock for ice-cream and birthday cake, and the rest of the afternoon was free play on a small beach – climbing coconut trees, skimming stones, building sandcastles and chatting.  It was amazing to be able to receive messages from and speak to friends and family back home – thanks to everyone for making the effort – it really meant a lot to Eloise.  Happy ninth birthday to our kind, caring, funny, bookworm-ish, sweet singing, ukulele-strumming, strong-willed, awesome little sailor and our absolutely favourite daughter!

Lots of love from us all on the good ship Victoria xxxx