VANUATU, THE LAND OF COMPLEXITY IN SIMPLICITY/2: TANNA & EFATE ISLANDS
After visiting Santo, the next stop on our itinerary was the island of Tanna, the 3rd most developed of the Vanuatu archipelago after Efate, the main island and Santo, that we have written about in our previous post. Santo was already testing our limits, so we were a bit apprehensive about Tanna, but we'd heard incredible things about Mount Yasur, the most accessible active volcano in the world, which we were looking forward to seeing.
TANNA
On Tanna we had booked accommodation on airbnb with Rex - yes, if you wondered, people in Tanna do list some accommodation on airbnb, which we found rather fascinating as they often lack the very basics as well . Rex was already waiting for us by the side of the tarmac when we landed. We booked a couple of nights at his place to get some truly authentic local experience before moving closer to the volcano on the other side of the island.
In terms of transportation in Tanna, for now the only asphalt on the island is the tarmac on the airport landing strip, however we saw plenty of development taking place as the Chinese government is sponsoring the construction of the road network throughout the island - with Chinese equipment, Chinese supervisors and an occasional ni-Van labourer. Although locals will benefit from better transportation on the island, one of the criticisms of the Chinese development efforts that we heard from local expats was that the government doesn't mandate the employment and up-skilling of the Ni-Van workforce for foreign investment projects, so locals will never learn these skills to become able to develop the islands themselves in the future.
Rex drove us to his village of 40 people located in the middle of the island, North from the volcano. We shared the pick up with some other guests he had at his place, so Szilveszter could enjoy again the pleasure of travelling on the plateau on unpaved dirt roads. In return, he could much better see the wild horses of Tanna that we were lucky enough to encounter on the way. These beautiful, shiny horses live in the wild and no local is certain how they got there and why they roam freely.
Rex's family manages a home stay, which is one of the dozen accommodation options on the island. Everyone we met in Tanna knew who Rex from the Black Magic Village was (more about this later). He is able to run and grow an airbnb listing in the middle of nowhere (seriously) with the help of the local Mormon church's infrastructure, using their sun panels to recharge his old laptop and use his portable internet stick - impressive entrepreneurial spirit which is sadly unique on the islands. His family runs all parts of the business, his in law is the cook, his wife washes and cleans, the kids entertain the guests in the evening and take them out for tours, and various relatives drive you to organised tours including to the volcano.
We stayed in a standalone bungalow that he built himself and we had a shared garden toilet and another bamboo building where the (strictly only cold) water runs for shower. His home stay had a 'restaurant' too, a thatched hut with a few plastic chairs and a menu. The menu was a bit pointless though, as the writing never changed, and they didn't have any milk or eggs for most of the meals listed on it, as the city was too far to go shopping and, as mentioned in the previous post, Ni-Vans have no intention to collect the eggs of their own chickens or to milk their cows, they rather buy imported goods in the grocery store.
Our restaurant (left) and a hut in the village we stayed at (right)
Most tourists, if they ever make it to Tanna, only travel for a day trip to see the volcano, or for maximum a couple of days, as they want to see the volcano in the dark. There's limited information about what to do on the island, which is not that surprising as most activities that you can do here are for the limited number of extremely authenticity-driven travelers. We think that if you want to experience the atmosphere of a real remote island, it's absolutely worth ending your volcano visit with an extra day or two to speak to locals and see how they live.
Tanna has recently gained some fame due to the 2015 movie "Tanna" which was made on the island in Yakel, one of the few villages that still live the traditional tribal Ni-Van way of life, e.g. wearing clothes made from natural materials and following the "kastom" traditions. The movie won the Venice International Film Festival and was also nominated for the Academy Award. The story is the local version of Romeo and Juliet, where the couple falls in love with each other despite the tribal rules that they're expected to follow and they escape.from their families to get married. The people playing in the movie are real villagers who you can visit in Tanna. Interestingly, they have never watched a movie themselves before performing in one, as there's no such thing as a TV in most villages and they purposely refuse western influence. The participants did not find it difficult to play in the movie though, because they performed what they are used to in their daily lives. Due to the dirt road system which makes relatively short distances an eternity, we had to decide to skip Yakel, but we watched the movie and it gives a good insight into the basic but fascinating local life and some of the otherworldy scenery of Tanna, so we would definitely recommend watching it! Watch the trailer here:
Despite - on paper - the island not offering too much to do, we found that it offers great opportunities to get some local experiences. Here is an overview of what we did and what we've learnt about the locals:
Track around the village
We had a short walk around the surrounding villages guided by one of Rex's daughters. People live in conditions that are more basic than what we've ever seen in any other developing countries: in tiny bamboo huts with dirt floor, with a fireplace (I mean a corner to make fire inside the hut and not like the ones in houses in Western countries), a few pieces of clothes hanging around on the floor or on the wall and there's a bamboo mat on the ground as the bed. Clothes are often dried outside on the roof or on the grass around the huts.
Village homes in the jungle
We saw a bunch of kids running around in these villages, as families often have several kids and not all of them can go to school, which is chargeable, Each family has a little patch of the jungle (maybe 50x50m), where they cultivate their local crops. Everyone refers to this as their 'garden', where most of the people work full-time. We struggled to see how a land of this size could provide enough work for 2 people full-time... Animals, mostly dogs, chicken and pigs, run around freely - this is real free-range bacon and eggs -, while cows are usually tied up. Rex's son even had a little goat - also tied up... We woke up at the crack of dawn every day to his very persistent crying, which sounded very similar to a baby, so it took us a good while on the first morning to realise that the voice comes from an animal. We later learnt that the poor thing is still so young that it's just got separated from his mother and it was crying after her while being tied to the fence.
The countryside was dotted with clusters of 3-4 huts within 10 minutes' walk, no matter which way you started walking, so it turned out there were a lot more people living in the area than you would first think. In our 60-minute walking loop we passed 4 schools, all of which were run by one Christian denomination or another. Besides the schools, we also passed at least 4-5 kava bars (with no customers), although 'real' kava is the one you make yourself.
Well, we did not only pass some of the kava bars.. - The local "pub"
Family life
The village we stayed in is made up of Rex's 3 brothers and their families, each living 5 minutes walk away on the plot of land originally owned by Rex's father. Women become part of the husband's family when they marry, so all of Rex's sisters live with their husbands in the neighbouring villages. It was strange thinking that none of the women in the village have any blood relationship to anyone else (other than their children), while all the men are brothers. While there wasn't any sign of abuse in Rex's village, we heard that in Vanuatu, in general, women don't have a very strong social standing and domestic violence and incest are very frequent, to the point of being socially acceptable as being the husband's right. It was interesting to think about how the social set-up of women being completely separated from their birth family - probably unconsciously contributes to this vulnerability. The concept of a bride price is still a tradition in Vanuatu, although here the husband has to pay the father compensation for losing his daughter's labour. While recently a law was passed that this can't be more than the price of a pig, it is still a symbolic gesture showing that a woman can be bought or sold, which again probably doesn't help improve gender equality.
Excitement about the camera function on a mobile
No Concept of Time and Distance
We'd seen a thing or two when it comes to people having an imprecise grasp of time, but Ni-Vans have proven to be beyond imagination. A frequent question we got asked was how old we were (straight before asking how come we don't have kids yet if we are married and so old - you don't need to read between the lines in Vanuatu), after which they proudly shared their age, which inevitably seemed far more than what we would have guessed (e.g. a 52-year old person looking like they were in their mid-30s). They explained this by telling us about the various black magic recipes that slows down aging, for instance a drink which stops aging, so you need to drink it when you reach adulthood. Magic is part of other fields of life too; we particularly liked the idea of a drink that the local "doctor" makes from different leaves and soil for you to choose the sex of your child after conception (!) if you drink it before the 3rd month!
Eventually we started suspecting that something was amiss when the numbers started not adding up: The 52-year old man's children were aged 3, 5, 8 and 10 respectively (and Vanuatu isn't a country where people wait until 42 to have their first child), a younger brother was aged 68, and the father who died three years ago was 103, but was born after WWII. We learnt that registration of birth has not been in practice for too long, so it's not a surprise that locals can't keep track of ages.
We also realised rather early on that it is pointless to ask anything related to time, as 'years' and 'months' don't mean anything to Ni-Vans, possibly because the climate is quite similar during the year, so the only thing that changes is what fruits are in season and how much it rains. When we spoke to an expat judge, our host in Efate, who had moved to Vanuatu 2 years ago, she told us that when questioning a witness in a court case to determine when an event (e.g. a robbery or murder) occurred, it is usually impossible to reliably determine even the month, so the only option that might work was "Were mangoes in season?" or "Was it raining that day?
Shorter durations and distances didn't work much better either. Max would give us an oddly precise 12 minutes whenever we asked him how long it would take us to get somewhere - regardless of whether it was 2 minutes or 2 hours. That was actually the most confusing part: it wasn't that they consistently over or underestimated things, but you couldn't even use their estimates to judge relative distance, a village 'close by' could be hours away by truck on the other side of the island, while another village 'far away' could be a 20-minute walk. So eventually you stop asking..
Black Magic Tour
Rex's village is more commonly known throughout Tanna as the 'Black Magic Village', since it is also the location of the 'Black Magic Tour', which they came up with to entice some more visitors to the village. We'd heard positive feedback about it from fellow visitors who stayed at Rex's at the same time, so we decided to see what it was like. The setting for the performance was the 2nd largest banyan tree of the island, a tree with complex root system that is the heart of a village in many Asian countries. To be honest, the show itself was rather overpriced for what it was: while there were some interesting things we learned, we found it quite cheesy and struggled to see how it's related to black magic - the theme was about how the natives killed (and ate) each other and the missionaries, with the villagers jumping out of bushes to grab our ankle while we walked :D It was also funny to see Rex's family members in costume performing their role, who we'd seen around the village many times.
Demonstration of the cannibal era around the banyan tree
Two of the more interesting stories were:
They showed us how to create a stretcher capable of carrying a wounded person using nothing but leaves by laying them on top of each other (huh, magic!) - very handy if you can't construct anything more sturdy from wood as the noise would draw the attention of the enemy warriors hiding in the bush!
Being a missionary was a high-risk & high-reward job in the region, and some of them actually met their untimely end as victims of cannibals. Eating your opponents was not about nutrition, it was more a symbolic method to absorb their strength and thereby make you stronger, and was therefore reserved for the most respected enemies from opposing tribes and to ceremonial occasions. When the first missionary arrived to Tanna, some of the islanders accepted him, while others were opposed and set a trap. Someone jumped out of the bush and grabbed his leg, but the missionary was able to shake off his shoe and run away. Never having seen a shoe before, the cannibals were convinced they had gotten part of his leg and tried to cook it and eat it to become stronger; but no matter how long they cooked the leather it just didn't become edible. The chiefs interpreted this as a sign that they couldn't compete with opponents who could shake off their legs and make them become inedible too, and decided that they would listen to the missionaries instead, which is how Christianity got started on the island of Tanna,
As part of the tour, we also took part in a magic ceremony to make our love eternal (again, magic!), and Szilveszter was also made an honorary chief of the village (this is where we lost any connection to black magic...)! He had to dress the part too, which was one of the cheesiest parts of the show - some of the photos just got uselessly blurred as Renata could not stop laughing!
Waterfall
Far better than the Black Magic Tour was a trip to the nearby Lenuanatuaiu waterfall (there's a local, shorter name for it, which we can't recall). Rex only mentioned the place as an aside and wasn't too enthusiastic about it, so we were completely blown away when we arrived there a 30-minute bumpy ride and 1-hour trek later through the jungle. We told Rex he absolutely needed to put together a brochure with some pictures of the various hikes for his visitors since he was underselling the place! The water was very fresh (well, freezing cold...), but Szilveszter just couldn't get enough of swimming under the waterfall. On the way back we made a pit stop at a fruit tree while Rex and his wife started throwing sticks to knock the ripe fruit off its branches and got a bag of them! None of us, visitors could replicate this ancient method of finding food for ourselves in the bush!
Kava Bars
Kava is the traditional drink in the Pacific Islands, and quite uniquely has a sedative effect that is quite different from alcohol, It is made from the root of the kava plant in a slightly different way on each island. A more modern way of making it is to grind the roots and then soak it in a bit of water, while the traditional method involves chewing it to give it liquid and then spitting it out on a banana leaf. Once you have a nice pile, you pour some more water on it and filter it through a net made of coconut fiber, and portion it in little cups (around 100ml). If you drink one (no sipping, you gulp the whole thing in one go), your mouth will go numb, and before it wears off, you're meant to drink another, and another one. Since it's sedative, people apparently don't become aggressive after consuming too much, but they definitely get drunk. While we tried it a few times for the experience, we didn't test our limits, as it tastes very similar to drinking grass and soil.
Although traditionally kava used to be drunk as part of ceremonies and strictly by men only, by today it has become a daily event, and you can even buy it in kava bars, signposted by hanging up a red bucket in front of the shack by the road. At these establishments even tourist women can drink it (what is the world coming to...). Szilveszter was invited to the village nakamal, or 'men's gathering place', to drink kava in the evenings, and he had to try the one made in the traditional way, spitted out.... Besides all that, it was incredibly scenic watching the sun set with the huge banyan trees in the nakamal while sitting with the village chief and the local men and talking about the "important things" going on in the tribe. One of the banyan trees even had a bench carved inside it, it was made cosy so that men could spend long hours here..
Kava in preparation
Men gathering in the Nakamal for kava
Village eating
Based on what we'd seen elsewhere in our travels, we'd made the foolish assumption that tap water would either be potable, or if not, we would be able to buy water in the shops. To our initial surprise, when asked, everyone said "of course, you could drink the water" - giving us a strange look. It turned out that the concept of water being unsuitable for drinking doesn't exist in Vanuatu - you drink what you get. In the cities (Port Vila and Luganville) this wasn't so much of an issue because the houses had piped water, which we assumed was OK (a big assumption, I know), and you could also buy (expensive) bottled water. However, upon getting to Tanna there was no such luxury (neither water pipes, nor stores selling water), so everyone here has big plastic barrels collecting run-off water from the roof. We got the same answer here too when asking if it was OK to drink, and they even explained that they had a net to catch the leaves from falling into the water, so we could be sure it was clean! Not quite what we were looking for, particularly since the constantly falling volcano ash was also in the water, giving it a slightly yellowish colour and little black particles, but we had no choice... Luckily we got through it without any big issues,
In terms of food we were limited to what we got as well - probably there's no need to explain there are no restaurant in the area if there are no grocery stores. Rex's sister-in-law who was our chef prepared some interesting local dishes for us:
Laplap - the national dish of Vanuatu, which is a meal made of yam cooked in coconut milk, wrapped in a leaf - it can also be filled with meat in the middle and you can get it at the markets which is great for taking away too
Deep-fried grated potato that was very similar to what we would call rosti, but it is eaten for breakfast and not as a side
The traditional way of preparing laplap in the village: grating yam on the thorny side of a wooden stick
Purple laplap with boiled choco and coconut cream; Laplap variations on the market in Lenakel
Her other specialties seemed to revolve around yam in some sauce with some very chewy meat and enormous sides of rice and potatoes - so after the 3rd plate of the same meal we suggested that we preferred vegetarian dishes. The lack of variety of food seemed to be a consistent issue: Szilveszter never really liked pawpaws (papaya) and bananas, but he learned to eat them here as these were the only fruits available on Tanna.
The cook's list of recipes was so short that we crossed everything off it within two days, so while Szilveszter was drinking with the local men in the nakamal, Renata helped our chef with the cooking- division of labour Vanuatu-style. She had the idea to propose to make some rice with vegetables and canned mushrooms (that we kept from Santo as a back-up option for bad times), so that we get some of the tastes we're accustomed to. Luckily our cook was eager to learn how to make it to extend her repertoire for the next visitors.
The kitchen was very basic and the list of ingredients and spices was a short one (salt, pepper, potato, yam, chicken, rice and some jungle salad) so it was challenging to be creative. Our can of mushrooms from Santo, was considered an incredibly precious good in Tanna, which our chef had never tried before. In the very basic kitchen Renata saw how toast was made in frying pans, how to prepare choko fruit and jungle salad. The cook also explained how expensive any raw materials in the shops were - 40-50 vatu (0.5-0.6 AUD) for a single garlic or onion, as it's all imported from abroad!
After dinner, we exchanged stories about our respective ways of life with our chef. We learnt about wedding traditions and other events in Vanuatu, while we tried to explain what we do in our daily life. Renata was also asked if she works "something little" at all, as most Ni-Van women stay at home in the garden. We tried to explain in very simple terms what we do and how we live our every days which is so different from theirs. She also told us how they survived Cyclone Pam 3 years ago by taking refuge in the churches, which are the only properly built structures on the island. We found out that the flight to Tanna is only twice as expensive as the overnight boat that the locals take when they go to Port Vila to sell their fruit and vegetables. Life is expensive in Vanuatu for locals, so after all, even if they claim they don't need it, money overall serves them well.
We had long discussions with Max and her daughter as well, and learnt much about schools, villages and other aspects of life in Vanuatu. One night we even played cards with the children and taught each other new games before heading off to bed around 8pm - after all, you need to get a good night sleep to get up before 6am, when the goat wakes up! Impressively, there were no rats here.
Volcano - the majestic Mount Yasur
After enjoying Rex's hospitality, our next challenge was to cross the island and reach Mount Yasur - after all, that was the primary reason why we were in Tanna! Unfortunately, if you're not willing to hire private transport costing an arm and a leg from Rex's remote village, you have to wait on the side of the road to catch a truck going to the provincial capital, Lenakel. We had to wait for 2 hours by the side of the road to find a car driving to the right direction, because all the men were going in the opposite way for an incredibly important 'meeting' that the chief had called each day for the third consecutive day! We'd never been so happy at the sight of a truck before when it finally appeared, so we could run with it to the town to then change vehicles for a truck going towards the volcano. All in all, a trip which would have been 30km as the crow flies, ended up taking the majority of the day.
Visit to the Lenakel market on the way to Mount Yasur
When we got to Lenakel on the back of the pick-up, Rex passed us on to the care of a pastor from one of the villages around the volcano, so we settled down to wait again (along with 20 other workers) by the side of the road for a truck to come. After 30 minutes a truck miraculously arrived, so we climbed on to the back, along with the pastor and 8 other people. We then proceeded to stop at every single bench selling something along the way - from island cabbage to bananas, tapioca, kava and bread, and the back of the pickup truck just kept getting more and more full. Buying a branch of bananas and sharing them with our fellow passengers helped us make some new friends and start a conversation.
The pastor was very curious to learn more about our Western life. We had a bit of trouble explaining to him how we didn't actually own any farmland and didn't really have any desire to do so. This led to the tricky topic of land ownership - our audience was disapproving of the fact that you can buy and sell land in the West, since this apparently leads to such poor people as us who are left without any land! I tried explaining that we used to have 'a chief owning all the land' in Europe in the past too, but I'm not sure I managed to explain the concept of feudalism, because they were puzzled why we wouldn't want to go back to a system as fair as that.
Approaching the volcano and its ash cloud
We could tell we were nearing the volcano because our eyes started watering from the increased ash in the air stinging our eyes; however none of that could detract from the majesty of the volcano. One of our favourite vistas was the desolate ash plain surrounding the immediate area around the volcano, which then gave way to lush forests just a few kilometres later. If you want to spend more time here you can walk around the plain or come with an organised tour to ash board on the side of the volcano.
The majestic Mount Yasur with the ash plain around it (left, below) ; Ash boarding field on the side of the volcano (right)
Our transport dropped us off at the bottom of a hill that was leading to our village, so we had to walk up the hill for an hour with our backpacks... We were initially happy to stretch our cramped feet, but were quite quickly out of breath. Luckily everyone was able to lead us to 'Richard's bungalow', and we even picked up the housekeeper for the bungalow from the village we walked through (turns out the bungalows are unstaffed during the day). She helped organise an impromptu transportation for us to the volcano for the evening, as it turned out we had to arrive there by 16:00, which everyone forgot to mention who we talked to about the volcano visit. Why were we not surprised by this point!?
Volcano - the actual thing
By the time we arrived to the foot of the volcano the trucks taking people up the slope had already left, but the office was quite flexible, and they waved our truck through - Iucky, as we didn't want to miss out on the 10,000 vatu (125 AUD) entry fee per person! We'd heard that the volcano was sold to a private company a couple of years ago, which promptly tripled the entry fee over the past 2 years and have gone a bit too far. This was a twice higher entry fee than the highest one we had ever come across in our travels, 65 AUD for Machu Picchu. Tourists and even locals are complaining that the price rises have gotten to the point where it is impacting the number of tourists coming to the island - as clearly the volcano was the only real draw of why people would go to Tanna.
The truck was able to take us all the way to the top of the volcano on extremely poor roads, and you only had to walk the final few minutes to the rim - which is why it is called the world's most accessible volcano. There were no hand rails or anything, only 3 guides keeping an eye on people if they started to wander off - no overzealous health and safety regulations here! Once at the rim, we were left speechless by the constantly erupting lava displays and that we could see directly into the bubbling cauldron of lava when the sun went down - words won't do it justice so we'll just include some pictures. Funnily enough, we met 2 Hungarians on top of the mountain - a young girl who was doing a 2-year NGO mission living in a rural village with her husband and two children to translate the Bible to Bislama, and her brother who was visiting her. It turned out that her family went to the same church as my brother's best friend from high school - incredible how small the world is!
On arriving back at the bungalow, a hot dinner awaited us - that we didn't order to start with, it was just assumed we would want it - but these things just happen in Vanuatu, so instead of arguing with the cook we discussed the thrills of the day with a Russian couple who we'd just shared the experience with, all the while looking out over the panoramic views of Mount Yasur from the eating area. Finally, we had a shower in an outside 'box' made out of bamboo to wash the multiple layers of ash off - with our headlamps naturally as there was no electricity -, and then we settled down for the night - choosing to ignore the rats that had decided to make our acquaintance yet again. I never thought we'd adapt to it so easily!
Walk on the Ash Plains
We had another early start to the day the day after to watch the sunrise above the volcano and enjoyed our surprisingly luxurious breakfast of home-made doughnuts with peanut butter and Nutella (!) with instant coffee and the remaining fruit which we had bought the day before (we'd started buying grapefruit, bananas and avocados whenever we got to a market to reduce the risk of being forced to subsist on dried crackers). We discussed with the host that we would be taking the afternoon flight at 16:00, so we would need the transport at 12:00 to arrive to the airport at 14:00. The lady was nodding and agreeing vigorously so we felt reasonably confident we had gotten the message across. Or at least we thought so until the taxi showed up at 08:00 to take us to the airport. We were genuinely worried that if we sent the truck away now, they wouldn't show up at 12:00 again, but we decided to take the risk.
Sunrise view from our garden
We had originally wanted to leave our luggage at the lodge and walk down to the ash plains, get the truck to pick up our luggage from the bungalow and meet us on the ash plain - but after the events of the morning we felt these instructions would be far too complicated. So instead we just hiked down the mountain to see the ash plains and walked back up. We saw plenty of scenes of village life, from 5-year old kids carrying a machete with a 30cm blade in one hand and a squealing pig in the other, as well as people inviting us in for a drink of kava.
We were impressed by the otherworldy beauty of the Ash Plain
After our walk on the ash plains, we managed to get a bit lost on our way back (we still don't know how we did it, there were only 2 roads on the entire island!), but the locals couldn't really give us directions. They had no idea who Richard was, even though he was in the next village, and they kept trying to give us directions through the middle of the jungle, but we weren't comfortable getting away from the road. We made it in the end though after an extra hour of walk by going back to the starting point where we missed the turn, and miraculously the truck had come back for us too at 12.00!
Talking to the Tanna youth
In our ride to the airport, we tried telling our drivers about the many ways in which they could grasp the opportunities in Tanna, and create great organic products from the organic raw materials - after all the future of the island is in the hands of the next generation of his age! He told us it wasn't a bad idea, but he and his friends were actually too lazy and they would prefer to hang out in the jungle and drink coconut juice (his words not ours). So we're not sure if things will actually change for the better on the island with this mentality...
The flight and the airport was its own adventure: when we were in Lenakel on the way to Mount Yasur, we'd brought forward the date of the flight, since we quickly realised that Tanna has a finite number of activities and we were also longing for a bit of the civilisation that the main island, Efate had to offer. In retrospect this was also a good idea because the forming cyclone caused all flights after the one we took to be cancelled for 3 days, so we would have missed our international flight back to Sydney too! Anyways, when re-booking our ticket, the airline agent told us the flight would leave at 15:00, so we needed to check in at 14:00. Re-booking the ticket meant writing 'check-in 14:00' on my old pre-printed email, and refused to print off a new paper. Having seen a thing or two about local time management, I wanted to see it printed on a piece of paper, since he'd already told me check-in is at 14:00. Afterwards it turned out that when the airline agent tells you a flight is leaving at 15:00, it can mean anything from 15:00-15:59, or even 5:00-5:59. So we checked in and received our handwritten (!) boarding passes, and since there was no waiting room, we joined the other travellers and the 10 ladies selling peanuts and sitting on the grass in front of the terminal building. Luckily the wait wasn't too long, the flight turned out to leave at 15:45.
PORT VILA AND EFATE
Arriving in Port Vila, we managed to catch a minivan to a modern expat compound where we stayed in an airbnb room at Cybelle's place. After Santo and Tanna, it felt incredibly sophisticated that there were public minivans going to places in Port Vila and that we could stay at an apartment that's much more similar to our own with bathroom, hot water and no pests! When our minivan driver revealed he was a professional golfer for Vanuatu, and had worked in Australia picking fruit before (apparently golf doesn't pay as well in Vanuatu), we realised this was a very different place than the other two islands we'd been on! We actually had the most relaxing time here in Vanuatu that we spent relaxing and talking to our fantastic host, Cybelle, who helped us even better understand locals and reflecting on what we've been experiencing over the last days.
Cyclone Donna
Soon after we arrived back on Port Vila, all domestic flights were cancelled because of an approaching cyclone Donna (or hurricane as they are known in the Caribbean and Atlantic) that was gathering strength. We were relieved that we'd made it out of Tanna, as we had more confidence in the ability of Port Vila to withstand the strength of 300km/h winds, and also of the disaster response preparedness in the capital, should it hit our island. We saw the capital enter lockdown mode, as all the shops' and houses windows were boarded up, it felt very strange being out and about on our business. Cyclones are very unpredictable in that they can move quickly or slowly and change direction without any warning, so you could spend days preparing for one that ends up missing you - or it could accelerate and arrive overnight. This one was coming in from the North, and slowed down over the Banks Islands and Espiritu Santo (slower cyclones are bad news because they use the time to gather more strength, and also cause more damage if they are stuck above where you are). We received automated text messages every two hours informing us about the latest position, speed and severity of the cyclone, but we were lucky in the end that it ended up avoiding Port Vila entirely.
Port Vila
However, even if the storm itself avoided us, it has a radius of hundreds of kilometres, so the sky was dark and uniformly cloudy and rainy during our whole time there - a spooky spectacle! This didn't stop us from going to see everything there was to see on the island, from the market, where vendors from all around Vanuato gather to sell their products. to the Tanna Coffee Factory (finally, this is where they bring all the coffee from Tanna!)
Port Vila market; Tanna Coffee factory and art shop; local coffee variations in the large grocery store (!)
In Port Vila we saw how some of the expats are starting to build businesses around the organic produce from Vanuatu (such as jam, coffee, chocolate, coconut oil and cosmetics), but they were still teeny-tiny businesses just getting off the ground. We heard how hard it is to run a business in Vanuatu from the unpredictable and corrupt government (Vanuatu last made headlines when 14 out of 52 members of Parliament were sentenced to jail for corruption - they didn't bother hiding anything as they didn't feel they had done anything wrong) to unreliable suppliers and infrastructure and the small size of the market. We heard there used to be a dairy company making milk on Vanuatu, but they shut down after someone started stealing their cows at night... It was encouraging that some people were trying to help Vanuatu bring the most out of its attributes, but it was discouraging to see that it was again the expats who had the ideas and implemented them. Again and again we saw that locals were so disconnected from the rest of the world they didn't see the opportunities or wanted to take advantage of them once they had been pointed out - this gave us a newfound appreciation for human capital as the foundation of a nation's development.
National Museum
As a perfect activity for a rainy day we decided to check out the local National Museum too in Port Vila. They clearly weren't prepared for someone showing up a mere 30 minutes after the designated opening time, so we had to wait another 30 minutes for them to open. A lot of artifacts are displayed here about the myriad of traditions of the individual islands. Each island used to be its own world, but with distances opening up and people caring less about preserving them, it is staggering how quickly the various languages, traditions and cultures are dying out. We saw beautiful face masks that no one knows how to make any more, and read about traditions that only 1-2 elders have witnessed when they were young. I guess all this had gradually happened thousands of years ago in Europe as peoples' culture and priorities shifted - but it was still sad to see it happening so quickly and on such a scale.
A special art that is still practiced is carving boar tusks - actually boar tusks are a traditional form of money. The longer the tusk and the more curved it is, the more valuable - really prized tusks have up to 3 complete loops! In a nod to tradition, Tangbunia Bank on the island of Pentecost has deposit accounts in hand-woven mats, shells and boar tusks as opposed to Western-type currency. Szilveszter was very disappointed that we didn't visit Pentecost and to see the bank and the land-diving practiced on the island (which was the activity which inspired a New Zealander to invent bungee jumping). This is a spectacle every year in April-May when men construct large wooden towers, tie carefully measured vines around their ankles and jump off the towers - if they calculated correctly, their hair grazes the ground, demonstrating their bravery and ensuring a plentiful yam harvest. We felt that on this occasion less was more as we didn't want to rush through the rest of the islands.
In the Museum we also saw a demonstration of sand drawing, a traditional art that is being passed on from generations to generation in Vanuatu. The beautiful and complex motives drawn in the sand are mainly animals, and the art represents a world heritage that has been recognized by the UNESCO. In the museum we also found some of the nicest art souvenirs in the city for our taste.
The fact that there was so much rain was a double bonus at the beautiful Mele Cascades, one of the most reputable destinations around Port Vila, as we had the whole place nearly to ourselves, and there was a huge amount of water in the waterfall, you could even swim in it! It's not like we would get wetter than we already were! It's located not too far from the city, so you can easily get there by public mini van.
On our last day Cybelle, even drove us to the other side of the island, to see the Blue Lagoon, the prettiest blue hole of the island, and potentially even the nicest in the whole Vanuatu, which would have been quite a journey to get to by public transport. We're so glad we made it here too though, as it was definitely one of the most beautiful blue colored lakes we have ever seen! Szilveszter also loved the swing into the pool - although he didn't quite master the backflip... We were lucky to get there just in time to enjoy an hour or so of the fantastic scenery before a huge storm reached us.
Blue Lagoon - Szilveszter's backflip performance just before hitting the water - straight on the back :D
Nightlife on Efate
Vila has a bunch of restaurants catering to the expat crowd so we decided to treat ourselves to some nice lava rock dinner. What was incredible is that its Australia-level price tag wasn't substantially more expensive than the run-down shacks where we had eaten something basic in Port Orly - but there was no comparing the quality and the ambiance.
To say good-bye to Vanuatu with style, we attended the place to be on a Saturday night: a charity helping develop employability for disadvantaged Ni-Vans, taught a group to create a fire show, which caught on like... wildfire. They have since become independent calling themselves the Mele Fire Boys, performing every week on the beach in front of the Beach Bar. It is a gathering event for tourists and expats living in Port Vila, and it is such a fantastic performance that it's definitely a do-not-miss if you're in town!
The Fire Boys show - the place to be on Saturdays
As we boarded our plane - relieved that the cyclone had missed us - we were full of very mixed feelings: the satisfaction of having gained a much better understanding of the traditional Ni-Van way of life and traditions, which was the primary purpose of our visit, the wonderment at people and a country which is the most disconnected from the world that we had ever seen, and an appreciation for the difficulties a country faces when trying to integrate into the world and catching up in development without accepting its consumerist and materialistic aspects and without sacrificing even more of their traditions - it is undoubtedly a land of complexity in its own simplicity.