Luganville July 23rd until August 8th.
The time just slipped away during these two weeks. We were
on a mooring at Aore resort and spent much of our time enjoying the touristy
things on Santo, boat maintenance and generally socialising with resort guests
and other yachties.
Highlights included the Santo Rodeo with local plantation stockmen
competing against one another. The European plantation owners had good horses
with saddles but the stockmen rode bareback on their ponies with hessian sacks
for saddles. These sacks usually slipped out from under their bums before their
event was finished. This was a free event and the local people flocked to the
event to enjoy the fun.
International Children’s Day was on Friday July 24 and this
was a public holiday with lots happening for the kids throughout the nation.
The Vanuatu people are very loving towards their offspring, particularly when
they are infants and the local park was decorated in their honour with lots of
stalls and games. Some shops open for kids only to shop!
Independence Day was to celebrate 35 years of self-government
and the day was celebrated in every town and little village throughout the
nation.
In Luganville the local police and army were on parade to
the tune of a brass band and the local politicians were in their element making
speeches to the assembled throng. We watched for a while then wandered off and
missed the police playing with their AK47’s but we certainly heard the noise!
Di spent quite some time snorkelling with new friend Sue (off
S V Mawari), off the resort beach. Sue is a fantastic photographer and she
showed Di many interesting underwater fish and other creatures including large
cuttle fish. It is so nice snorkelling in water that is crystal clear and 27
degrees and the varieties of fish were never ending.
The main highlight for us during this period was the day
trip to the Millennium Cave.
After a 45 minute ride over 10 million pot holes we arrived
at a small village where our bus managed to get stuck in the greasy conditions,
so we walked the next 2 km to the main village where we were met by 4 guides.
Our party was probably 20 people and to get to the cave we walked for another 2
hours over a very slippery, muddy track which was very steep at times.
However the walk was worth it as the Millennium Cave is a
very spectacular 400m long limestone cavern, about 10m wide and up to 50 metres
high inside with a small river running through the full length. Our party waded
through the cavern in water about waist deep in places with torches for
illumination and bats for company. Quite an eerie experience.
Once we emerged from the cave we found the cavern river
joined a much larger river. We stopped at this point for lunch. We had left our
backpacks with some of the villagers at the top of the gorge before the climb
down into the cave and they had lowered them down into the gorge on ropes.
Once we had finished lunch they hauled them back up and
carried them back to the village.
Our group then enjoyed another 2 hours canyoning (clambering
over rocks) and swimming downstream through some spectacularly steep gorges
with numerous waterfalls flowing into the river.
We finally emerged from the river at a point below the
village. The trip back to the top of the gorge consisted of a climb up a
waterfall then a series of bush ladders. A lot of very tired but exhilarated
people finally re-entered the village where we were given hot drinks and fruit
to restore our energy.
One of our group slipped early on and fractured his wrist
but, with the assistance of some guides managed to complete the walk. Luckily
one of our party was an Orthopaedic Surgeon and he strapped the wrist then
accompanied the patient to the hospital after the event.
Di and I were very stiff the next day, but a day round the
pool and some liquid therapy soon restored us to normal.
We were now into departure planning mode and spent a couple
of days refuelling (carting 20 litre drums in the dinghy across the channel to
the local service station), then restocking food from the local stores.
Clearing out of Vanuatu consisted of a trip to immigration,
on to customs, on to the payment office, back to customs and back to
immigration for the final (handwritten) paperwork. A full morning’s work!
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