Its a long long story – day 5 & 6 Vanuatu

 

Day 5

DJD was ill!!! He was aching, fever, sore throat and no sleep. So we cancelled our trip to the island of Lelepa and got him some drugs, dose him up, let him rest for the day and hoped he is well enough for tomorrow to do the island tour.

Met a guy at the waters edge as we watched a couple of locals throw a net out to catch the tiny silver fish which they used for bate

he had won a fishing competition and was from Wellington also. He was here for 7 days of fishing, chartered tours, he said he hadn’t been catching very much and hadn’t seen any sign of Marlin.  What a prize to win djd was drooling at the mouth and pulling his pouting face at me “told you I should have brought my fishing rod”

Sunset Vanuatu style…..not even a spectacular one but so romantic….shame somebody was too ill to enjoy.

Day 6

DJD drugged up and rearing to go!!! So off to Lelepa Island, 30 minutes drive from Port Villa on their most interesting roads. We were picked up from the resort with another couple who were from Auckland. They also had won their trip!!! But was only 5 days, so they flew in Saturday, late, and will fly out Wednesday morning early….so in effect that gave them 3 days only….nice prize but in reality they should have extended their stay. Anyway nice people, our age so we got on ok.

The trip to Lelepa is run by the people of the island and you go over and they give you lunch and you can go snorkeling and fishing if you want. The drive over is over the main roads, only you could be forgiven thinking you were in the back roads of Efate as they are not sealed and there are so many pot holes the driver was ducking from one side of the road to the other to avoid them….but this all just adds to the charm of the day if you ask me. I think they have probably avoided these pot holes so often they could be blindfolded…but thankfully they aren’t!!

We arrive at the point where we will be taken over to the island and two very nice island gentlemen are there to be our guides.

the one facing us is called Brownie and for the life of me I can not remember the name of the older gentleman. The harbour is called Havana and it is just beautiful. From the mainland you stand and look at two islands one being Lelepa (the one in the photo) and the other one is Moso.

The beautiful sparkling Havana Harbour

As we are trundling across the harbour on their boat the guys throw out the fishing rods in the hope of catching some fish, there is much banter about this being our lunch and if we don’t catch any we will go hungry today 😉

They then hand the poles to the visitors and hope they bring them better luck!! The depth of the water apparently is over 100metre and you only have to go about 2 metre’s from the shore line and it just drops away….rather spectacular.

My fisherman…but no fish

I asked if they have any sharks in the area and I get a rather reserved answer of no….well occasionally but they don’t like whities 🙂

We were dropped off at a beach area to walk over to the other beach area where we

would be snorkeling and having lunch.

This beach was used in part of Survivor Vanuatu, now you could be forgiven in thinking that those poor people had been placed onto a dissolute island to survive the hardships of island life, but as you can probably guess that just was not the case. They were ferried around from island to island to perform various tasks. They were taken to one beach on one island to perform the challenges, then they were taken to another beach on the main island to go to tribal council and then they were taken to the beaches on another island they were staying on!!

And this is also the spot where the current Celebrity Australian survivor is being filmed. There is much talk about the fact that they were used for the taping of survivor and the fact that the French had just been and filmed one and now the Australians.

Brownie walks with us and tell us interesting facts as we go, he becomes all very serious and he is determined to tell us all the things of interest on the way between beaches, a walk of 5 minutes which stretches into 20 as he tells us all he needs to.

It was really interesting though, he explains about a bush that they have that when it flowers it means that it’s not good to go fishing. Why would a tree on land give them a sign to not go fishing you may ask yourself as Brownie was certain that we were asking ourselves that very question. Well the answer my friends is that when that tree flowers so does the coral in the sea and therefore the fish then become poisonous and no longer edible.

Then there are the hornets that tell them when a cyclone is coming. The hornets make their nests high in the trees but when a cyclone is coming they go low on the tree close to the ground less than 50cm and that is their sign to batten the hatches so to speak.

There is a tree, a type of hibiscus, where when a woman is pregnant but the baby is facing the wrong way they strip the bark and use the inner bark to give to pregnant woman to turn the baby. That’s because it was slippery and would make the baby turn. Um ok!!

Then there is a bark of another tree they chew when they have pain in their teeth as it’s an anesthetic and numbs the mouth.

There is also a frond that comes from a palm tree kind of plant which is also a symbol on their national flag which if placed at the entrance of anywhere, property, driveways, walkways etc this signifies a taboo area (prohibitive)  and you are not allowed to enter and if you do the natives will probably chase you away!! And I say if the natives are chasing you away run for your lives after all back in the bad ole days they eat the missionary’s in Vanuatu!!!

There is a tree they use which has a rather dark wood they use for their canoes. It takes them years to hollow it out with their stone axes.

Then there are the coconut crabs. These are now a protected creature as they have been extensively harvested and eaten. We did not realise this 7 years ago when we were here the last time and we had our last meal that had a coconut crab…we would never have ordered that meal had we know this.  Brownie told us the story of the coconut crab. They live in caves and only come out at night time, but best to hunt them at sundown. A coconut is placed at the entrance of the cave. The crab can smell the coconut and will back out of the cave to find it. Backing out means that if they need to escape they just quickly run forward back into the cave, but what they do is have the flesh of the coconut facing away from the entrance of the cave forcing the crab to have to turn around and have their backs to the cave meaning they would have to turn to escape and therefore giving the hunter more time to catch the crab!!

Brownie showing us a crab cave and how the coconut goes

We arrive at the other beach and the couple we were with wanted to go fishing and not snorkeling so off they went in the boat, oh how I could see djd dithering as to what to do. He wanted to go fishing but didn’t want to miss the chance to go snorkeling. We stayed and snorkeled.

Our beach 🙂

Have I mentioned before that I had never been snorkeling before coming to Vanuatu and it just fascinates me? There I am swimming around like a school girl calling djd over to me all the time to show him the wonderful fishes that I have seen. So many colours so many different sizes and although they don’t swim up to you some don’t exactly scarper for cover either so you get to see quite a bit of them helped of course by the fact that the water is just so clear. Such a range of sizes for the fish as well, from the tiniest ones I can only make out because they are so bright in colour to the bigger ones that swim lazily by.

After about an hour or so of snorkeling we head to shore to have lunch. They have fired up the old bbq and put some of the “best beef” steak on the Barbie to cook up for us as well as a few good sa

usages, salads and bread. We certainly had swum up a hunger so were very pleased to see the food. We ate before the others arrived back and then had time to lounge about the beach.

Our lunchtime cafe

Time to take a few more pictures and as we sit there the wonderful geeko’s with the bright blue tail appear from nowhere. These are the lizards that we had seen many years ago on the mainland. So glad to see them over here. Fast little devils though, not that easy to get a picture of.

The others came back and had even caught a few fish, I wont talk aboutthis too much the jealousy in djd face was not pretty nor is the baracuda they caught.

Look at those teeth

My mum always taught me to go potty before you go on a long trip but mum I think I shall miss this one

Time to move on, they have a cave to explore!! Quick boat trip and a short wonder up from the beach and there is a cave. This cave has many stories to tell but the main two are these. Many years ago when the islanders become ill and old the village people would put then in the cave to basically die. Sounded awful and it truly probably was. The other fascinating thing about the cave was it had bats!! Tiny little things that flew over our heads. Was a really exciting cave and not hard to access but we did have to watch out for ghosts!!!

Spot the bats

We continued around the island on the boats and stopped off to feed some fish who were extremely used to be fed. We had decided to get changed back at the spot where we had lunch and so didn’t jump in the water with the fish being fed and on second thoughts this was a bit disappointing as it looked really fascinating. Although we really enjoyed out snorkeling etc I think the other couple did the right thing by going fishing and then snorkeling with the fish we were feeding…well the guy did I should say, no way was his wife going to get in that water.

We carry on our journey to the village of brownie. Here they gave us afternoon tea,  a very welcome hot drink. Here they had there wares out on display for sale. They certainly were not cheap but you realise that this is a way for them to make their living so we brought a few things and felt happy we were supporting them.

Children in the village

The people of Vanuatu are not really shy about getting their photo’s taken and the kids are just wonderful to capture on film (so to speak!)

Back on the boat ready to be taken to the drop off/pick up point. Once again the line is put back into the water in the hope of catching a fish and this time we got lucky!!!

Past the Australian Survey tribal council spot where we see the contestants walking the path to the council.

Back to the bus to take us back to Le Lagon…..what a great long wonderful day we have had. I could not recommend this trip enough to people who are going to Vanuatu.

As a post note, we have been saddened to read recently that the beautiful harbour known as Havana is to probably get a refinery built there with large oil tankers docking there….oh how Vanuatu is changing everyday and in most ways not for the better…progress??