Vanuatu (pt 2) Sept 16 2007

Hi everybody.Lots happening here in Vanuatu, so this will be a bit long, but for those ofyou who may only read a few words before getting tired of our tales, I havea book to recommend. It will at the least entertain you and, at best, givethose of you who can't understand what the hell we're doing out here, aninkling of what our lives and motivations are. The book is "Getting Stonedwith the Savages, a trip through the islands of Fiji and Vanuatu", by J.Maarten Troost. Very funny, but true. Read it!!!Now back to our favorite subject, us. We left you with Rose in thevegetable garden on Epi and Rendezvous with a broken autopilot (we now havethe part--just haven't gotten around to installing it). We left Epi tobegin to make our way further north to Espirito Santo. We were heading toMalekula, one of the larger islands and the beginning of shark attackterritory. In our on-line cruising guide for this place, there was apicture of the local dock with "SHARK ATTACKS" painted on the side.Malekula is also known as the cannibal's island, and the last reportedincidence was only 30 years ago. That's reported. It was aFrenchman--anyway, we don't figure they just stopped all of a sudden--like Isaid this is National Geographic stuff here. It was a short sail over toPort Sandwich from Epi, and we had a field day fishing, getting 4 nice sizedtuna on the way. Since we're having a good bit of success and these wereskipjack which aren't too good, we decided to give them to the localvillagers. Makes it easy as well, since they eat everything and we don'thave to clean the fish first--tuna are extremely bloody. Joey gave themaway as he walked up to the local store about a half hour away. In return,we got some eggs and saw loads of pigs, cattle, chickens, etc. This is areal subsistence 3rd world place!!! A local guy asked us to shore thatevening for Kava, but we were too tired and opted out. Needless to say, wedidn't go swimming and left the next day for a hop up the coast of Malekulato a place called Wala Island. It was supposed to have a resort, but it hadfailed, and there were just dilapidated buildings around. We were justthere for the night, but about 10, there were some big lights in behind usand the local tramp steamer pulled in. Turned on all the outside lights soas not to get run down, and this was probably a good idea as the crew seemeda bit tipsy.Next day, Saturday, was a short 4 hour trip up to Santo, the second city ofVanuatu and the old HQ for the allies in WWII. We actually entered throughthe only pass that wasn't mined during the war, and we're still trying tofigure out how aircraft carriers and battleships made it in there! Wepicked up a mooring across from Santo (officially called Luganville) at AoreIsland Resort and hopped their free ferry over to Santo to check it out andsee customs (this is sort of like Fiji where you need to check in in eachdistrict) Customs was closed, and the whole town reminds one of a brokendown mining town in an old western. Once a bustling wartime boom town, itis now nothing but a rundown dump. We hustled back to Aore for a nice steakdinner at the resort. Ran into our friends, Tom and Katie from Mariner IV,who were on their way back to check out of the resort. (They were all bentout of shape because they thought they had negotiated a deal to leave theboat there for 3 weeks, but the resort reneged on the deal. This meant theywould have to sail all the way back to Vila and then back up to Santo againfor the boss. We guess they worked something else out somewhere as the boathasn't appeared back here in Vila.) Anyway, all was not lost in thisgodforsaken part of the world as they have the largest accessible intactwreck, the Coolidge, as a dive sight.This dive on Sunday was one of the highlights of our trip. Rose doesn'tdive, so she stayed on board. The dive company meets you at the Aore ferrydock and drives you to the office for the requisite paperwork. Then it'sabout a 20 minute drive up the coast to their private property with thewreck 50 yards off the beach!!! After the dive, you drive back and theygive you coffee and rolls while you wait for the 11:30 ferry. Great dealfor $35!!! The dive itself is spectacular. This is a 600+ foot longconverted cruise ship to a troop transport lying on its port side. Thecaptain, for whatever reason as there are many versions, decided to enterthe harbor through the wrong pass, hit a mine and sank. There was littleloss of life as they were right offshore. Anyway, you start on the bow inabout 30 feet and fairly quickly get down to about 130. There's all sortsof cool stuff like old shells, gas masks and even a bank of urinals, allwell preserved, just lying around. We did have a bit of excitement asJoey's air gauge decided to fail at about the 130 mark and he had to finishthe dive on the divemaster's octopus. I ran low as well and shared air withanother guy on the way up. It was all very professional with 2decompression stops and extra tanks in the water at that point so I guesslow air is a frequent occurrence.With nothing to keep us in Santo and the big magic festival coming up onWednesday in Ambrym, off we went on Monday back to the south. We were verylucky the winds cooperated and were out of the east so we weren't beatinginto it. We had rain, sun and easterlies so made it a bit further thanintended down to a secluded bay called Crab Bay. Caught a nice Mahi on theway, which is rapidly becoming our favorite fish--beautiful in the waterwhen catching it and really tasty to eat. Crab Bay used to have a copraplantation, but is deserted now with a beautiful beach and well protectedanchorage. It had the advantage of being due west of Ambrym, so, eventhough we had to motor into easterly winds the next day, we were in the leeof the island with fairly calm seas. We hooked some giant fish that broke a1" diameter jury rigged wood outrigger, moved the bolted down rod holder itwas in and snapped our 130 pound test hand line. Major bummer, but I don'tknow what we'd do with something that big anyway!!Ambrym is the "mystical" island with 2 active volcanoes and traditionalvillages. The festival, which involved an hour walk each way into thejungle is their way of making money now that copra is dying out. It wasvery cool, and several other yachts were there to attend. We're talkingguys in nambas (banana leaf penis shields with their nuts hanging out) andtopless women with grass skirts. All sorts of local dances, sand drawing,local magic Siegfried and Roy need not worry) and flute exhibitions, andmuch more which is too long to go into here. The captain rubbed his footraw on the walk the first day (Took 2 weeks to heal up as Vanuatu and theS.Pacific are known for nasty infections.) and had to pass on the third daywhich had the Rom Dance which is a highly sacred ritual with some kind oftotal body grass outfits. Definitely worth it and the real thing. They'reprobably still eating people not far from where we were!! The last night,the local chief invited us all to the beach for kava. We hadn't yet triedVanuatu kava which is supposed to be much stronger than Fiji's or Tonga's.Basically the difference is they don't dry the root before grinding it up.Used to be it was pre-chewed by pre-pubescent boys and then squeezed into abowl before adding water. Now, we hope anyway, they use a mortar andpestle. So--we have one bowl (a split coconut shell). Nothing. We haveanother. Nothing. Now this stuff is not exactly tasty. Sort of likepeppery muddy water. Joey, of course, is pounding these things--big manright. So the captain decides to have a third bowl. From stone sober toweak kneed and slurring in about one minute. Barely made it back to theboat. Fortunately, I was not worshipping the porcelain goddess or feedingthe fish like my son and most of the other cruisers who were overserved.Cheap high at $.50 a cup!!!Now, it's about the 26th and we needed to get back to Vila to meet up withRose's friend, David who was arriving on the 1st, so off we went back toMalekula to an island group, the Maskelynes, on the south shore. All theway back to Vila would have involved an overnight sail, and we didn't feellike hassling ourselves with that. Besides, these islands had a beach withmagic stones that, Rose, our resident gypsy, wanted to collect. If you bangthem together, a blue spark emanates and the weather turns bad. One couplewe talked to tempted fate and were stuck there for three days while the restof Vanuatu had beautiful weather. It was another 80 miles back down toHavannah Bay (About 20 miles from Vila) so we got an early start withcooperating winds which by now had swung north exactly as we'd hoped.In Havannah Bay, the lone Vanuatu patrol boat was checking all the boats'papers, and one poor guy must have had drugs or something. They spent aboutan hour--with 7 guys--on his boat, and then stood off all night and followedhim to Vila at 6AM next day. We, on the other hand, had all in order andeven gave them a tuna and barracuda we'd caught on the way in. They spentabout 10 minutes on our boat. We had an uneventful and quick sail back toVila the next day. But, just as we were entering the bay, we hooked anotherbig one. This one threw the 8o (i.e. very large) hook after bending ithalfway straight. Wait minute. Check the hand line and another one's on.This time, Moby Dick broke 100 pound test. I'm not kidding there are somebig fish here, and maybe that's why they even get great white sharks inthese waters.Okay, we're getting close to the end!!!! Back in Vila we ran into ourfriend, Paddy from Zafarse, and managed a few cocktails. Due to theridiculous costs of dockage in Sydney, we decided to do a rally he's in fromNew Caledonia to Bundaburg, which is about 600 miles north of Sydney andreduce the time we're spending there. No matter where I checked, a slipthere was at least AU$3,000/month without electricity. That's triple thecost of Auckland and, thanks to our current administration, almost 3 grandUS!!! That's more than I paid for the entire season in Chicago! And I gotfree cable.Let me digress for a moment to politics because, well, because it's myletter and I can. Also, I'm out here taking shit as an American and payingevery day for the deterioration of our currency. I think I'm becomingliberal in my old age, and this will delight some of my friends--you knowwhoyou are--who are somewhere to the left of Teddy Kennedy (for you non UScitizens, that's left of Marx). Sure, I've always been pro choice and nevercould understand the flap over gay marriage. Who cares? But, the lastdemocrat I voted for was Jimmy Carter, and I still think that George was abetter choice than Kerry or Algore. Nonetheless, this stupid war is killingme in the pocket book and I'm definitely not happy. Oh, you can argueBush'smotives for going to Iraq. Some of you are convinced it's a conspiracy withbig oil, or Halliburton or revenge for his father's sake. But few of uswouldargue it wasn't good that Saddam was kicked out. What I don't understand iswhy we're still there. Even my moderate liberal friends, not to mention thehard liners out there, believe we just can't destroy a country'sinfrastructure and then leave. Oh, they say, we'd lose face and the rest ofthe worldwould think we're awful. Well, let me tell you, with what has and is goingon, we have no face left anyway, just an ass the rest of the world wants tokick. We are never going to "Marshall Plan" an Arab country, because theyare not "western culture", and never will be. We have as much likelihood ofcreating awestern democracy there as we would in China, and you would think the idiotsin Washington learned that from Nam. We should get the hell out of thereand regainat least a sound economy since it will take years to grow a new "face",regardless of what we do now!!! Okay, that's the war. Now let's talk aboutthedrug companies. I used to ridicule the democrats for vilifying these guys asI, at least, used to be a staunch capitalist. Also I've worked inbusiness my whole life and am fairly confidant that all the conspiracy crapyou liberals throw out doesn't happen. However, why is it that the samedrug here in Vanuatu or NZ from the same company costs a fraction of that inthe States. These are not big government negotiations with loads ofbuying power like Canada or the UK. No, these drugs companies know ourscrewy health care system will pay the bill, so they buy market share bycutting prices in the entire rest of the world and letting the Americanconsumer pay the price. I'm not kidding you. One pill I needed for afungalinfection, Lamisil, is something like $10 a pill in the US and I paid lessthan $1 each in NZ, and that wasn't the even cheaper "National Health", butthe tourist price. These guys should be shot!!!Whew, I feel better now. So, we've been just sort of hanging out here inVila for a couple of weeks. We got a great view of the Luna Rosa eclipse ofthe moon, a first for all of us and really cool. Later,while Rose and Iwere at dinner one night, Joey and a buddy answered a damsel in distress whowas single handing and having trouble getting into the harbor at night. Joewent on board while the other guy hung nearby in the dinghy. There's twoversions of what happened next. Joe's is as soon as he got on board, hetold the chick to tack, and before they could come around, she ran themaground. Her version is that he came aboard, gave her bad advice and that'swhy she ran aground. Joe's friend verifies his version. This is a youngpolish women singlehanding around the world. Apparently she's married tosome Hawaiian guy she just met up there--too bad for Joe, the knight inshining armor. Then again, there was Sir Lancelot.Rose's friend, David, was delayed a week to attend a tax hearing in NZ, buthis traveling companion, Sue Ella, did arrive. We had dinner, the girlsshopped, and we all went out to the "Cascades", a waterfall about 1/2 hourout of town. We figure these are about the best falls we've seen, and theyeven had a guy rappelling down one of the side channels. So often one getsripped off and the falls are about 5 feet high or a 4 hour walk away in thejungle, but these were all they were cracked up to be. An easy 1/2 hourhike up through beautiful scenery and rapids, then the 100 foot fallsthemselves you could actually walk into and under. Really good. We alsohad some excitement with one of Joey's young friends. Seems they were outdrinking verrrrrrrrry late. Joe came back, but about 8AM, I get a callfrom this guy, Alan--18 years old, totally drunk, wanting Joe. He calledback about three times before I could get Joe up, and then he finallydinghied over to the boat clad only in boxer shorts. While almostincoherent, the story is he was on his way back to the harbor and some guysheld a knife to his throat and robbed him. Took everything, even hisshoes!!!! To shorten this up, he didn't see any point in going to the cops,and Joe finally took him back to his own boat. However, something wasrotten in the state of Denmark. Did I forget to mention that along with hisboxer shorts, he still had his nice imitation gold watch on. Wait a minute.Anyway, our theory is he was in bed with some chick when her husband,boyfriend, father walked in, and he did a runner out the window. Later thatday we confronted a more sober Alan and, of course, he denied everything,but we think the case is closed!!!Alas, not for you, but for me, I have come to the end of our story thistime, and we're getting ready to leave Vanuatu for New Caledonia sometime inthe next few days. We'll check out tomorrow and hit the duty free shops asbooze is very cheap here duty free. A fill up with diesel and water, andwe'll be ready to go. Forgot to mention the water maker is acting up again,but, fortunately, we have only a short 200 mile sail to New Cal so itshouldn't delay our departure.Cheers to allTim, Rose and Joe