Arrival In Vanuatu

We set out early on Saturday morning for the airport, pausing only to pose with the dragon in the Departures hall and grab some breakfast. A short flight to Auckland and then we boarded Air Vanuatu for our flight to Port Vila.

Our flight was sparsely populated. As you are no doubt aware, Vanuatu was hit by Cyclone Pam in March of this year and is only now back on its feet in terms of tourism. Many of the buildings that were damaged were made with traditional materials, so rebuilding them largely consists of finding the constituent parts and putting them back together. The most obvious damage that still remains is missing tin roofs, which have been replaced with temporary plastic coverings until a new roof can be installed. The damage to the trees was apparent as we flew in to land. Unfortunately there’s not much they can do about that – it’s not economic to harvest the wood, so they’ll just be left to be grown over.

On arrival, it appeared that a full planeload of Aussies had landed minutes before us, so there was quite a queue to get through Immigration. We eventually found our way to the holiday rep, who presented us with a shell lei and a bottle of water. We then boarded a minibus to our resort, with the driver cheerfully explaining as we drove through Port Vila how there were no speed limits, no traffic lights, no drink-drive laws, and precious little else in terms of rules of the road. One group of Kiwis on our bus were amazed at how the steering wheel was on the wrong side of the bus, and they drove on the wrong side of the road!

We checked in and were taken to a “garden view” beach hut which would be our home for the next 7 days. Garden view means “not directly facing the beach” but we’re less than 100m from the beach, so not too concerned.

In the evening we went to the bar for a pre-dinner cocktail (Nicola) and beer (me) – well I was thirsty and wanted to try the local brew. It’s called Tusker, and has the slogan “Bia blong yumi", which means “our beer”, or, more literally, “beer belonging to you and me”. The local language is called Bislama, which is mainly pidgin English with a few other words thrown in.

We’d arrived too late in the evening to order the seafood platter, which had sold out, so settled for a ceviche-style fish salad followed by prawns in chilli & garlic sauce, which was adequate. There is an economic argument for the standard of the food – why cut into your profit margin by providing an outstanding meal, when your audience is largely captive, and your restaurant is full anyway?

Starting during dinner, and continuing afterwards, was a dancing display by Ni-Vanuatu dressed in “traditional” costume. This also involved some audience participation which we chose not to take part in, largely as we were still eating our dinner.

After dinner we went to find our hut in the darkness, and fell asleep to the sound of geckoes chirruping.