This and That

I learned this afternoon from Barbara on S/V Destiny that the volcano on Tanna Island, Vanuatu has had a major eruption. Google search provided news that the officials are considering evacuating the 6,000 inhabitants. There was a 7.2 magnitude earthquake on 31 May 2010. A tsunami warning was issued, but apparently nothing developed because I don't find any news about it on the internet. Barbara and Frank had hoped to sail from Fiji to Tanna Island in a few weeks and do the popular tour around the volcano crater, but doesn't look like they will be doing that now.

Mt. Yasur volcano has been unusually active for the past 3 months. Now there is an ash plume/cloud almost 2 kilometers high spewing up from the volcano and the local water supply is contaminated by ash. Our thoughts go out for the villagers on that tiny island. We visited the top of Mr. Yasur last May. Thankfully the 'old man was asleep' on the night we visited the crater...........meaning that the century-old continuous eruption was very slight. And that was active enough for us! As I said at the time, walking around the crater of an active volcano was not the most intelligent thing we have ever done -- but I sure am glad we had the experience. We hope the 'old man' goes back to sleep very soon and the lives of the jungle inhabitants are not too disrupted by this latest display of the Ring of Fire.

It appears that we will be taking the grandchildren to Thailand after all. The recent political protests by the Red Shirts is apparently over, so it should be safe in Bangkok again.........at least as safe as any large city normally is. This afternoon I sent email inquiries to the appropriate offices about purchasing the train tickets. Our plans take us on an all-day train from Johor Bahru to the Butterworth station at Penang; spend one night in Penang; and the next afternoon board the overnight train to Bangkok. This should be an adventure for our two 9-yr-old grandchildren. We will spend 4 nights in Bangkok before taking a daytime express train to the northern city of Chaing Mai. After 5 nights in Chaing Mai we take an overnight train (hopefully with private sleeping compartments) to Bangkok. That is as far as we are willing to commit to at this point. We have also reserved the Bangkok hotel for an additional 3 nights on the return trip, but we will see how much we enjoy Bangkok before finalizing that portion of this trip.

Bill and I are each over the age of 60 so we qualify for the senior ticket price on trains in Malaysia, which is the same price as a child's ticket. Unbelievable to us, the total price for all 4 of us to take the trains from Johor Bahru to Bangkok (about 1250 miles) is a whopping $165 USD!! And that is in the top class of service available on each train. Malaysian trains and Thai trains are not of the same class or new age of the trains we rode in China, but the grandkids should enjoy the novelty. They are both from Texas and trains are not a normal mode of travel in their world.

Less than 2 days until we move the boat from Malaysia back over to Singapore! I am so excited about this. Seems rather silly to be excited about motoring only 22 miles to another marina, but we have been docked here since Nov 3 and it will be wonderful to be out on the water again for a few hours..........even just motoring along the coast to One Degree 15 Marina in Singapore.

Looking forward to seeing granddaughter Elisabeth (a/k/a BeBe) and her mother Lynn at the airport around midnight Saturday. And then meeting grandson Zachary at the airport at 05:45 Sunday morning. He is flying as an unaccompanied minor and is routed through Moscow. Do hope he stays awake during that portion of his flight so he can see Moscow from the air.

Zachary arrives tomorrow! and another Vanuatu experience

Our 8-year-old grandson Zachary arrives in Australia tomorrow! His flight arrives very early tomorrow morning and Bill is flying to Brisbane tonight to be on hand to meet him. We are very proud of Zachary for being brave enough to fly alone half-way around the world. His mom is flying with him from Houston to Los Angeles. Once he is on the plane for the flight from Los Angeles to Brisbane, then she will fly back to Houston. Bill will meet Zachary in Brisbane and they will fly together to Mackay where the boat is docked. Zachary will be sailing with us until mid-August as we make our way up to Cairns. Quite an adventure for an 8-year-old boy.

We haven't done anything since arriving in Australia other than a few boat chores. Bill replaced the accumulator tank on the pressurized water system. The original tank failed when we were in Panama and the only accumulator tank available for purchase in Panama was a cheap one not intended for marine use; it was from a patio and garden store. That cheap tank was rusting and Bill didn't think it would last much longer. So while we are in an area where he could find one, he replaced it. Still could not find a true marine accumulator tank but this one is much sturdier and hopefully will last longer than only one year like the last one did.

I forgot to mention earlier something that happened back in Vanuatu. The last afternoon that we were anchored in Port Resolution a young man paddled his outrigger out near our boat while I was reading in the cockpit. He just wanted to visit and practice speaking English with a stranger. It was very obvious that English was not his primary language and he struggled to say the words. I spoke very slowly and clearly, trying to make it earier for him to understand me. He asked me a series of questions; the standard things like: what is your name; where are you from; and how long have you been on your boat. He seemed to understand my answers. He even seemed to be familiar with Texas and knew there were cowboys there. Then he asked a question that natives don't normally ask: what did you do before you lived on this boat? And what did your husband do before you lived on this boat?

How could I answer that? To tell this man who lives in a dirt-floor grass hut in a jungle that I worked with computers would be meaningless to him. Telling him that I did accounting would also be meaningless. I decided to say computers; and, sure enough, he did not know what a computer was. How do I explain that??? He had no concept of either computers or accounting. To tell him that Bill was the CFO of a company would be absolutely meaningless to him and trying to explain all that with limited language would be impossible. So I said that Bill had worked in the furniture business. Well, what did that mean to this native man? He had no concept of furniture either. There is no furniture in any building in his village and he had never traveled outside his village.

That encounter really brought home to me how isolated and primitive the people living on this island are -- even in today's high-technology world.

Denied entry to port due to fear of H1N1 flu

On Saturday, May 16, we received an email from the our new weather router in Australia telling us that a LOW pressure system is likely to form in the Coral Sea between New Caledonia and Australia and last maybe until May 23; so his recommendation was for us to get over to New Caledonia before this system formed and moved in our direction. It was just as well because the wind at Port Resolution had changed to the north and the bay was becoming pretty rolly. Figured we might as well be at sea because we couldn’t sleep at anchor with the increasing swell rolling into the bay. So on Sunday morning at 0730 we weighed anchor and set off.

Our initial destination was the port town of We on Lifou Island in the Loyalty Islands, about 160 miles west of Port Resolution on Tanna Island in Vanuatu. Boats can clear in with Customs at Marina de We via fax to Port Moselle and then have 3 days to get to Port Moselle at New Caledonia to finish clearing in with Immigration and Quarantine. Noonsite.com says you have 7 days but that is not correct; you have only 3 days.

We departed Port Resolution and went south beneath Tanna Island and turned west; and were immediately greeted by a large pod of porpoises. They didn’t play with the bow wake like porpoises normally do. These guys swam straight at the side of the boat and turned around and swam straight southeast. Maybe they were trying to tell us to change course because it turned out that we should have followed the porpoises. This passage was doomed from the beginning.

By the time we reached the western edge of Tanna Island we were hit by the first rain squall – high winds and lots of rain. This was the first of several and our overnight passage was lively. It was rough and we could not point far enough south as we would have liked, but at least we sailed all night instead of having to motor. Shortly after daybreak we turned on the engine and motor-sailed southward towards the entrance to the port of We. We were greeted by one of those full rainbows over the sea.

As we were lining up for the entrance to the port the Marina de We hailed us on the VHF radio and informed us that we should not enter the port. The port was closed to all vessels arriving from outside New Caledonia or the Loyalty Islands because they feared contamination by the H1N1 flu virus. This seemed a little extreme to me since they still accept arrivals by airplane passengers and those people are far more likely to spread the virus than us slow-moving yachties. But there obviously is no room for discussion in this matter. If the port control tells you not to enter and to turn around and head back out to sea, then that is exactly what you must do. He instructed us to proceed directly to Port Moselle at Noumea, New Caledonia; and that we would be met by a Quarantine inspector and our health verified. Well, okay; if you say so.

We turned around and headed towards New Caledonia – directly into 20 knot winds that rapidly increased to 33 knots. The strong winds were directly on our nose so there was no way to sail or even motor-sail. We tried pointing off to try to motor-sail but to zig-zag in order to motor-sail would have more than doubled the distance we needed to travel. So we resigned ourselves to motoring the entire 111 NM distance pointed directly into the high winds and directly into large rough stacked seas. This truly was a miserable trip. Normally I do the first 8-hour night watch from 1800 to 0200 and Bill does the second 6-hour night watch from 0200 to 0800. For the first time since we started cruising we were not able to follow this watch schedule. It was simply too exhausting to sit at the helm or in the cockpit very long. I did the first watch from 1800 to 2215. Then Bill took over from 2215 to midnight. Then we rotated 2 hour shifts for the rest of the night. The boat was rolling and twisting so badly that by morning all muscles in our bodies felt worn out. Sometimes the bow would be raised way up and then slam down with a loud bang; reminded me of a whale broaching and slamming back down into the sea. This pounding was brutal. Other times the bow would be pitched through a wave and a couple feet of water would come pouring over the deck back all the way back to the mast. We powered the engine 600 rpm higher than we normally would do, and still could not go faster than 2 or 3 knots. A completely miserable 24 hours. And we are doing this because the weather router says this will AVOID the upcoming bad weather. If this is the better weather then I don’t ever want to experience what he calls bad weather.

Eventually we did reach the southern tip of New Caledonia and turned west. Once we were inside the reefs conditions improved dramatically. Not having to fight our way directly into the stacked seas made a huge difference in comfort level. By the time we had crossed the bottom end of New Caledonia (with the wind on our beam instead of on our nose!!) and turned northward up the western side the weather improved to become a beautiful day. By the time we arrived in Port Moselle at 1500 the sun was shining and the breezes were gentle. What a difference!!!

We had previously contacted Noumea Yacht Services by email to act as our agent in Noumea. When we were turned away from the port at We, we emailed Eva Dumas at Noumea Yacht Services (nys22s@hotmail.com) to notify her of our new arrival date. Eva did a marvelous job. We would recommend her highly and we are very, very glad that we utilized her services. Eva arranged a marina slip for us and met us at the dock with the Immigration officials, and she even took our dock lines as we backed into the berth! She handled all our paperwork and questions with the officials, speaking in French to them and speaking English in to us. I don’t know how we would have managed this clearance by ourselves since we don’t speak the language and the Immigration men only spoke a couple words of English. Eva, you ROCK!

Then the Quarantine official arrived --- wearing heavy-duty face mask and surgical gloves, which she did not remove until she was well away from our boat after finishing our clearance. There were health questions and she removed the few remaining fresh produce items and the eggs. She allowed us to keep all meat and poultry in the freezer because it came from New Zealand. The laws state that all meat will be removed, regardless of origin; but she said meat from New Zealand was okay. She also let us keep all cheese and butter and yogurt. That was a relief. We really did not want to throw out all the perfectly good food. There is a strange rule here regarding Customs. Once you are cleared in by Immigration and Quarantine, then Customs has only 2 hours to arrive to inspect your boat. If they do not come within 2 hours, then you take down the yellow Q flag and consider yourself cleared in. Customs never showed up, so we removed the Q flag at the appropriate time.

Didn’t plan to come to Noumea, but here we are. There is a holiday on Thursday. The officials are taking a 4-day holiday and boats will not be allowed to clear out until Monday. So we know we will be here at least that long.

Walked the crater rim of an active volcano

We really should have better sense!



But this was such a unique experience that we just had to do it. Mt. Yasur on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu is an active volcano. Sometimes it spews boulders the size of vans or pick-up trucks, but during the week we visited Mt. Yasur "he was asleep" as the locals said. Asleep is not really asleep. The volcano was constantly belching and roaring and spewing red-hot rocks about the size of basketballs on the evening that we visited.

It was a steep drive up the side of Mt. Yasur, again bouncing on the wooden bench seats in the back of a small pick-up truck. They take you up there while it is still daylight and you stay well after dark so that you get to see the volcano under both aspects. On the ride up we could see steam venting along the sides of the dirt road. Really cool. There was a somewhat level area where the trucks could park fairly close to the top. It was an uphill walk from there. The tour operators had marked off several paths and wise people stayed on those paths. More adventuresome people walked off into unmarked areas, but I overheard another guide saying that it was dangerous to go over to the right side of the crater so we opted to stay with our group. I was not able to make it up the final 20 feet to the pinnacle because it was too slippery in the loose volcanic ash on the steep grade, plus my heart was beating ninety-to-nothing and I couldn't breathe well. But Bill took the camera and had no problems getting to the pinnacle. I decided the view was just fine on the lower rim level, so I headed back down there and watched the volcano for a long time. Really a unique experience.

On Friday night we were supposed to attend a "religious" ceremony of the Jon Frum Movement but it rained so we canceled. The Jon Frum Movement (a/k/a John From Movement) is also known as the Cargo Cult. In 1936 it was claimed that the brother of the god of local Mt. Tukosmera came from the sea and announced himself to some kava drinkers. His name was Jon Frum. He told them that there would be an abundance of wealth and no more epidemics - so long as all Europeans left Tanna. Remember the pandemonium of the Condominium governance of France and England over Vanuatu. Also remember that kava in Vanuatu is a really strong drink.

I mentioned in an earlier blog how the primitive tribal society of Vanuatu was catapulted into the 20th century during World War II when the American troops moved in for several years to repel the Japanese. During WWII a large number of men from Tanna were rounded up and taken to the major islands of Efate and Espiritu Santo to help build numerous buildings and air strips, etc. that were needed for military use. The men from Tanna were astounded to see black servicemen and were convinced that these men must also have come from Tanna. Guess they had never seen black people other than their own tribe members. The Tannese men saw huge quantities of transport equipment, refrigerators and radios and endless supplies of Coca-Cola and cigarettes.

Keen to hear the message of Jon Frum, some supporters made imitation radio aerials out of tin cans and wire. Others built an airfield in the bush and constructed wooden aircraft to entice his cargo planes to land. Others erected wharves where his ships could berth. At that time The Red Cross sign meant free medical treatment. Small red crosses were erected all over Tanna and remain a feature in Jon Frum villages. This movement has at times been vigorously opposed by missionaries and officials. Even now, some cult villages refuse to pay taxes or use government schools.

So, will Jon Frum, the brother of the god of Mt. Tukosmera, ever come? The cargo cult members say "How long have Christians waited - nearly 2000 years. Yet we've waited only 65 so far."

The only thing I was interested in seeing at this weekly "religious" ceremony was the dancing. Sorry we missed that. And those are the 2 tourist attractions at Tanna - the active volcano and the cargo cult. We've finished everything we came to Tanna to see. Really glad we visited here.

Halfway to halfway

Port Resolution, Tanna Island, Republic of Vanuatu
19°31.4221 S 169°29.7752 E

We arrived at Port Resolution on Tanna Island of the Republic of Vanuatu on Monday, May 11, 2008, after a 7 day passage from New Zealand. We experienced southwesterly to westerly winds for the entire passage, which is very rare. None of the normal southeast trade winds materialized during our entire passage. Good thing we weren't trying to sail directly to Australia because that would have been very frustrating and uncomfortable. Two other boats arrived at Port Resolution on the same day, so all 3 crews needed to go across the island to the official clearance port of Lenakel and do the paperwork dance. The chief of the local village made arrangements for transportation for all of us for 0630 the next morning. This check-in turned out to be an all-day deal. Lenakel is the main town on Tanna Island and is located on the western side of the island, but the tiny "harbor" there is very rough and normally not safe for anchoring and leaving your boat even for the time required to clear-in. Port Resolution is on the eastern side of the island and is normally quite calm except during due-east winds or northerly winds, when the shallow harbor can become untenable with large crashing waves and boats must weigh anchor and get out quickly. Since we arrived the bay has been very calm and we are checking weather gribs daily watching for any forecasts of easterly or northerly winds.

A small pick-up truck picked us up right on time Tuesday morning. Our seats was a 2X6 board which lined all 4 sides of the back. The Kiwi people who have made this trip many times grabbed the best seats (the woman in the passenger seat of the cab and the 3 men on the wooden bench directly behind the cab). A Frenchman from New Caledonia, Bill and I sat farther back along the sides and the village chief sat on the rear bench, which was the bounciest place on the truck. We had been warned to bring something to sit on because it would be a very bouncy ride over roads that are nothing more than half-washed-out dirt trails through the jungle. Bill was able to sit on his backpack but my pack was too thick to sit on, so my amply padded butt was bouncing on bare wood with no padded protection all day long. Bill's skinny little butt would never have been able to stand it. I don't know how that poor village chief stood all that bouncing because he had no padding on his skinny little butt either. Bill was able to sit on top of his backpack and hold onto the top rail of the truck bed. I could not do that. I had to sit on that hard bench and lean forward so my hands could grab onto the bottom of the 6-inch wide bench; you absolutely had to hold on with both hands or be thrown across the truck as it bounced along. This bent-over position was murder on my lower back and every time we would jerk sideways and the top of the truck bed side would jam into my lower back it hurt so much that I wanted to scream.

The road/trail from Port Resolution to Lenakel goes through heavy jungle and across a mountain ridge. The views are spectacular. For several miles the path goes around the top of an active volcano and across an immense volcanic ash deposit. There were large rocks and boulders strewn about that had been spit out from the volcano. Luckily "the volcano--he was asleep" while we were driving across that area. I cannot find the words to describe this terrain but can tell you that it would make a fantastic location for a movie, especially a movie depicting the moon or Mars or another planet. We could not get any good photographs because of all the truck vibration as we sped across this eerie scene.

After almost 2 hours of this hard bouncing and jerking I asked Stanley (the village chief) if we had much father to go. He said we were "halfway to halfway." Oh God, that was bad news! I wasn't sure my back would be able to stand it if we really were only halfway to halfway.

But Stanley was just kidding and we arrived at the bank about a half-hour later. We converted New Zealand dollars into Vatu currency. It was a short drive to Customs where they graciously allowed us to check-in and check-out on the same day, thus saving us from having to do that God-awful round-trip across the island again when we are ready to leave. They allowed us to clear-in and out at the same time because we said we would only stay one week and then would be departing for Australia. Don't tell them, but we might stay here 2 weeks. Our drop-dead date for departure is May 26 in order to arrive in Australia well before our 8-year-old grandson arrives there to sail with us for a few months. We figured that if we said 2 weeks that they might require us to make a second trip, so we guessed our stay at 1 week. Really depends on weather as to when we will actually leave.

After Customs it was a fairly long drive to Immigration and then a shorter drive even farther out of town to Quarantine. And that finished our clearance process. You definitely need transportation in order to handle clearances at Lenakel. Stanley suggested lunch at a restaurant (there appeared to be only one) but none of us felt up to eating anything, so he took us to the local market so we could all shop. Available to buy were: brown roots of some sort, more roots, more unknown brown roots, several types of bananas, coconuts with outer husks removed, taro bulbs and stalks and something that looked like huge long cucumbers except they curved every which direction. I bought a small bunch of those short, fat bananas that Bill and I like so much. Definitely nothing else there that we would eat. We found the one "grocery store" that sold fresh-baked bread and bought a loaf of that. Bill bought a package of cookies and distributed them to some local kids. On the roadside we notice a large snail. Probably the largest snail either of us had ever seen.

You know how things grow differently in jungles. Made me wonder what else was out in that jungle that we needed to be careful about. One good thing is that there are no venomous snakes on this island.

Then we sat on the side of the road and watched the waves crash into the Lenakel harbor and thanked our stars above that we had wisely chosen not to come over here in our boat. There was an inter-island transport ship trying to unload but the waves were bouncing it everywhere. Waves were crashing over the concrete wharf. The ship almost landed on top of the wharf on one particularly large wave, so he pulled anchor and moved out to sea. Then they continued to unload the ship to a small boat from out at sea. The harbor was simply too dangerous. The small boat would maneuver between large rocks to a beach and could land there without too much surge. What a job.

There was a small yellow sailboat anchored at Lenakel that was being thrown about like a toy. The owners were not aboard. Nor could they have managed to get aboard if they had wanted to. Stanley said this boat was anchored here last Friday with no one aboard and it was still here on Tuesday. The waves surging across the reef were tossing that boat and yanking of the anchor chain to the point that we all thought it was going to break loose at any second. The local folks were sitting around watching and they all thought it was going to be washed onto the rocks at any moment.

The language of Vanuatu is called Bislama and is sometimes referred to as Pidgin English. Many people also speak French and/or English. We got a kick out of some of the signs in the town market area. Both Bill and I could read most of the signs even though we could not understand anything when the local people talked among themselves. The phrase I liked best was: Wat nam blong u? Or, what name belong you? That is how you ask someone his name. The sign on theleft obviously says that smoking in that location is taboo or forbidden and also in other places like the hospital, etc. And the notice on the right says that if anyone finds Doctor Lisa's scuba mask they should please give him back, thank you too much.

On the 2 ½ hour trip back across the island we stopped several times to stand up and relieve our aching backs and butts. Once several of the men stopped to "wash the vegetables" as Stanley put it. Hadn't heard that euphemism before. Beside one of the enormous trees alongside the road there was a produce market with a couple dozen villagers sitting beneath the tree. We stopped so the Frenchman from New Caledonia could buy some kava roots, and Bill again distributed cookies to the little kids. The trunk of the tree was as big around as a jumbo jet fuselage. There were thousands of these large trees in the jungle all across the island. They appear to be centuries old.

Kava is popular in Fiji and Vanuatu, but there are 2 different kinds of kava. The kind in Fiji is dried and is called "brown" kava. It is very mild. In Vanuatu they use "green" kava and it is supposed to pack a whallop. Kava is absolutely forbidden to women. Women are not even allowed near where kava is prepared or drunk. Fine with me; the men can definitely keep this joy all to themselves. For those who don't know, kava is prepared by first chewing the root and spitting into a bowl. Then water is added. Then men drink this nasty stuff that supposedly tastes like ditch water. (Sound familiar to anyone who read "Clan of the Cave Bear" by Jean Auel?) Two bowls of the Vanuatu green kava will put a large drinking man flat on his back, so we are told.

On the final stretch back to Port Resolution a man was riding a horse down the road. This was the only person on a horse that we had seen all day. Bill shot a short video of the guy and horse galloping up behind our little truck. A cowboy in Vanuatu?

There is a group of 30 Romanians currently at Port Resolution. They are camped out at the Port Resolution Yacht Club, which is basically a large hut on the hilltop overlooking the bay and is run by a man named Weery. The Romanians are here to build a new church for the Seventh Day Adventist religion. These Romanians are from all parts of the world - Australia, Italy, and Canada, among other places - and they paid for all the building materials themselves. The building materials were delayed 2 weeks in shipment and just arrived the same day we arrived here. So the Romanians were sitting here waiting for 2 weeks and they only brought food supplies to last a scheduled period of time. Since the butcher in New Zealand screwed up my order and we have more meat than we can possibly eat, we are giving our surplus to them. Any fresh or frozen meat onboard when we reach Australia will be destroyed; so rather than waste perfectly good food, we are giving a lot of it to the Romanians. Guess this time they will believe that God does indeed provide. They are almost completely out of food and we arrive with a surplus. I gave them about 7 kilo boneless chicken breasts, 4 kilo round steaks, and 4 bags of freeze-dried ground beef along with cans of tomato puree, tomato paste, Italian seasoning, and 4 kilo of dried spaghetti noodles. I also gave them a huge bag of instant potatoes, butter and dried milk.

We were exhausted after our 5-hour round trip ride to Lenakel on Tuesday and just wanted to get back on the boat, get a hot shower and relax. But we arranged with Stanley for the truck driver to return on Wednesday night to take us to see the active volcano. There were 8 of us scheduled to make the trip. Unfortunately the driver did not make it back to Port Resolution on Wednesday night, so this excursion is rescheduled for Thursday night. We are apparently back on Island Time, I guess. Things happen when they happen. I mentioned earlier that Stanley is the village chief. Actually each village has 2 chiefs. One stays in the village and works with the people and settles and disputes among the villagers. I think this chief is called the yemen'a. The other chief is called the yemen and his job is to be the spokesman for his village. Stanley is the yemen for the village at Port Resolution. His father was the yemen until his death earlier this year; he was called Rodney. Upon his father's death, Stanley assumed his father's name of Rodney and assumed the duties of spokesman for his village. That is why he accompanied us to the Customs, Immigration and Quarantine offices. By law, the officials must accept Stanley's word about our arrival and boat location. We would not have been able to clear in at Lenakel unless our boat was physically anchored at Lenakel unless we had the village chief there to vouch for us and say that we arrived at his village. Stanley is only 31 years old and seems young to be a village chief, but as mentioned earlier Vanuatu has a very young population. Some of the villagers now call him Rodney and some of them still call him Stanley. I would be willing to bet that as the years go on he will become known simply as Rodney.

Now our short geography and history lesson: Vanuatu is a country comprised of 83 little islands, situated between Fiji and New Caledonia, north of New Zealand, and southeast of Papua New Guinea. This area was named the New Hebrides by Captain Cook and in 1980 the name was officially changed to the Republic of Vanuatu. The total landmass of these islands could easily fit inside of the State of Arkansas but they are spread over 700 miles of ocean. Vanuatu lies on the Pacific Ring of Fire and has several active volcanoes, one of which is located on the island of Tanna and we plan to visit it tonight or tomorrow night.

Vanuatu has a multicultural society. The people are predominantly Melanesian although there are a few Polynesians and whites. Melanesians are black, whereas the Polynesians are light brown or almond-colored. Vanuatu is the only Melanesian area that we will visit. Some of the Polynesians arrived in these islands via outriggers in the 11th century. The first whites to arrive were the usual mix of European explorers followed quickly by traders who realized how valuable the native sandalwood trees were, and blackbirders (slavers) who realized how valuable the native people were. On a few of the islands there is presently an effort to again grow the valuable sandalwood trees. The best sandalwood trees are the old male trees and the smell is only detected when cut deep into the main trunk. I had hoped to smell one but the only ones we have seen are too young to have developed the distinctive scent. By 1839, Protestant missionaries arrived to try to convert some souls. The islanders wisely dealt with this latest threat by eating them. Vanuatu was one of the last regions of the Pacific to accept Christianity. The last officially reported act of cannibalism in Vanuatu was as recent as 1987.

Unfortunately, the explorers, traders and missionaries brought with them a collection of germs and diseases that wiped out whole villages: cholera, measles, smallpox, influenza, pneumonia, mumps, scarlet fever, and the common cold. The population of these islands is estimated to have numbered 1 million in the early 1800's. By 1935 there were fewer than 41,000 ni-Vans left.

Early European settlers hailed from England and France, the latter usually via the penal colony next door in New Caledonia. In 1906, the two countries set up a Condominium government in Vanuatu, which granted both of their nationals equal rights. During the Condominium, there were two sets of laws - one applying to the French, one to the English and both to the ni-Vans (it pretty much sucked to be a native). There were two sets of courts, two police forces, even conflicting rules about which side of the road to drive on. One wag referred to this time as the Pandemonium.

During World War II, 500,000 Allied Troops passed through Vanuatu. James Michener wrote Tales of the South Pacific based on his experiences in Vanuatu during the war. The island of Bali-Hai was entirely mythical but there actually is an island called Vanikolo about 175 miles north of the island Espiritu Santo in Vanuatu, a name that strongly resembles the mythical island of Vanicoro in Michner's book. The Allies hired the ni-Vans to work on the military bases. The disenfranchised ni-Vans were surprised to receive good wages for working on the U.S. military bases and were astounded by the seemingly equitable treatment of black and white soldiers. Not surprisingly, after the troops pulled out, an independence movement developed that resulted in the establishment of the Republic of Vanuatu in 1980.

The population of Vanuatu is now estimated to be around 200,000, fifty percent of whom are under the age of 15. It is a young country in so many ways. But it is also full of people practicing very old ways of life, particularly on the out islands.