One of the biggest tourist attractions in Port Vila is the Mele Cascades Waterfall, located a few miles outside of town. Jaime had gone to the Cascades before we arrived and he said it was worth going to a second time, so we knew they had to be good.

We caught a bus. The buses are odd for us. There is no regular route. You simply hail down a minivan with a “B” license plate. You tell the driver where you want to go and they eventually take you there, after a few stops along the way (and out of the way) to deliver other passengers.

The bus dropped us off at a nice park looking area. From the entrance you can see a nice footpath paralleling a stream. The path slopes upward gently and is nicely landscaped. As you walk up, there are quite a few small drops little, tiny waterfalls — in the river that are quite pretty to look at. There are birds chirping. It is really serene.

At one point there is a turn off that has a spectacular view of the ocean and a small island just off the coast.

We came to the end of the footpath, where the waterfalls were a little bigger than we had seen coming up, with a bigger waterfall off in the distance. It took a minute to register, but we realized that the path continues on inside the water. There are ropes mounted in the water and you actually walk up these little waterfalls to get to the big one. Wow. You would never, ever see this in the United States. The walk up in the water is actually pretty short, but it is really weird to be walking along in the rushing water. At the top there is an enormous waterfall that drops into a couple of small pools at the bottom. It is gorgeous. The water is cool, clear and fresh, with a definite blue tint.

Off to the right of the big waterfall is a second smaller waterfall. There were a bunch of people swimming in the big pool, so we went to the one on the side, which we had to ourselves. After a few minutes, we went over to the big falls and swam in those pools. Well, the guys swam and Christi waded. The water was a bit cool for Christi.

We couldn’t lounge in the pools too long because we still needed to go back to run errands. Tomorrow is Constitution Day, which is a huge public holiday where all the government offices are closed. We reluctantly headed out and caught a cab back to town. We went to customs to let them know we planned to move the boat to another island over the weekend. They gave us a sealed envelope and instructed us to take it to customs when we arrived at our destination. We went back to immigration for our receipt. We booked a tour to Tanna with the same company we had gone with for the tour of Efate. We took our laptop into an internet café since there is no wireless to the boats. We went to the grocery store and bank.

We saw that there was a fair going on in the park along the seawall in the heart of downtown. There was a small city of white tents filled with assorted venders. We decided to wander through and check it out. Many of the tents were still being set up and stocked, but many were already set up and open for business. There was everything from clothes to carvings to cleaning products to furniture to pre-fabricated houses. At the end of the park there was a big stage set up where it looked like bands would be playing, but at the moment there was no activity. It would probably be hopping tomorrow.

We went out to dinner at a restaurant/bar/pool hall. It looked like they were getting set up for a band to play later in the evening, and they seemed too pre-occupied to deal with us. The food choices were an interesting combination of British and French with just a little bit of a local twist. We ordered basic fish and salads. The food was OK.

On a side note, we wanted to mention that the yogurt survived the ride to Port Vila. The batch we made upon arrival in Vila was the best one yet.