The Mele Cascades Waterfalls

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.

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Tour of Efate, Vanuatu Part 2

Continuation from yesterday”¦..

“¦We were completely surrounded by the villagers, each of us having several weapons pointed at our necks and chests.

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After a very long minute, the villagers spontaneously ran off down the road. We were told to have a seat on a bench. The villagers reappeared and danced several dances for us. The dances were different from anything we had seen before. Most of the group was in neat rows and danced in place, using their weapon as a prop. They all wore ankle bracelets of toasted nuts in the shell, which made a maracas-like rattling sound in time to the music as they moved their feet with the rhythm. There were a few lead dancers who danced all around and through the group mimicking animal movements. Each dance was for a particular animal. In this photo you can see the man mimicking a bird to the right. The music was rhythmical percussion instruments, with the dancers all singing along in a deep bass. The music was powerful.

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After the dancing we were led Continue reading →

Checking into Port Vila, Vanuatu

We were up again at 07:00. The information we had downloaded said Yacht World would help us with the check in process, and they opened at 07:30. We got them on the radio a little before 08:00. They told us to sit tight and they would bring the quarantine officer to our boat around 09:30.

Port Vila bay has two small islands in the center of it. This is a scan from a postcard

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The quarantine anchorage is located Continue reading →

Welcome to Port Vila, Efate, Vanuatu

Lat 17.44S, Long 168.18E. Vanuatu is made up of 83 islands over an area of 450,000 square kilometers. Like Fiji, some of the islands are volcanic and some are raised coral islands. Like Tonga, Vanuatu lies on the squarely on the Pacific Ring of Fire. There are nine active volcanoes and earthquakes are commonplace.

The vast majority of the population are native Vanuatu (called ni-vans), and most live in traditional rural villages that are much the same as they were before the arrival of Europeans. Both culture and language vary greatly from village to village. Vanuatu has the highest concentration in the world of Continue reading →