It was quite a mammoth journey from our place near Lenakel on the west side of the island over to Mount Yasur. We left at 2:30pm in order to get their in plenty of time for us to see it in both daylight and darkness as the sun went down. Pretty much the only bit of tarmac in Tanna is the airport car park, and the roads were quite astonishingly bumpy. We were in a pretty rugged fairly new Toyota land cruiser, but it had already taken quite a battering from the roads it was regularly driven on. Also, being a late arrival to the tour I got to sit in the boot on a tiny add on seat that faced sideways rather than head on so most of the 3 hour drive was spent grabbing pretty much anything I could in a vain attempt to stay sat on my tiny seat.
It was the first time I had been anywhere away from our tiny bit of coastline and the views were stunning as we headed up in to the more mountainous interior. Unfortunately due to the savage road I found it virtually impossible to get any decent piccies while the beast was in motion. This was probably my best effort.
Shortly after this shot was taken we arrived on an incredibly steep, concreted section of road that lasted for about 300 yards. The driver cheerfully shouted back that this was built by British royal army engineers in the nineties as the previous track kept washing away. The road just before and after, however, seemed to be some of the worst we encountered leading to various comments from the French and Aussies also on the tour about how maybe they could have stretched to more than the rather paltry 300 yards.
Soon we were over the north-south ridge and could see the island stretching out in front of us. I hadn't realised it was quite so big.
After another 15 minutes or so Mount Yasur came into sight. It was quite an imposing site and with the grey skies above had a very Mordor look about it.
Another 45 minutes saw us reach the ash plane. This was a tremendously barren sight. It looked like a big black dune stretching up to the top of the volcano. Our guide told us that some people do sandboard down it. The fools.
I did genuinely feel a little apprehensive at this point. The dark clouds above made it feel a very oppressive place.
There were some crazy red lava formations on the plane.
And also this trickle of a river running though it.
Our guide informed us that 3 years ago this had been a big lake, but after huge rains from a cyclone the compacted ash wall had started to fracture and it eventually broke sending tonnes of water down the toward a village below. Fortunately, the integrity of the lake was being monitored by a group of scientists and the village had enough of a warning to prevent any people being killed, despite the damage to their houses and possessions.
Mount Yasur looking up from the ash plane. You can make out the tracks of some of the ash boarders.
There is a village at the bottom of the volcano (possibly not such a sensible location in my eyes), and our truck stopped to pay the fee for us to head up. The chap taking the fees looked like he had been at the kava all day. Our driver thought this was hilarious. Once on our way through the village our driver stopped so we could get a piccy of this fantastic tree house.
The track making its way up the mountain was seriously subsiding, and there were a number of places where our driver had to reverse back and get more of a run up. This added to my fun on the slidey back seat. After a while he stopped to let us take a picture of the smoking banks on the side of the track.
Seconds after exiting the vehicle in the car park there was the most almighty boom. It was possibly the largest explosion I have ever been close to. It was followed by this puff of smoke heading up out of the crater. The tour operator had warned us all that we were doing this trip at our own risk, and people were fairly regularly injured up here, but perhaps rather stupidly, this was the first point where I really registered that they weren't just saying this to cover there arses...and what you might wonder, is that thing on the slope.
Its a postbox of course!...Complete with not very fire resistant shelter, and huge warning about Vanuatu Post not taking any liability for anybody stupid enough to want to post anything from one of the most accessible violently active volcanoes.
Looking back towards where the ash plane meets the jungle. A striking contrast I reckon.
The walk from the car park was only about 400 yard or so. Just as we reached the top there was another almighty explosion, and I took a few pics of the huge cloud that appeared.
Small puff...
Slightly bigger puff...
Big puff...
Frickin huge puff...
It really was incredible. The power of the explosions was just epic...there was a small crowd up there, spread out along the ridge and from there you could just see down into the left hand crater. There are actually two main craters next to each other, and the left one seemed to be far more active. Occasionally though, the right one would blow just when you were least expecting it and at one point it blew almost simultaneously.
Each explosion would cause a whole expanse of gloopy molten rock to burst out all over the sides of the crater.
Here you can see the both craters, shortly after a double bone shaking explosion.
This one is the biggest explosion I managed to capture. It was truly awesome. Some of the debris looked like it was sent higher than where I was standing. Unfortunately the sun was now going down, and it was difficult to keep the camera still enough to get decent pics. Luckily our super cam still takes pretty nice vids once the light gets a bit lower.
Here's the mahoosive cloud that came off that last explosion.
You can see the fairly constant rumblings that continue below.
Once it started to get dark I got a few nice pics with a longer exposure.
'Bootiful Bernard'!
I totally loved it, and no huge rocks landed just centimetres from my head (as apparently happened to a previous tour group that week).
I think the vids speak for themselves though. You must watch to the end with your supa-bass headphones turned right up to really appreciate it. The last vid was probably the biggest explosion of the entire evening and I by lucky chance started filming just before it started.
The journey back from the volcano fortunately seemed a lot quicker than the way there, but my bum was pretty bruised by the time we finally rocked up at our White Beach bungalows. Here I found Clairy in the most hilariously enormous island dress looking quite frankly ruined. The kava had certainly taken its toll, and she was pushing her dinner round her plate politely trying to make it look like she had eaten something. The poor thing really looked like she'd been at the Class A's all day.
The next morning was as stunningly gorgeous as the previous ones had been and Clairy snapped some nice pictures of the beautiful planting outside our hut. We did feel hugely privileged to have such a lovely place all to ourselves, but also a little sad that having had the number advertised in the lonely planet disconnected they were pretty much relying on people dropping in like we did, and that had been bit of a leap of faith even for us. We did try and indicate that they really need to get that number connected again to get more business and I think they eventually understood that.
Annie was still insistent that I needed to try the kava back up at her Uncle's village too, so after lunch we had the necessary rum and cokes to get us on our way. Clairy looked not just a tad dubious about repeating the carnage of the day before. Also, our plan was to drink some kava and then walk the 11km to do a Jon Frum Cargo Cult village tour from the place miles away where we had done the previous tours. The reason for us repeating this insane journey was the fact that we had to head somewhere where we could pay for the tours by credit card as our cash was pretty much all spoken for and there was no where to get any more on the island.
Outside our hut with the rum and cokes. 'Don't she look nice in her island dressssss!'
On the way to the village we bumped into Timothy, a nice lad from the states who was one of number of peace corps workers based around the islands of Vanuatu. His job was to try and help get running water to a village 45 mins up the road from here. He had been given 2 years to achieve this, but it sounded like the progress had been slow so far.
'I just can't wait for some more kava!' says Clairy. Again we had to be a little secretive about it as Annie was hiding the fact she was having some from her family.
The kava hut or nakamal. A small boy poured it out in coconut shells for us.
I'm definitely excited.
Here we go. It was a full on earthy rooty flavour. And sure enough as soon as it went down my throat and tongue started feeling very numb. This was combated by some rice and laplap to nibble on. I didn't really feel too much immediately after the first one, and in my usual style was adamant I wanted the full effect. We all ended up having 3 shells, including Clairy, more out of politeness than anything else, and then went and sat down again in the Uncle's village.
Here we were joined by Christina, Annie's cousin who Clair had met the previous day. They were up for lots of piccys and we agreed we would send them copies when we could.
The effect of the kava really started to seep in after about half an hour and I found myself repeatedly staring off into the distance with a real heavy feeling in the back of my head. I enjoyed the effect very much, but it wasn't necessarily something I think you could do if you had a lot of stuff to be getting on with, even say walking 11km's to do a tour you had already paid for. Annie was up for us having a few more shells, but Clairy already looked like she didn't need any more and although I was keen, our cash situation prevented it. This didn't stop Annie who quickly returned to where we were sat with a coke bottle full of the muddy looking soup and shared it out.
Now fully kava'd up and the sun rapidly going down we needed to get on our way for the 3 hour walk to our evening tour. We both set off with head torches on a little unsteadily. As we walked we were regularly joined by various local people who happened to be heading our way, so that it was only at the very end that we were totally on our own. Unfortunately as time went on Clairy felt less well, and the last half an hour was real struggle. By the time we arrived at the resort where the tour was due to leave from she felt so nauseous that we persuaded the nice people to simply drive us home so I could put her to bed. All in all a slightly pointless trek along a dirt road in darkness, but I enjoyed it nonetheless and still found myself lying along from the effect of the kava after Clairy was fast asleep.
The next morning was our last, and Clairy got out early again to take some nice last piccies. She loved the textures on this palm bark.
Here is her Tanna collection of shells. She was particularly proud of the giant cowrie. It was as big as her hand!
We spent the morning playing around on the exposed rocky reef.
This little blue hole looked particularly strange and was filled with aquatic life.
Clair was intrigued by this spearfisher's little pile of goods left on the beach.
A gurt mahoosive banyan tree.
Me walking on water.
Clairy poking shells where maybe she shouldn't. She was most upset that it wouldn't stay there.
These people were fishing right on the edge of the reef where there is apparently a 1km drop off. It looked seriously rough to us and we didn't quite get the nerve up to snorkel off it and see what was there.
Later in the day we got a lift to the tiny Tanna airport to catch our plane back to Port Vila. Annie was quite sad to see us go and insisted to Clair that on our return to Tanna we would be staying at the family home and not paying for anywhere. We really enjoyed her company and genuinely felt very privileged that she had let us into her world to see some of the real day to day life on Tanna.
On the flight out we managed to get some nice piccies out the window of the plane. Clairy particularly liked these ones where you can see the shadow of the plane down below.
And this one shows the huge expanse of beach that our lovely White Beach bungalows was located on.
'Byeeee Tanna. We loved our stay with you!'
Back in Port Vila we decided to go for somewhere a bit more central and ended up in the cheerfully clean City Inn Motel. We had just a couple of nights before we would fly on to the Solomon Islands, but it gave us a chance to chill out and catch up with the blog (a bit anyway...as we were falling way behind due to insane prices for internet and the nightmarishly slow speeds).
Port Vila is not the most pretty of Pacific capitals, but its certainly not the most hideous either. Like we found on Tanna, the locals are super friendly and it was also a place where Clairy could indulge her waving addiction without fear of adverse reactions.
The waterfront was nicely chilled with a couple of nice places for coffees and juices. This was the Namba one cafe.
Clairy spotted this picture advertising a local island. We were surprised to see that Jenny Pin was already here!
Clairy took this nice piccy of a knackered looking old barge in the evening sun. Afterwards we read the rather brutal tale of its history in the local paper. It had been full off seriously malnourished cattle being taken from a drought stricken island to the mainland when the barge's engines failed and it got stuck on a sandbar. As no food and water were taken on board most of the cattle died before it could be refloated and returned to land. An investigation had been launched into the boats unseaworthiness and the general lack of preparation of the voyage.
We really liked the simplicity of some of the packaging in Vanuatu.
On our penultimate night we headed to a nice restaurant by the waters edge where we both had lovely fresh fish. I had mine in a Melanesian sauce and Clair went for the Caribbean variety. They were both proper lush. We were also adopted by an older Aussie couple from Melbourne who could talk for their country. They were nice enough though and took the next couple of photies so I won't be nasty.
Not our boat (sadly).
Tree ferns on sale outside the market.
We had a look round the city market. There was a huge range of luscious looking produce.
Nice bit 'o' corned beef. From Oxford apparently...
On our last night we went to a cute little Thai place where I had 'big fella prawns' in lime and garlic. They were huge and it was well tasty. Note the super tasty Vanuatu beer called Tusker (pull those poor piggies teethy pegs out!).
Vanuatu had been one of our most amazing and genuine Pacific experiences so far. We can't wait to go back and check out some of the other islands!
1 comment:
Brilliant vid, really captures the force and scariness of volcanoes. Didn't envy you the trip there tho. Kava too, but an impressively pointless 11km walk - bad luck Clairy xx
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