Swimming with the fishes

A bit of a shambles to start the day, with the power out around 2am. Usually not a problem unless you use a cpap. The power came on about 30 minutes later, with everything beeping and the ceiling fan light blazing bright, then went off again. And on and off 10 minutes later with beeping and flashing and finally on. Then it rained, not exactly the ideal weather for an outdoors tour day. Half of it was snorkelling but the bits inbetween would have been a bit rugged.

For breakfast it was an omelette with New Zealand butter. Pretty good for a free hotel breakfast I guess. The service here is generally very good, but a little too attentive. Rio was a bit much with the waiter hovering nearby, but in some places here you get asked every 5 minutes if everything is good. They also take each person's plate once you've finished eating, instead of waiting for the whole table to finish. So when one of us is a gobbler and the other is a more methodical eater, we're often left with what looks like one one person is having dinner. Luckily I don't look as though I get by on scraps so I don't think anyone is going to assume I skipped dinner.

The tour we were going on today was to Lelepa Island, off the North West coast. The bus to the boat was a normal bus but was full of white people. So absolutely not normal at all. We picked up some more couples along the way, two pairs of Australians and a NZ couple. Real international lot we were. We couldn't help compare their resorts with ours, and Louie decided ours was far better. Each time we did a pickup there was much bartering and discussion of prices and exchanging of money, waving about bits of paper and promises of different prices. We were waiting for our turn to be shaken down for cash but we heard the mention of "collected from Nasama" so our resort once again won out - protecting us from the cut throat financial bartering of local tour operators. I did a quick check just now and by my memory the difference was about $3.

My ability to read foreign languages without formal training continues to grow, spotted this pearler on the way to the boat. It was an interesting trip, going through the morning Port Vila traffic near the airport so it jam packed, but other than the odd friendly hello toot, there wasn't any car horns or impatient driving just everyone taking their turn and giving way to everyone else.

The driver told us there aren't really any rules here, just guidelines and everyone just drives however fast they want. As far as our small experience goes, it works pretty well.

Out of the city the scenery was pretty much small houses, roadside stalls and tropical trees. Sometimes roaring past at terrifying speeds. Oh and no seatbelts either.

Our departure point with the luxury launch. Very glad I bought reef shoes because there are coral stones on the beaches and they fucking hurt to stand on. As you can see the weather got a lot better, pretty hot a lot of the day and only the odd passing shower.

Billy our guide for the day was a real character as you can imagine. He lives on Lelepa Island along with about 500 others, in their ancestral village. After the Vanuatu independence, ownership of their island and the fronting shoreline of the main island was returned to them. It was good to be able to see that the money we paid was going directly to them and not to some faceless tour company.

We had a quick stop along the shore to drop Billy off so he could cook lunch and the boat operator Lino took us over to Lelepa and along the shoreline for snorkelling.

He dropped us off on the shore, after after a lot of fooling about trying to walk into the deeper water with flippers on I was in heaven!

Absolutely crystal clear waters (as far as I am concerned) and so many tropical fish! Due to the winds, we weren't able to go to the main areas which have a lot more fish and rocky stuff but where we went was perfectly fine for me.

The GoPro takes a really wide angle photo so things look a lot smaller than they are, this rock was about 3m across and was teeming with little bright fish. Louie didn't really enjoy the snorkelling, and he couldn't relax with using a snorkel underwater but for me it was the best time just floating and looking at all the action below me. The prescription goggles I bought worked perfectly and I was able to really enjoy everything in focus. The cheap GoPro waterproof housing worked a treat as well, and didn't have to think about it, just hit record and go for it.

Fish, you might have to zoom in or squint.

The water was very warm, just straight in and no panicked gasping. Lino moved the boat away from the shore and we could slowly make our way to him, maybe 200m away. The  depth started out maybe a meter but by the time we got to the boat it was a lot deeper. Absolutely amazing just floating above everything and just watching.

Thanks to my genetic inheritance of hollow bones I guess, can't be anything else I was able to float without anything in the way of jacket or aids. My childhood spent floating about in our pool paid off.

After a bit of undignified scrambling up a ladder we moved to where the giant clams were. I tried to swim down for a closer look but thanks to those hollow bones, I wasn't able to get far. I was impressed with my asthmatic lungs though, being able to blast all the water out of the snorkel. i remember Dad teaching us how to do that, so the lesson was not wasted, although it took over four decades to come into use.

More fish, this time featuring a Blue Tang. I need the change the GoPro so it zooms in a bit.

Our last stop was to a sunken plane. By this time I guess everyone was getting a little tired, but I was hitting my stride. I was first off the boat by a long shot and the last on, very reluctantly. Here are my flippered feet fo scale. Please note that I'm not horribly sunburnt, this is just the camera doing colour correction for the blue water. There will be much dicking about when we get home with the 100s of photos I took underwater.

Not everyone got in this time, and they kind of stayed near the boat. I took off and did a full orbit of the plane and a bit further. One my way back I saw some white crap floating past me and a top of fish - Lino was throwing bread to them and made sure I got in on the action by throwing some at me. Worked a treat until my watch beeped telling me I had been swimming for 10 minutes and scared all the fish off. 

Everytime I've seen tropical fish in a tank, they have a UV light on them to make their colours pop. Here they did it all by themselves. It was mostly overcast but the colours were as bright as anything. I can't wait to go again!

Me being typical, the last to get out of the water. My happy smiling while snorkelling face. Absolutely one of the best mornings I have ever spent. The afternoon was great too, but this was an absolute highlight.

Sadly we had to head back to shore for lunch and some lounging around. Definitely worse places to relax! I thought the warning about falling coconuts was a bit of a tourist thing but I heard a couple falling amongst the trees so I steered clear.

A mostly local spread of Vanuatu fare, and definitely the start of the upward quality of food. Going from top down we have local bread, "Vanuatu cabbage" salad (looked like supermarket coleslaw and corn to me), what I thought was raw fish and bananas was pinkgrapefruit, papaya and bananas, chicken wings and sausages, rice and beef stew.

i didn't try the bread so have no idea if it was good, but it went fast so i guess so. The chicken was fantastic, golden and crispy on the outside and tender. I have no idea how he cooked this on an open fire wood BBQ! The sausages were so good, no idea what the meat was and I don't care, they were great. The beef stew was beef stew, loads of local root veges and the meat was well cooked.

The bananas were very small and thin but they are so sweet and very strong in flavour, I would eat these every day if we had them at home. The grapefruit was nice and sweet too, not like the sour buggers we have in NZ. Papaya I didn't like at all. Louie said it was really good so maybe this is like coriander?

Next on the events was the actual island, where Lino dropped us off on a beach made entirely of coral. No soft landing if we fell over here!

After we were all on the beach, Lino motored off and Billy proceeded to tell us all about how his tribe used to be cannibals. We were waiting to hear how there was to be a village feast with us as the guests of honour.

Thankfully the stories he told were about how one of the great chieftans brought about the end of cannibalism. Definitely a relief for me in particular, since looking at the others I would have been considered the most succulent and tender. The others were mostly gristle and tough old mutton.

We heard about different herbs and leaves used to treat pain, catch fish and something to do with women's troubles and vaginering.

A walk through the bush a bit further we got to the start of the village. It runs along the shore for quite a bit, and is entirely designed for making tourists fall over and break their ankles. I kind of saw what it looked like but mostly looked down so  wouldn't arse over.

I always feel really akward going through places like this, as though I'm intruding on their private lives. Counter to that, a lot of their income depends on tourists coming to the island so it's a double edged sword.

There are a few dogs in Vanuatu and every one of them have been so friendly. Louie does not approve of my need to pat every one of them (and this morning we had a bit of a drama keeping the very wet resort dog from coming inside). However the village dogs required smooches and chose the other dog happy visitor and myself to warm our feet.

The villlage had a range of "crafts" to sell to help suppliment their income although some were suspiciously similar to mass produced crap in the Port Vila markets and others were literally rubbish. $20 for a dirty coke bottle seems a bit much, even if the Gods Must Be Crazy.

The punching bag at the back of one of the churches might explain why they are the friendliest people - nobody messes with anyone who uses a gas bottle as a punching bag.

More local languge, but I haven't quite worked this one out yet. Co-operative society means they are strong together at least.

Idyllic waterfront to the village, but with no electricity and having to eat fish it's a tough trade-off. 

They do have a fair amount of power on the island, with a few solar panels and the odd generator. A lot of the adults go off the island to work, and past primary school the high school is on the main island so they rely on the small ferry boats. Today was a great insight into the trade-off between a paradise location and the realities of living there in a developing country.

On the way back, one of the others asked the driver if he could stop by a market so she could buy some pamplemousse (grapefruit). For some reason he thought the best solution was to stop at the main market the locals use in the middle of rush hour. It did give us a view of the back streets and people living their lives there. The chaps outside the "Gentlemen's Kava Bar" seemed very friendly.

After the day we were absoutely knackered, and very grateful for the on-site restaurants. Tonight I had hands down the best gnocchi I have ever had, and one of the best all round meals I've had in a long time. 

Kumala (yes that's how they spell it) gnocchi with island cabbage, braised onion, pesto, pickled walnuts, crispy basil, parmesan cheese and chicken. I might have caused issues because after I ordered the host came up to me as asked if I was allergic to nuts. I said just peanuts, nothing else but I think the walnuts were missing. Dammit, I like walnuts.

Anyway it was such a well balanced plate, everything worked togther and I'm definitely going to try to make this at home.

I was so tired after today that I just couldn't do any posting so I left it until today (Thursday) when it is a bit gloomy and raining, plus I slept for 10 hours straight. I really need to make this holiday thing my full time job.