Aradonna's blog

The island of Tanna was badly damaged by cyclone Pam. But that was two months ago! The people here have been busy cleaning up, rebuilding houses and getting on with life. While there is plenty of evidence of the destruction, it is also easy to see that the people here are forging ahead. They are certainly not feeling sorry for themselves! They have received a number of supply shipments, including building materials, tarpaulins, tools, rice, cans of food. All of this has been put to good use. Our delivery of seeds was the first supply of seeds that had been able to reach them. They would have liked seeds two months ago, straight after the cyclone, so they could start planting again straight away. But no seeds arrived - until now! Stanley is the 'organiser' in the village and collects all supplies donated by yachts. He then coordinates with the 15 surrounding villages to divide up supplies for the wider community. The seeds were very welcome and very much needed by the people here, but most other needs have been taken care of.
Last night we, and two other couples from other yachts, did the trip up to Mt Yasur. First there is a "road" trip by 4WD pick up truck. I use the term "road" but it takes a lot of imagination to see a road here. The dirt track is full of boulders, you cannot even say pot holes, there are no holes, just lumps and bumps. In fact, if water were to flow down the "road" you would have grade 5 rapids! After somewhere between 40 and 50 minutes of lumpity bumping along, we reached the carpark. Time to walk the rest of the way - up ash laden slopes, steep and crumbling. Ahead we could see tiny stick figures on the ridge way up ahead of us. Eventually we joined those people, up on the ridge. The ridge, of course, is the rim of the volcano. Looking down into the crater was an awesome sight. A bubbling couldran gurgled and puffed beneath us. Every now and then it would rumble and shake, sending hot spurts of lava skywards with an explosive force. We were treated to a volcanic fireworks display as showers of molten rock burst from the crater, hanging in the air for a while before tumbling back down. Steam vents hissed, sparks flew and the ground trembled beneath our feet. Spectacular! After an equally bone jarring ride down the mountain, the six of us went to a local "restaurant". We had booked ahead with one of the locals, Leah, who prepared a meal for the six of us. Chicken, yam, taro, cassava, cabbage and rice. Very tasty! Today we did some odd jobs on board including making some bread. In the afternoon we visited the school, taking some school supplies with us and a couple of frisbees to play with the kids. We watched some of the villagers building a new house using branches of trees. Everyone is active here. Boys and young men play soccer, girls play volleyball, some men fish all day using nets they put out from their dug out canoes, ladies weave pandanas leaves into baskets and mats. Everyone we meet looks fit, muscular and healthy. We learned that here they only have a primary school that serves the surrounding 15 villages. There are well over 100 kids at the school. When they get to secondary school age, they need to go to a village that is 6 hours walk from here. The kids walk to school for the school term, stay with family over there and then walk back home again in the school holidays. They don't think anything of these long walks, it is a normal part of life here.
Talking to the village people here, we learned that there are many villages inland from Port Resolution that have had no supplies or aid delivered to them so far as they are difficult to reach. Supply boats stop at Port Resolution on the east coast and and Lenakel on the west coast, but there are many people living in remote villages in the southern part of the island. It is impossible for boats to anchor on the southern and south western coast so these villages have missed out on much needed aid. So, we have arranged some transport, by hiring a driver of a 4WD, who will take us to the southern part of the island tomorrow. Along the way we will pass 15 remote villages inland from Port Resolution, all the way to Green Point in the south. We will travel for a few hours over bumpy rocky dirt "roads". A couple of locals will join us to help push the vehicle out of difficult spots so we don't get stuck! We have packed up supplies of seeds and other donations into 15 different "village par cels" so we can distribute these to each village along the way. One of the other yachts, ALBA has donated bedding, clothes, rice, buckets, ropes, tarpaulins and handsaws to take with us as well. It should be an interesting day. We will depart at 9am and all going to plan we will arrive back in Port Resolution again and be back on board Aradonna in time for dinner. Wish us luck!!

Yesterday was Karl's birthday. Good news came over the SSB radio from Patricia early in the morning. Ted from Opua was donating an inverter for Port Patrick school and a yacht was collecting it soon, departing NZ in the weekend bound for Vanuatu. The cruising community is wonderful! We went ashore to let Stuart know the good news. He looked astonished, then bewildered and said "How did you do that?". We tried to explain the ships radio to him but he looked at us like we had performed some kind of magic. Then he broke into a huge smile and said thank you, thank you, thank you!! We also dropped off some photocopies we had made about NZ - he asked us for information because he is supposed to teach about NZ to his students are part of the curriculum but the only thing he knew about NZ was rugby! Next we were off to Futuna, a 7 hour motor sail into head winds. There are not many details on the chart, so Karl was up on the bow watching carefully. The depth around the island is 1000m plus and quickly rises up to 100m then 40, 30, 20. As soon as we got to 30m depth, Karl could see the bottom! Wow. We are anchored in 15m of water but it is so clear that it looks like 2m. Sheer cliffs surround the bay and no houses or any sign of life can be seen. We were having a snorkel, wearing only a snorkel, when a local arrived in his dug out canoe. The water is so clear that we knew he could see everything!! He glued his eyes to the boat, admiring it while he talked to us :-) When he left we saw him disappear into the cliff somewhere. So later, and with clothes on, we took the dinghy to explore where he had come from. A cave in the cliff has a shelter in it and several men and boys were there. The next thing we knew a large wave came out of nowhere and tipped us out of the dinghy! Capsize! Our new outboard motor hanging upside down in the drink! Some of the men came and helped us right the dinghy, then swam out to retrieve the seat which had fallen out. Heather had managed to grab the petrol tank and luckily neither of us lost our glasses. As we scrambled ashore by the cave to thank the men who had helped us, Heather realised that her wet top was now completely see through and a large hole had been torn out of the bottom of her shorts by the rocks. The men got quite a view! Then they explained to us that the cave was where the boys came to get circumcised. They stayed there to swim in the sea and keep it clean every day to stop infection. Time for us to g o! After rowing back to Aradonna, Karl spent the next two hours getting the water out of the motor and getting it up and running again. More locals came by in their dug out canoes to check on our progress. Finally about 6.30pm we could relax and enjoy a birthday dinner celebration and a late evening swim.
One of the senior men offered to be our guide to go to the village this morning (he is on the community council) and we are glad we had his help. The entrance to the steps up the cliff face is not easy to find. It was described to us as "by the big rock near the big tree", but in a rocky bay full of trees we would have had a difficult job! We climbed and climbed, up and up. Some rock steps, some concrete steps, some wooden steps, more rock. Finally we reached the plateau. What an amazing view! Isia village is perched up high at around 350 - 400m above sea level. No problems with waves coming into the village here during the cyclone! But all the fruit had been blown out of the trees and all the crops had been washed away by the rain. We met the headmaster of the 150 children at the primary school and we met the principal of the 114 children at the secondary school. There are three main villages on the island, with a total of 600-800 people living here. All the children on the island go to school in Isia. They were very grateful of our gifts of seeds, fishing gear, educational supplies and frisbees.
Supply boats only drop off supplies every 2 months to this isolated community and everything that the village needs has to be carted up the steps. They have pigs and chickens, they go fishing and they grow fruit and vegetables. They used to have cows as well but during their jubilee celebrations they ate the last ones! No one has managed to land any more cows onto the island due to the difficult terrain... After lunch on board Aradonna with our guide, he promised to come back at 9pm tonight to go snorkeling with us and show us the local lobsters. Unlike our crayfish, the lobsters here have nippers, so we are a bit reluctant to grab them!

Today was a day of two halves. This morning we watched the cruise ship come in and boat loads of cruise passengers were ferried out to Mystery Island. Loads of tourists having fun. Snorkeling, paddle boarding, kayaking, boat rides, swimming with turtles, buying souvenirs at the market, having their photo taken in the "Cannibal Soup" pot, having their hair braided, getting a massage. All the things that tourists love to do. This afternoon we moved to the northern tip of Aneityum, to the small village of Port Patrick. Here, the people live a simple life. Their crops were destroyed by the cyclone. Waves tore through the village, taking quite a large amount of land with it. Water swamped houses. Massive trees lie on their side, root systems now towering high into the air. But life goes on. Gardens are being replanted, much of the mess has been cleaned up and lawns have been reestablished and are mowed, now neat and tidy again. School children listen and learn. We met Stuart, Headmaster of the 55 children in the primary school. Like many small villages, the school is the hub of the community. We delivered seeds for the village to grow crops, along with school supplies and fishing gear. Stuart and the two other teachers in the school, Vanessa and Rose, were delighted. The school will call a community meeting and share out the seeds and fishing supplies to the people in the village, who are scattered a long way around the coastline. We asked if there was anything specific they needed. Yes! The cyclone wiped out their inverter. They have good solar panels and a bank of batteries, but no inverter. So if anyone is coming to Vanuatu and can bring an inverter, please bring it to Port Patrick. They need it to run the photocopier, printer and scanner for the school and other electrical equipment for the village. We gave a couple of frisbees to the school, and watched the amazed looks on the kids (and adults) faces as Heather threw them to the kids. They had never seen such a thing that hovered and spun! At first the kids all screeched and ran away, but one by one, curiosity took hold and they started to join in the game. The kids and then the adults got the hang of how to throw a frisbee pretty fast and had a great game. As confidence grew, some kids started to play chicken, being brave to stand in the path of the oncoming frisbee, leaving it until the last second before diving for cover! Stuart then took us for a walk along the beach to see a dead whale that had beached about three weeks ago. It was decidedly smelly and half decomposed. Stuart pointed out the oil slick extending from the whale, right along the coastline and right around to near our boat. He advised that the whale "slick" had been attracting sharks, so it might not be the best idea to swim in the bay. Great advice! Tomorrow we will head 43 miles out to the island of Futuna, a very remote island that was badly damaged by cyclone Pam. Hardly anyone ever goes there but there is a school and a few hundred people that live there.

Customs entry and Quarantine is handled by the local policeman, Richard and his helper, George. Yesterday we were asked to go ashore to the police station to clear in. Richard does all the paperwork and every now and then holds his hand up to George, who runs to the other room and brings back a paperclip for Richard. This happened several times during the process, making us wonder why Richard didn't simply have a jar of paperclips on his desk. But George seemed to take his task very seriously, always choosing an appropriate sized paperclip for each bundle of paper that Richard was holding together. Besides, it gave George something to do! As we are bringing seeds into Vanuatu to help people grow crops again after cyclone Pam, we had ticked YES on the Customs declaration about plants and seeds. This made Richard quite agitated. He said "No! We do not accept seeds here! You cannot bring seeds here!" We explained why we were bringing them in, but still he said it was impossible. So we handed him the bundle of paperwork we had gathered from officials including the OK from the National Disaster Management Office, the permits from Plant Protection and Border Control, all the certificates and letters of authority...He studied these papers in awe. It looked like he had never seen anything like it in his life before. But, once he had viewed all the signatures of all the Government officials from Port Vila, he calmed down and said. "No problem!" Phew! Anelghowhat is at the bottom of Aneityum Island and was largely untouched by cyclone Pam. 99% of the trees are still standing and during our walk through the village we only saw one roof slightly buckled. The village huts are made of bamboo frames with sides made out of woven plant material and thatched rooves. All were still standing. The people told us that Port patrick, at the top of Aneityum was hit badly, but most of the damage is on Tanna and Erromango Islands. We will keep our seeds and other supplies for those places.
Just off the coast of the village (only 1 mile away) is a tiny island called Mystery Island. Once or twice a week, a cruise ship anchors between Aneityum and Mystery Island. They are expecting a cruise ship tomorrow, so there will be 2000 people arriving for snorkling trips, fishing trips and perhaps to buy some local crafts or fresh fruit and veges. There is no market here apart from when cruise ships come in, so we are hoping to find something at the produce market ourselves in the morning. It looks like the locals here do pretty well out of the cruise ship visits.
Today Heather spent the morning unpacking towels and cushions from cupboards, doing the washing and having a general sort out. Karl diagnosed the fault with the autopilot - just the relay, which he promptly replaced and all is well again now with "Raymond". Yay! This afternoon we went snorkeling at Mystery Island. Many different types of coral and not too much damage from the cyclone, most of it is intact. The usual display of many coloured reef fish was very pretty too. We had a walk on Mystery Island, which is all set up for the tourists. When we viewed the tiny grass airstrip we were glad that we had arrived by boat! I put our position on the website at Mystery Island, to make it clear where we went today, but we are actually anchored well out of the way of the cruise ship, in Anelgowhat Bay. We enjoyed zooming over to Mystery Island in our dinghy - the new bigger outboard motor we have this year makes such a difference. Now we can plane across the surface of the water in a flash!