Zoonie’s Good Effort to Efate
During the waiting hours before we set off at 5.00pm we busied our minds on small chores to help the time pass and just before we left I was playing the Wordscapes Game on my phone when are rather worrying set of words started to real themselves. I will let the photo speak for itself but I think it is safe to say that these are the words no yachtsman wants to read just before setting out on a passage. Shall I tell Rob now or when we are safely at anchor or mooring buoy I thought and decided on the latter when it became a source of fun. It reminded me, though, of Donald Campbell who apparently drew the combination of playing cards that denotes Death the night before he took Bluebird on to Coniston Water and hit a tiny wave that lifted the front of the machine high in the air before it disappeared beneath the water of the dark lake.
Zoonie quickly turned what had been an anxiously anticipated passage into a thoroughly enjoyable one and I loved her all over again for it. With a pocket hanky main and a hair ribbon genoa she quickly got into her groove. The main was reefed because of the split seam(s) but the foresail was reefed to keep her speed down to 5 knots so we would arrive in daylight at the waypoint we had placed off the peninsular where we would turn for the harbour of Port Vila, Vanuatu’s capital city.
She rolled along nicely at five knots close hauled and just to the right of our desired course and the sea was re-assuringly comfortable suggesting there were only light to moderate winds out there. The night sailing was proving to be a steadier option than daytime when diurnal wind patterns become established around and over the islands to do with the difference in air temperature over the sea coming into contact with the warmer land temperatures.
Zoonie tucked 50 miles under her sailing belt before the wind turned to face her, put up its hand palm facing her and said “No more by that means lady”, so on went the engine and away we furled the jib at 3.30am. There is something wrong with the furler, it furles in ok but furling out is a hard task and we must get it sorted. We rely on the foresail more than any other sail as you know.
Helming was a pleasure under the starlit sky in the cool of the night and dawn started creeping into the sky, as it is now, around 5.30am. The channel is well marked because container ships and cruise liners use this port and nearing the shore I spotted what appeared to be a massive Quarantine buoy. We knew the anchorage was anywhere immediately around it but I hadn’t expected such a big, bright orange buoy at least 27 feet across until we got a little closer and saw it was an all-orange yacht! I don’t know if I could live on a vessel where everywhere you looked was orange. The actual quarantine buoy is a tiny yellow pillar buoy.
We anchored on coral, not a secure holding at the best of times and with the promise of moderate winds in a couple of days Rob was not happy. The alternative was to pick up one of the many substantial Yachting World Marina buoys at £10 per day for total peace of mind.
Just as an aside and by co-incidence Tom Cunliffe writes a Seamanship column in the UK sailing magazine called Yachting World and he is including my account of our sail from Fiji back to New Zealand in the November issue just in case you are interested.
The kind lady on their radio said that Moses would be waiting for us to give us a hand with the mooring so we motored gingerly into the lagoon between pretty Iririki Island and the town, through a little channel over the reef where Zoon’s echo display recorded what to the uninitiated would have been an alarming drop in figures, in metres, 28, 23, 17, 14, 9, 6, 3, 1.9, 1.2, 1.1!!! The depth reads from the keel down which makes sense as that’s the part of her that would touch first, so we really had 2.2 from water level. As we passed over this pale green stretch I was watching the decreasing numbers as I watched our progress to the deeper blue water; that helped.
Rob sorted out the two mooring lines to go through the rope loop Moses held up while I kept Zoonie nosing into the mooring as best as I could see over the inflated dinghy that lay upside down on the foredeck and in moments we were secure, just before the 24 metre high overhead cables and right infront of the Iririki Island Resort entrance jetty and amidst the most lovely birdsong.
Two islands I thought, the big one Efate and the little one Iririki, we’ll motor around one and canoe around the other.
The Flower Rob is holding is the Banyan Tree Flower and the white filaments are tipped with orange and look just like fibre-optics, as beautiful as the tree itself.
The Delights of Port Vila
The first of course being the Independence Day celebrations in Independence Park. On the 30th July 1980 Vanuatu shook off the shackles of Britain and France and many of the ni Vanuatu residents have had mixed feelings over the issue ever since. However, although the young generation is taught about this event in history they are aware of how things are now and not so much how the present situation fits in with the past and shapes the future. Many older folk are worried that the new independence has brought a vulnerability as far as exploitation by foreign countries more powerful than this small archipelago is concerned.
The park was full and the surrounding streets jammed with hundreds of pickup trucks full with people from the outlying villages who wanted to join in this day of celebration. An army band was playing in the arena within the park and the army was marching to the beat. The overall impression was one of vibrant colour in a friendly atmosphere.
We walked slowly with the crowd around the road area looking for a spot where we could view the proceedings and came to a TV van that was recording the event. In front of it was a gap and we stood next to seated folk, women in their Mother Hubbard dresses and sometimes family members in clothes made of the same material, as dignitaries stood to make their speeches and high ranking army officers very slowly raised the Vanuatuan Flag.
Back down the hill at the bottom of the Park all the food and trinket stalls were laid out and we could have bought anything from burghers and chips to lap lap and rice. Lap lap is the national dish and is made from grated manioc, taro or yam roots, squeezed to a doughy paste, laid on wild spinach leaves and soaked with coconut milk then topped with either meat, flying fox bats, or seafood, wrapped in banana leaves and cooked amongst hot stones in one of their ground ovens. It is very tasty, we had it with river shrimp in Narovorovo when we were there.
Next day we got our modem topped up so I can send you these blogs and we can communicate with the outside world again and then stopped off at the pretty little Village Café overlooking the water and Sunset Cruise ship and relaxed over iced coffee and croissants.
When we first arrived we were sampling the local brew in the Yachting World Marina when we noticed a young man wearing a marine electronics T-shirt and clearly working on one of the yacht moored stern on to the quay. Well fortunately he knows all about recalcitrant auto pilots so he agreed to “Come and have a look” just as soon as he had finished his present job.
Well in a matter minutes Andy had the device working like a newly trained pup and put the fault down to corroded connections on the non-tinned cable which he said looked as if it had been there for years. He recommended new tinned electrical cable to ensure the unit continues its reliable service.
Two days later he was back and fitting the cable through all Zoonie’s starboard side lockers from the lazarette to the chart table control box. So that was a relief as we hadn’t expected to be able to fix it in Vanuatu.
We had a rendezvous arranged with Steph of the Sharm Foundation and Rod her husband to hand over the boxes of school uniforms. When I asked her which school they were going to I felt a little foolish as they were bound for Shirley’s school at Navrovorovo and we could have left them there. However we weren’t sure when we were discussing this with Customs in Luganville if we would be going there and as Steph suggested they needed to be cleared through Customs we brought them on down to Port Vila.
Never mind, as we were on our way back from the Customs Office here Steph had another phone call about a yacht having just arrived with the rest of the consignment from Whangarei and we correctly guessed it would be Ken and Beth on Eagles Wings, so it was lovely to see them again for a chat and catchup.
Rod told us about Cyclone Pam that hit the area on March 13th 2015 with winds that reached 340km/hr. Sixteen people died in Vanuatu two of whom were yachties who returned to their vessel. Many yachts were sunk on their moorings while others washed up on top of eachother on the shore. Altogether 65 yachts and numerous fishing boats and ferries had to be re-floated by the Australian Army and Navy for the harbour to be used again.
Steph is from a legal background and has a strong sense of giving. She has used her influence to head many post cyclone projects to get children back to school and enjoying the lifelong benefits of a good education.
Feeling lighter having passed on the boxes we went to the big 24/7 fruit and veg market to stock up on local organic veggies and fruit and noticed, for the first time, a canteen in the same building with numerous kitchens around the walls providing small, medium or large meals for around 500vu (£3.57). An opportunity not to be missed we thought. So we sat amidst the friendly locals Rob with his beef and me with some fish and tucked in, a tasty meal designed to fill and satisfy. A forester came and sat by Rob,
“So you’re off a cruise liner are you?” He asked and then answered his own question with,
“No you look too healthy for that and you certainly wouldn’t be eating in here!” We chatted about trees and how sandalwood trees are a 25 year project and the ones grown now still go to China to satisfy the incense stick industry.
Later we sat in the cockpit watching all the comings and goings to the island resort next to us. It was good to see Rob contentedly reading his latest book while we listened to the BBC World Service. By way of some exercise we went ashore to find the museum, up past the anonymous Parliament Building down some side roads with high fenced homes and offices some nicely decorated walls and gates suggesting the comfortable wealth of the people hiding within.
There are many empty buildings around, a red block of legal offices overlooking the water, a nice looking motel all overgrown and padlocked, failed businesses and wasted structures. We found the big Bon Marche supermarket full with French goods and items and brands you would see anywhere and vowed to return mitt trolley.
On our way back we called into World Car Rentals and booked a car for the 12th and 13th of the month because that is the next available date to book the smallest car and to give us a good length of time to look forward and plan.
The next day was a Sunday and it rained all day so I worked on a blog, cleaned the shower tray and then started reading a book Bron had given us, ‘There’s a Bear in There and he wants Swedish’ by Merridy Eastman, a factual tale about an out of work actress in Sydney who spends a year working the weekend night shift as a receptionist in a brothel in Redfern. Great book sympathetically and humorously written.
Our present evening viewing from 7.00pm to 8.00pm ish (which will end in two days) is two episodes of The United States of Tara about a Kansas housewife who has numerous personalities. Gradually the story is working towards the cause of her personality split and she is supported by her two children and gorgeous landscape gardener husband.
Edgar’s Soft Voice of Welcome At Vanuatu National Museum
We climbed the hill towards the museum with a hunger for knowledge and started by admiring the tree fern figures that are carved to represent a person or spirit with their hands either across their stomachs or by their sides. A fern sculpture is carved each time a person passes to another grade in the maghe festivals and the carvers strive to make a perfect carving because then the spirit of an ancestor will make their home in it. They can be painted in natural colours, black, red, white and or green and are usually life size unlike the tam tam slit gongs, which as you can see in the picture with Rob showing the scale of the carving can be up to six metres high.
The number of heads above the carved slit denotes the status of a chief. There are many of these tree fern carvings and tam tams around Port Vila decorating hotel and restaurant entrances and they are a delightful reminder of the past.
We passed the National Parliament Building, now open for business because it was Monday and entered the cool dark shade of the museum. The photo of the man wearing a namba or penis sheath is typical of male clothing in ancient times on Malacula Island. The custom has now largely died out except in a couple of isolated villages in the south of the island.
Cannibalism continued in to the 1960’s on Malacula and a very few old people can still be seen who had their heads bound when they were babies. The centre of a person’s being was thought to be in their brain so by ‘extending’ the cranial cavity it was thought the person would achieve greater intelligence. The photograph was taken by an American couple, Martin and Osa Johnson, who did a major photographic survey of the Vanuatuan people exactly one hundred years ago. An exhibition of their work was in the art gallery next door.
In our travels we have noticed a few male villagers wearing pigs’ tusks as ornaments. They are high status and very expensive. In jewellers shops they cost tens of thousands of vatu as bangles and pendants. The front top incisors of the pig are removed when it is young so the bottom ones overgrow and form a circle which, if the pig is allowed to live long enough, will penetrate the lower jaw and continue to grow into another circle. The more circles the higher the value of the tusk and the status of the wearer. A very old pig might have three perforations of his lower jaw, ouch!
The Vanuatuans traditionally believe in reincarnation so the grotesque effigy of the dead person you see might well have their actual skull moulded in to the head, imagine coming across that in a forest ramble after dark!
The tomb of Roi Mata and the photo of his excavated skeleton along with that of the wife he really loved is the story of a man who landed in south Efate, at a place called Maniora with the intention of conquering the island but turned out to be a peacemaker. But I will tell you more about that particular legend later.
I was leaning over a glass table containing shells upstairs in the museum photographing some A4 pages of information about the 1990’s revival of sailing in the islands when a soft male voice said “I am about to start a little cultural show in a moment if you would like to join us.” Well that’s like offering a dog a bone to me so I scuttled after him back doen the stairs making a note of where to resume my ‘photocopying’.
Rob was already seated, he had been there a while waiting for me to finish exploring, and a few more visitors sat on the two facing rows of forms.
On the floor was a large shallow wooden tray covered in a thin layer of sand. Sand drawings I thought, great, a treat indeed. A young lady came out of the office, knelt on the floor and gave the tray a sharp shake so the sand settled in a fine layer ready for her index finger to ‘draw’ a continuous line starting with the straight lines of a grid like graph paper to assist accuracy. Her finger then rasped a lot of sensuous curves without leaving the board until the picture was finished. I could see, amidst the numerous lines, the shape of a heart in the centre, can you see it? She finished by drawing an ‘I’ on the left side and a ‘U’ on the right side. I love You.
Then Edgar gave the tray a quick flick and drew firstly a turtle and then a typical French blackbirding ship that brought terror to coastal communities and drove some of them into the hills to live in hiding.
He told us the story of Roi Mata and then played the percussion instrument you see in the picture while singing the Vanuatu National Anthem followed by the British National Anthem. I asked him about present marriage rules and he confirmed that couples now marry from choice but divorce is strongly frowned upon, “All the entities that support the couple in their union in the first place would be likely to follow the separated couple with bad luck for the rest of their days.” He also said the male Rom Dance I mentioned before is still held in secret in some villages but also performed for visiting tourists. I valued his show as it came from his heart and it was so nice to meet someone who knows how important it is to pass down the colourful history of these islands.
You see the photo of the little dugout with the palm frond sail, well if you remember I mentioned how the islanders from Lamen Island on Epi, our last port of call before Vila, used to sail back to their island home in the evening using a diffused trade breeze to get them home. I have a better photo of this later but the people could easily go back to using sail and oars to get around if the price of petrol rises too much. Nice they have the traditional option.
The masks you see are worn during the young boys’ Circumcision Dances as part of their Rite of Passage to manhood.
We wandered through the vast Chinese built Conference Centre, or should I say Controversy Centre where a Unesco Meeting was being held and chatted with some of the local ladies who had their craft stalls in there. They weren’t getting much custom in this imposing and formal building and 50% of their goods for sale looked like Chinese made tat. Since then a lady approached us on the promenade with little handouts directing us to this market to try and drum up some business. There is also a new handicraft market on the prom amidst bars and restaurants and with the shops nearby, a much more likely target for the purchasing of souvenirs.
The first photo was taken by Steph at the handover of our three boxes of uniforms.
Rubbish, Wrecks and Retreats in Vila Bay
Before we paddled off in our little canoe we set off along the waterfront on a diplomatic mission, to meet the recently installed British Consulate staff who are snuggling down with the New Zealand staff in their Embassy. Paul Lawrence is the new Deputy High Commissioner and at first he thought we had come along with a problem but relaxed when we said it was just a courtesy visit.
He has worked in various interesting places around the world including Antigua, Tunisia and Thailand, where he met and married his wife and is now intent upon improving life in the South West Pacific for our post-colonial friends especially in the out-lying villages and eighty odd islands of the group with small business projects, the allocation of aid and post disaster relief. There hasn’t been a British diplomatic office here since 2005 and it is with our “exit” in mind that this office has been opened. I liked his diplomatic use of the word “exit” there instead of Brexit, no political bias shown!
He has only been in the office for five weeks and has already arranged a medivac for a British person in need of urgent medical attention.
I told him about the concern of the two village elders over the Chinese large scale investment in a country which has no hope of repaying the debt in monetary terms and he valued the information prior to his meeting these people.
He kindly said he was just an email away if we wanted any doors opened in the countries we are heading to.
Back along the prom we stopped into the village café for another iced coffee and I learned from a young lady, as we chatted by the coconut crab cage, that these giant crabs can only be collected in the Banks Islands now, to the north and must be a minimum size. That’s the theory, these two were so small there was barely any flesh in them and one would only feed one person unlike the giant ones in Fiji that fed a family with leftovers. She was adamant the fines were big enough to act as a deterrent.
A young man from the luxury 171 foot Deniki you see in the picture (3.3 metres draft, I like my details!) was relaxing on the prom just off the stern of this Dutch beauty. He told us of how well the staff are treated by the owners, always included in excursions and valued as essential to the running of the ship. The result is they stay with their job for years, in the case of the captain over a decade and ongoing. Good to hear of benevolence working with wealth.
Enough of that, it was time to get afloat!
I had to include the picture of the beautiful fish we had around our mooring buoy before we set off around the island to which we would not be paying a visit. 2,500 vu (£18 each) just to put ones toe on the beach. The water was beautifully clear in places and we ‘bio-snorkelled’ from the canoe into the world of marine life. A friendly islander called a ‘hello’ as he brushed leaves from the very private beach and another had pulled up on the reef at the end of the island in his panga, probably from Ifira island (just to seaward from where we were paddling) that owns Iririki and was casting his net right off the sewage treatment plant and the solar panel farm.
Just around the corner the rubbish dump spewed into the water amidst wrecks of yachts and commercial vessels dating from well before Cyclone Pam in March 2015 during which 65 vessels sank in this little harbour. The land rights of the indigenous people from Ifira have been closely guarded and they also own a lot of Port Vila itself making them some of the wealthiest people in the SW Pacific.
It was a different story from the tip and sewage plant and wrecks on the town side of the Bay with delightful secluded pre-sixties homes, some original limestone shoreline, rocky cliffs and big shoals of fish. One shoal of metre long blue fish were new to us and another of hundreds of foot long trout like fish with scissor tails and a yellow lateral line stayed around the inshore reef while we were there, streaking past us in a frenzy of escape first one way then the other.
Where yachties land their dinghies near the Waterfront Bar lots of sea urchins live together and migrate around the seabed near the pontoon keeping their spines a short distance from eachother. They are clearly working together because there is not a gap between their individual spines and there is a brave little shoal of small charcoal fish that appear to benefit from the urchins’ eating habits and stays close by them.
That evening after our aborted plans to walk around Iririki and then have a nice cocktail in the bar we went with Mark and Jill to the Waterfront and met a German couple just passing through for supper before setting off that evening for New Cal because the weather for the next two weeks is high winds and a disturbed sea. Jill has the suspicion this is what is called a southern oscillating weather system in place at the moment, so its looks as if we will be here for a few more days yet.
Just by luck there was rugby on the TV and the bar staff were as keen to watch as the four of us were and what a match. The Aussie Wallabies beat the NZ All Blacks 47 – 26 there biggest ever win over their rivals in a fabulous fast and furious game. Actually not so furious because the players were very well tempered with only one tiny exception, well I wouldn’t like it someone rammed my head down on the grass either! It was really exciting and there was sometimes a lot of cheering coming from the pretty little bar in Port Vila our voices amongst them. What’s more we could see the Fire Dance taking place on Iririki Resort beach for free!
Roymata’s Reign and the Cave of Swallows
Picture the scene, eight hundred and seventy years ago in 1250 a fleet of big outrigger canoes with triangular sails makes its way northwards towards Efate island full with men keen to find new lands to settle. The holds of the canoes are full with pandanus mats and building materials, tools and weapons, food and water and their precious ceremonial clothing and head masks. In the first canoe of the fleet are two brothers from a high status family, Roymata and his brother Roymuru.
The outriggers ground onto the coral shore at the southern-most tip of the island, Maniora, where there is now a spar resort. From there over the next months the two men led assaults on this island and its many off-lying islands until Roymata was recognised as the new leader by the previously waring villagers.
Roymata, ironically, did not agree with village fighting village over land, women and water so he introduced a new, matri-linear system which linked villages through high status families. The marriage of the women from these families to men of the same status family in neighbouring villages thus maintaining the links between villages so war would not be waged between them. The system still functions today and we met numerous women throughout the islands who came from another island to marry her husband and live with his family. Although there are still land disputes after a volcanic eruption destroys one person’s productive land, these are sorted by the chiefs of the combined village councils.
At Manga’asi on the shores of what is now known as Havannah Harbour a village was known to have been inhabited from 500AD and here Roymata decided would be the ideal place to settle. He ruled the island with benevolence, a quality so rare in those set up to govern and under his leadership the village grew and grew.
The people of Efate became united and the economy thrived on the productivity of peacetime. Offshore from his home village are two islands, Lelepa and the much smaller Eretoka or Hat Island which appears in photo number 575. Lelepa Island you can see directly opposite the beach at Lelepa Landing where I took the photos of the World Heritage Sign and Rob sitting on the giant clam bench.
The area between these two islands and Roymata’s home are now known as his Domain, where he lived and functioned for around fifteen years. Sadly his brother, Roymuru was a jealous person and one day while they were on Lelepa Island he shot his brother through the throat with a poisoned arrow. His mortified followers carried him to a deep cavern of compressed ash and calcium called Feles Cave near the main habitation on the island, Natapao where he died. High up on the walls of the cave are black wall paintings of men, fish and birds which date from about 900AD. With Roymata’s demise there it is now a place of national significance since Roymata is remembered as the man who shaped present day Vanuatu with peace and unity.
His body was laid carefully in a canoe and taken back to Lelepa Landing you see in the photos and then on to his village, Manga’asi to his young wife and family and the other members of his court for the 100 day and night mourning period and it was decided he would be laid to rest with his 18 courtiers, their 21 wives and Roymata’s own wife effectively ending his dynasty.
When the time came the men drank a lot of strong kava to make the traumatic experience bearable but the women were not given this option and according to Edgar at the Museum Roymata’s wife ran as fast as she could into the bush to escape. What must she have felt, the loss of her beloved husband and then facing being buried alive. She was brought back and joined the rest of the funeral party as they made their way to the island from the tiny beach at Maga-liliu village which ironically survives the deceased’s own capital still being a small village.
After the burial the mourners danced over the grave and then decorated it with a big stone you can see in the photo in the Museum blog and the story was carried down through the generations who treated the grave site as tabu, a forbidden area. But was it true?
In the late 1960’s a French archaeologist, Jose Garanger decided to test the legends and spent some time excavating the site. He found the 41 skeletons and Roymata was clearly distinguished by his ornate necklace and the many rings around his ankles. You can see the bindings around his wife’s wrists and from the position of her bones she tried desperately to avoid being buried alive.
Roymata’s home village of Manga’asi understandably went into decline after his death and was eventually the remaining residents left in the 1700’s. This long abandoned capital has now been reclaimed by Mother Nature and although it is thought the local villagers can still show one the site it could do with being excavated to add to the incredible story and become part of the cultural pilgrimage around his world.
By this time in our circumnavigation of the island we were ready for some refreshment and found the Wahoo Bar/Restaurant and guesthouse. Situated on the shores of the Havannah Harbour’s protected waters the welcome was a warm as the price for two iced coffees was high, £12. We gathered the owner was Australian with an ex-pat mentality on pricing.
Onwards through the sprawling village of Ulei built amidst the abandoned Havannah Harbour settlement. (The name Havannah came from the first British warship that regularly patrolled the archipelago. Back in the 1800’s this was the island’s main settlement until a combination of drought, falling world cotton prices when the US resumed production after the Civil War, cyclone devastation and malaria forced the settlers to set up the new capital on the shores of the protected bay at Vila.
All around remains the evidence in the form of runways, wrecked planes, jetties, a museum and ruined buildings of the WW11 US presence but we decided to view them only if they appeared; our main interest was in the island, its history and its people.
So next on the list was the Valeafau Cave at Siviri on the north coast where David McArthur had an interesting story to tell. He is pictured with Rob.
To tell the story of the cave it is essential to include the big island of Nguna that lies across Undine Bay to the north. This island through history had been a home to warfare between the hill dwellers and the coastal people. The conflicts ranged from suspicion of theft of fruit and vegetables from the garden and trees, allegations of causing injury and death by sorcery and the availability of water, and that is where the cave comes in to the story.
David explained that back in the dangerous times of blackbirding the people from Siviri village where he was born and bred and numerous other villages too moved up into the hills to hide from the marauding French ships, so for a while the village was empty. So during the nights villagers from Nguna paddled their canoes across under cover of darkness to search for water. They watched as swallows disappeared into the rocky undergrowth and then emerged from a different point. On further searching they found the cave and its life saving lake of fresh water and from then on shared it with the swallows.
There is evidence in the form of the footprints that the cave has been in use through history but when the villagers returned to their home village from their hill-top hideaway after the threat of blackbirding was over the chief confessed he had no idea it was there.
The Nguna Villagers paid compensation to Siviri village and continued to take water from the lake. Once an expedition of scuba divers is thought to have travelled 5km into the cave before turning back but we just took a few paces into the cool watery interior and declined David’s offer of a kayak trip on the lake for another 1000vu and instead listened to his tale of how he used to look after Kate Blanchett’s nearby vila for five years which is now on the market for 3 million vu, (£21,428); he described where it was but we didn’t look hard for it. She had previously donated 5 million vu after the devastating effects of cyclone Pam. Bless her.
Our next stop was an idyllic little garden area between the village itself and the waters of Undine Bay where we watched a big herd of narrow-beaked oceanic dolphins gradually making their way down the Bay about 20 metres beneath our beautiful lookout. Straight opposite was the big island I have mentioned, Nguna sitting in brooding dark shadows under its hat of cloud, it would become our companion and where we were going to stay.
We had paid 1000vu (£7) each for access to the area and it really was ours for the time we were there, quite alone. After lunch of coleslaw salad and in addition for Rob two beef sausages, and fruit at a picnic table with the benches fastened to young sandalwood trees, we scrambled down the steps to a little walled terrace just above the water. No need for the changing room we were soon making our way in sandaled feet across the carefully and thoughtfully smoothed limestone rocks before launching ourselves into the deliciously cool and clear water. Familiar fish swam in the caves and submarine alleyways of this limestone reef that was devoid of coral, just very sharp rock!
Our next stop was the stuff of dreams, in this particular instance Doroline’s Dream.