Sunday 31st July

What a lovely holiday I am having…apart from…COMPUTERSTRESS!!

Pete says, “This is not a holiday, this is YOUR LIFE!!”

Well no; my life does not usually consist of balmy tropical islands parading before me one by one; volcanoes erupting; drinkies on deck; people to meet places to go by the dozen.

We arrived in Port Vila (capital of Vanuatu) at 4pm yesterday after a very lively bit of sailing. We had both sails up (head and main,) and at times we got up to 15 knots – wee hee!! That is FAST! But it was also very difficult in that steering the boat was very strenuous, to put it mildly. Pete did most of the work (are you surprised??) but I put in as valiant an effort as I could. Exhausted!!

Our night at Erromango was very pleasant. We tucked up in bed and were fast in snoozyland by…ahem…8.30… In the middle of the night I heard voices - HELLO HELLO!!! I got up and saw lights – OH NO! how terrifying! (It turned out to be all of 9pm…) I said to Pete, in a quavering voice, “We have visitors!” He got up in his nice little pyjama shorts, and strode up on deck to be The Man. And there, floating on the calm clear water was a cute little dugout canoe, with two local boys, offering us – two small but beautiful crayfish… They didn’t want to slaughter us in our bed at all… We asked what we could trade for these delicacies – well there’s no such thing as a free lunch, is there? Umm…whatever… I rootled around in our cupboards and came up with a tin of spaghetti sauce and a fresh new jar of peanut butter. Fair exchange!! Earlier on (before snoozeytime) we had had a visit from another bright-eyed local boy with a big basket of fresh veggies for us. We “gave” him our last few cups of rice and some…well I have completely forgotten, but some…something… Oh yes, some UMT milk. He told us he was building a “yacht club” in Dillon Bay – very sensibly, he had worked out that sailors on their way from Port Resolution (Tanna) to Port Vila (Efate) might need to stop overnight for Rest And Recreation. So far so good…a bit of building is evident but…nothing as flash (???) as Port Resolution is on the boil yet. The beach at Dillon Bay is very beautiful but totally rocky; big round stones, steeply sloping to the calm clear water.

OK – into Port Vila!! At last…and there to meet and greet us was - a whale! I spotted it first - most unusual, it is always Hawkeye Headlam who spots these wonders of nature… No marina…I was devastated; I do love a marina… But it is all very beautiful, a dear little town, all wet and puddled and eccentric.

We got a very good anchorage, just across from the main drag, not far from Island Claws, a big fishing boat – isn’t that a great name?? We were very keen to find Leah (my niece) and Mark (her boyfriend). But…oh dear and oh no…my computer decided it would not accept internet connections…. My something or another is turned off and inoperable…I am very stressed by all of this and have been doing lots of DEEP BREATHING. Pete has been very kind and patient. His computer is more than receptive to cyberwaves… He managed to convert files from my computer to his and I have posted some sort of blog for the last many days… but it won’t let me look at my gmail… (breathe…breathe…)

Last night we wandered along and found the Port Vila Yacht Club (a slight bit more sophis than the Erromango or Port Resolution Yacht Clubs…) We listened to a very mellow trio of local lads singing very harmoniously for the dinner crowd, and met a Dutch engineer (Fred) from Haarlem, who lives and works here, living on his very big (61’) yacht, Drydock. He was very Mick Jagger in appearance…and full of information. On his advice, we looked out for the sailpast the following morning – how beautiful it was! About a dozen yachts of various sizes, all rigged out with a panoply of sails, cruising right around the bay and right past us, some with music, some with dancing, some with both. And one with Fred! It is still Independence Day celebrations…speeches, music, performances day and night! (And yes I did find it hard to sleep…Pete, however, was totally in Sleepyboboboland, bless him…)

We got up and ate some of our Erromango pawpaw (thank you Jif William and Mrs Martha Mete!) and set off in the tender to tie up at the wharf. I had photos of Leah and Mark – “Ah yes, this man is from Melé,” was the unanimous cry. “We will take you to his village!” We declined these offers and trudged along, getting wetter by the minute – a very rainy place, Port Vila! I was trying to buy new sandals – my friend Meriloy had assured me I would find Birkenstock-type sandals by the dozen. Well I did…but the dreamy girl in The (grandly named) Shoe Store said, “Oh no, not in your size…” and resumed her dreamy posture leaning against the wall. “Would you like them in size 41? Oh no…well I suppose if you wear 37/38 then 41 will not really fit…”

We ended up at a nice sort of restaurant with a view over the main street and the Grand Casino, where we had lamb wrap (Pete) and club sandwich (me.) By the time we got back to the tender we had made contact, more or less, with Mark (from Melé!) and Leah (from Launceston!). Pete picked them up at about 4.00 and we gave them sumptuous cups of tea – well we have hardly anything left on board… My sister Monique, mother of Beautiful Leah, is arriving at midnight tonight and we are going to meet up and kick up our heels tomorrow…

Sunday 31st July

We spent the entire morning trying to fix the stiff steering. Pete went down into the engine holds and got very hot and …ummmm…bothered, and I sat at the wheel obeying instructions – turn the wheel PORT, I mean STARBOARD, no PORT, MORE, no STOP, now STARBOARD. Fun Fun Fun. Eventually we were rescued by a phone call from Monique after lunchtime – they were ready to meet us – Leah, Mark, Monique. And there on the dock, a bonus – Dara, with baby Justin!! ) Dara = Monique’s Numbawan Daughter, sister of Leah, niece of…well, me! I hadn’t met Justin, not many weeks old, so what bliss it was, to be able to hand him from one to another through the afternoon. So wonderful to meet the latest member of the family, and to see Dara so confident and competent.

We sat around for a while at La Tentation, then went to a very flash supermarket, full of everything we could ever want - Sultana Bran – tick! Whole egg mayonnaise – tick! Then we crammed into the big twincab ute and found our way to the house where Mark and Leah are living, on a hill overlooking a golf course, a lagoon, a beautiful bay, a lovely little island. There is no such thing as street addresses; we would never have found this house had we gone hunting for Mark and Leah by ourselves. It is up a steep concrete drive off another steep concrete drive, hidden in thick lush greenery… The house is wonderful, big and cool and spacious…and very empty! They have two big couches and a few beds. Apparently it is very hard, and expensive, to get furniture in Vila. We were quite happy; we all had somewhere to sit, and some delicacies from the deli section of Au Bon Marché supermarket. And some G & T; who cared if it was still raining??

Monday 1st August

This is a very damp and rainy island! We had a spurt of sunshine this morning and got quite warm and thrilled but…soon there was rain again. I am, mind you, going to need a lot of rain because…I got my hair cut again… Yes what was I thinking?? It grows very rapidly, in all the humidity, and it had just gone past optimum length. I managed to snavel an hour or so away from family and friends and went to Head Hunter, as posh a salon as Port Vila can muster. I was given star treatment – lots of shampoo and massage and then a session with a lovely young coiffeur from the Philippines. I said, very clearly, that I just wanted – a bit of a trim…same as it is now only a BIT shorter. He snipped away delicately and lulled me into a sort of trance from which I slowly emerged to find he was still snipping away…and had snipped all of my fringe off to a startling and horrible shortness…I am sure he has done a great job; he was very skillful. But… I hate it!! I have taken myself off to a salubrious little toilet area at the Baywatch Restaurant, where I am waiting for my lost family & friends, and I have plastered my hair with water and rammed my Tilley hat down on top of the whole damp horror. I suppose one good thing is…it was all very (and surprisingly) cheap; I think the Vanuatu flag I bought for 2XS earlier on cost more… (Dennis’s the coiffeur’s last words to me were…sorry about your fringe…)

Leah and Mark’s shop is called Island Princess. It is just lovely, all clean and bright and full of objets… There are dozens of fairly tatty tourist shops and Chinese shops; I think expats living in Vila must find Island Princess to be a very pleasant little oasis and a great source of gifts.

I am sure you want to know how the local ladies dress. They wear smocks! But not the same as the New Caledonian ladies. In NC the dresses are made of thick cotton or nylon and are quite simple. In Vanuatu they are made of more floaty (Pete’s mum might even say diaphanous…) material and they are much more elaborate. (Monique says no they are made of very stuffy nylon - she knows this from bitter experience, having had to wear a fluoro smock to church once...) Lots of puffing around the sleeve area, and lots of floating panels. The colours seem a bit more muted as well, although his morning I did see a very large lady in bright yellow with orange and red flowers and many furbelows drifting from her ample form.

Leah and Mark have kept us most entertained with stories of Life in Port Vila. Recently the government decided that it would be much easier to check on tax fraud of every single business, large and small, had a cash register. And failure to have a cash register would incur a fine of something equivalent to $100,000. So ofcourse there was a panic buy-out…there were only 18 machines available in the whole of Port Vila! (They hadn’t thought to warn the supplier that there would be a mightily increased demand…)

The government has also, bizarrely, decided to impose very hefty fines on business which sell cigarettes individually rather than by the packet. Why??

Mark and Leah have a big 4WD ute, which they dutifully registered and insured. Imagine their surprise when they were apprehended by the police on their way back from the airport – “Where are your registration papers?” They handed them over with great confidence only to be told that their rego had expired… They didn’t realize that in Vanuatu rego lasts for a calendar year; if, for example, you pay your full amount on 30th December, you are registered for one whole day, not one whole year… Oh oops! So there were poor Mark and Leah, un-registered…and the police took their car away! “Out you hop!” and they were stranded! They got a ride back to town and tried to claim their car. “Oh no it has to have a roadworthy check before you can register it…” Oh deary me…a whole lot of palaver before they could actually get hold of the car and actually take it for its roadworthy check… This, in the end, consisted of: a ride over a speedbump and a check of the windscreen wipers…