Friday 26th August

Yesterday we – finally – went to the Mélé Cascades with Mark and Leah as our chauffeur and guides. This is an absolutely wonderful place, only about five kilometes out of Port Vila. A magical cascade of clear blue pools with, at the top, a magnificent pair of waterfalls. We swam in the very top pool, under the smaller of the waterfalls, and gasped happily as the cold spray hit us on the head. Mark was frolicking happily on the larger of the falls, clambering up like a mountain goat. Leah took lots of photos while Pete and I admired this feat appreciatively. Andrew, who while quiet and gentle is actually VERY competitive ( well you have to be, to be a racing car driver…) waited till we were out of sight and clambered up the waterfall himself. (Pete stayed behind and took a photo to prove it. He, mind you, stayed on a warm dry rock…) Mark took Andrew into a cave behind the larger fall, and I decided, after a bit of cautious deliberation, that I couldn’t miss this opportunity. It was a bit confronting going under the breath-taking (literally) rush of water, but then – magic! A dry little cave! Whoopee! I was inordinately proud of this achievement and managed to get all the way back down (down is always much harder than up…) the Cascades without having to slide on my bottom, as usually happens to me in waterfall areas.

At the bottom we celebrated our achievements by having a nice cold drink – beer for the older people brightly coloured drinks with flowers and umbrellas atop for Mark and Leah. The Cascades belong to Mark’s large extended family –various cousins, uncles, brothers-of-cousins, brothers-in-law and uncle-in-law, and they have created a most beautiful development there, totally in keeping with the beauty of the area.

Our other activities for the daylight hours consisted of…travelling around in buses, or in long-suffering Mark and Leah’s Island Princess Ute, looking in hardware stores and mechanical repair shops for weapons to tackle the rudder problems on 2XS.

At 5 we had speedy showers and met up with Chris, who sells photocopiers and other such Toshiba equipment in an office overlooking our marina. (He has a connection to Pete’s cousin Michael, who had told him we were in Vila.) Chris had very kindly offered to take us to a kava bar (nakamel). It was a much more salubrious establishment than Ronnie’s, where we had been with Fred, our wild Dutch friend. It was perched on a steep hill overlooking the harbor, and we had clean plastic chairs to sit on instead of dusty wooden benches in an unlit thatched hut. We met yet another group of expats, all of them long-time Vanuatu residents. Jerry and Jan (Dutch) own La Tentation, the beautiful restaurant where Pete and I had dinner the night before we went back to Tasmania. Their son Nick is the manager. When I told Jerry how much we enjoyed our dinner there, she said, swiftly, “Please put a review on tripadvisor.com”, which is exactly what the manager of the Café du Village said the night before.

We were later joined by Beverley (English) who has also lived in Vanuatu for over twenty years. She does various jobs, including being a property manager for rentals around Vila. Not an easy job…. “I have 200 children who ring me saying, “fix this, fix that, my light globes have blown,’ that sort of thing.” Beverley is very tall, blonde, gorgeous, and she might join us after work today. For drinks not kava, I hope… I really enjoyed the kava last night and was very circumspect – TWO shells, not FIVE. But…I still had terrible trouble getting to sleep. Kava is not my friend!

At 7.30 we met Leah and Mark for dinner at our front garden restaurant (Waterfront Bar & Grill.) Mark and I had totally delicious fish (wahu) with veggies. Pete had rack of beef which was ENORMOUS and possibly not as yummy as my fish…Andrew had steak, which was also… not as yummy as my fish, and Leah had calamari. Food here is good! Later in the evening I was talking to the owner of the Waterfront and she said…“Please put a review on tripadvisor.com.” I am very busy writing reviews to make all my Vanuatu restaurant managers happy! She also told me where we should go when we leave her –this island, that island, not here, not there, and WATCH OUT FOR SHARKS. I said I couldn’t hear her above the music, it was all too loud. I don’t want to hear any more about sharks!!

We have been reading our Lonely Planet Guide to the South Pacific, and it is FULL of shark warnings. In fact, it is fulsome in its praise of Epi Island - you can swim there secure in the knowledge here will be no sharks. So where it is SILENT on the topic of sharks, this is also alarming! Pete and I talked to a man in Au Bon Marché supermarket the other day. He is Australian and has a little resort on Epi. He agreed there were no sharks around Epi but said, charmingly, “No sharks but many inexplicable disappearances of catamarans.” Very witty and amusing!!

We have been reading jaw-dropping stories about the time of the Condominium in Vanuatu – generally known as the Pandemonium. For about seventy years this poor benighted country was run by a coalition of Les Francais and The English. On some islands, they even had currency with cinq centimes on one side and sixpence on the other. And Beverly told me last night that they could never agree on left-hand or right-hand traffic, so they instituted a rule of alternate days… So you would wake up in the morning thinking, “Hmmm…is it Wednesday, when I drive on the left, or Thursday when I drive on the right?” She said it actually all worked quite well because there were, in those days, so few cars here.

We are supposed to be leaving for bluer waters tomorrow. Pete and Andrew have been slogging away on the rudder problems. I swear I saw them with a very large sledge-hammer, making a horrendous noise. I am prudently keeping out of it; I have no skills in this area. I spent a very pleasant hour or two bobbing around in the dinghy under the boat with a small squirty bottle of fairly mild poison (the fish loved it and clustered around me, fascinated, trying to wash off some of the slime adhering to the hull.) Occasionally I would look up, to find the odd wistful sailor gazing at me. “I think I should bring my wife to watch this. Can I take a photo?” No thank you! I do not want photos of me looking like a tomato appearing on youtube; and I do not wish to make enemies of sailing wives, whose husbands are very wrongly impressed by the very small contributions I make to boat maintenance and wellbeing.

I don’t know when next I will be in internet range. A mystery! I will keep writing but the next blogpost might be a large and unwieldy affair…

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANN-MARIE!!