Efate

Efate is the main island of commerce in Vanuatu. It is the perfect South Pacific island with white coral beaches and coconut trees. i told a serious young man i met on a tour that more people in Vanuatu are killed by falling coconuts than by traffic accidents, and the poor chap believed me, but maybe i was right, with my made up statistic. There certainly don't seem to be many accidents, although the fabulous ring road around the coast of Efate is another story.

Built by the Americans, it has connected villages in a way the internet first connected the cyber world. Before the ring road, if you wanted to see your friends you bush bashed with a knife for hours. Now, you walk along the ring road. So on the ring road people sit, and play, and dogs wander, and a famous elderly man is wheeled in his chair, right down the middle as befits his age and status. Vehicular traffic is almost secondary, and needs to watch out for picnics.

The other lagacy of the American invasion of World War Two is botanical. The main plant on Efate is morning glory. With its big, heart shaped leaves it can grow a metre in a day. It coats the canopy like a net, smothers the trees, and make the landscape uniform. Tendrils grow onto the roads. There are no plans for its eradication, as there is no money. If the Americans wanted to do something for Vanuatu, they could exorcise their own botanical demon. i could get quite exercised about it myself!

i took several tours including climbing the gorgeous Mele Cascades. You climb hanging on to ropes, and at the base of the main cascade is a limpid pool of cool water deep enough to swim in. There are also small caves behind the waterfall. Undine fairyland.

Other tours involved kastom villages where ni-Vanuatu people perform in 'traditional' style. You enter the village, and the men and boys leaps out and threaten you, brandishing spears, clubs, ukeleles and the terrible tea chest bass. The idea is to evoke scary cannibal shit. Some of the tourists are quite sophisticated and mug for the cameras, pretending to be speared and eaten. i photographed Seru the guide, photographing the tourists, being photographed with the villagers. Actually i thought the jumping-out-and-scaring-people ritual was more like the Maori poowhiri, the welcome ceremony where the visitors are challenged, and once the challenge is met, they become part of the village and are no longer visitors.

Kava does not agree with me. i lay in my hotel room as the hotel band played Livin' on a Prayer (the windows are shuttered, so there is no sound proofing), exhausted from trips to the toilet, and decided from now on i would live a blameless life, and was grateful for the 'Gudfela toilet paper blong yumi ' and for clean sheets. A travel tip: food is expensive In Vanuatu but it is totally worth paying for something that stays down.

i had three nights in Port Vila, on Efate, and then went on to Tanna - and the volcano!