Bat Cave and Laundry Day in Asanvari, Maewo, Vanuatu -- 6 September 2014

We were well past due for washing clothes when we arrived here in Asanvari yesterday. But we had a higher priority today. There is a cave high on the mountain near here called Bat Cave, which, as you can imagine, is home to countless bats. Actually, some birds ("pijin") also nest inside the cave. Anyway, a local man here guides visitors up to see it for a small fee. Some friends of ours who visited it a number of years ago considered it a "don't miss" activity. So, we arranged yesterday to meet the guide, Barry, on shore this morning at eight o'clock.

Barry doesn't speak much English at all, nor French which is also a possibility here, only his local language (one of many here) and Bislama. But we've been working hard these few weeks on Bislama, and we had a great time conversing completely in it. A little stilted, perhaps, but still quite enjoyable.

We knew it would be a long hike up a steep, muddy trail -- I use that word loosely here -- for an hour and a half, or so. It was, indeed, both steep and muddy. We came to these islands with no footwear save flip-flops, so we found some sneakers to buy in Vila just for hikes such as this one. It wasn't long, though, before I was wondering if flip-flops might not be better here. Barry was wearing them, or occasionally going barefoot, and he was not slipping and sliding nearly as much as us. But we persevered for a couple of hours, Barry pausing to show us some plant, or an old village gravesite, or to chat about something ("samting") in Bislama. Actually, he couldn't seem to walk and talk at the same time, and I was beginning to wonder if we'd get there and back in one day. But we did, of course.

Bat Cave was cool. Just inside the entrance, there are some human bones and a partial skull from antiquity. Stepping further inside, bats flying all around us, we scrambled along with flashlights. About the time we lost the light from the entrance, we began to see a glow from another opening. Reaching that second opening, we saw it was a giant hole in the cave roof, extending down into an equally giant hole in the cave floor, descending into an abyss. Barry said that no one has ever gone down this hole, but that it apparently connects with a lower cave accessible from another entrance. The cave was interesting, and was of course the motivation for this hike, but it was the hike itself and the interaction with Barry that I enjoyed the most. He, like so many ni-Vanuatu, has an infectious smile and a warm, open personality. He seems to really enjoy the contact with visitors, showing them something of his island and its ways. As we have so often found, he also responded enthusiastically to our attempts at his language.

Slipping and sliding down the path ("smol rod"), it began to rain, not making traction any better. After a drippy beginning, it gained momentum, setting in to be an all-afternoon tropical downpour. We hadn't brought rain jackets, and were soaked to the skin with warm rain, but that was preferable to being soaked to the skin with warm sweat underneath rain jackets.

So, that leads into laundry day. Considering that fresh water is a valuable commodity on a boat -- we have to either make it, fetch it, or catch it -- and laundry takes a lot of it, we rowed back to Mintaka quickly to set buckets under our rain-catchment hoses. Within minutes, both buckets were full and emptied into our laundry basins. Robyn -- bless her soul -- sat out in the rain scrubbing and rinsing two weeks worth of clothes, sheets and towels. Then, she strung our clothes lines, hanging things up for a further rinse before taking them down again, lest they blow away. No chance of drying them today; that'll have to wait till tomorrow.