A Ni-Vanuatu Friend

Robyn has a life-long friend from Minneapolis, who married a Brit and now lives in Britain.  She, in turn, has a niece who is half British and half ni-Vanuatu (that’s what the locals here call themselves).  This niece — Serah is her name — has been attending University in Britain, but is home in Vanuatu right now.  She lives in the little village of Mele, not far from where we are now in Port Vila.  We met her Saturday, and had Sunday lunch with her family yesterday.

How we found her deserves a telling.  There was a charity horse race sponsored by the local Kiwanis club Saturday near Mele.  A local event, it sounded interesting.  We had been having difficulty contacting Serah, but managed to get a message to her uncle that morning that we would be at the horse races.  He said she would come out there looking for us, that we should wait at the gate, and that Serah was tall and light-skinned (half British) with curly dark hair.  Robyn wore a bright orange T-shirt for Serah to seek (that, with a white face in a sea of black ones was distinctive).  So, we went out there Saturday morning and found that one of the gate tenders actually knew Serah, and said he would watch for her.  We went on in, but after the first two races, we were ready to leave.  Serah hadn’t shown up yet, so we got a ride to her village, and asked the first person we saw if they knew Serah.  “Oh, yes.  Go down this street, take the third left, and ask someone for further directions.”  We did.  “Oh, yes.  Go down to where you see the laundry drying on a line, and ask someone for further directions.”  We did.  The next person was tall and light-skinned, with curly dark hair, and lit up when she saw Robyn’s T-shirt.  We had a very nice visit, met some of her many relatives, and had some local food before catching a bus back to Port Vila.  Serah’s mother invited us back for Sunday lunch.

Mele is a small village, where pigs and mangy dogs roam the dirt lanes, and the small houses are a mix of cement, corrugated metal, and thatch.  Many floors are dirt, and are covered with mats, finely woven from pandanus leaves.  Everyone seems to know everyone, and everyone is very friendly.  One young man called out to us, “Thank you for visiting our village.”

We caught a bus up there again Sunday morning, arriving at Serah’s house — I should say her extended family’s group of houses — amid a croud of her relatives preparing various foods for lunch.  Men tending several rather large dutch ovens simmering chicken; four women preparing platters of salad.  Another, a huge bowl of a sort of spicy coleslaw.  Two other women grating coconut meat to squeeze for coconut milk to go in the rice.  Etc, with all of the cooked dishes being done over open fires.

We were a little early, so we went for a stroll, stopped by the church where some big conference was getting underway, and wandered around the village a bit.  Then we just hung around, watching the preparations, meeting some of the family.  Serah wasn’t around yet; turns out she was in the church service.  At one point, Serah’s mother presented Robyn with a handmade dress like all the other women were wearing, and a bit later presented me with a brightly colored shirt, also hand made.  No explanation, though.  Later, we found that this was a family tradition with visitors.  Then we sat down with the family at a very long table for a nice meal of local dishes.  Serah showed up, and we had another nice visit.  Just before leaving back to Port Vila, Serah’s mother presented us with one of their woven mats, a special, ornate one.  We were quite taken aback.  It was a pleasure, as well as a cultural experience, to be included in the family like that.

Futuna

Futuna is rarely visited by yachties, or by other tourists.  This is partly due in the case of yachties to the poor anchorage, and to its out-of-the-way location, but also in general to no great interest in tourism among the people of Futuna, and little of interest to a tourist — just a pretty little tropical island, where people go about their lives quietly.  The population is small, and there is no industry.  Consequent to all of that, there is almost nothing in the way of restaurants or hotels.  The people are quite friendly, though, and seem pleased that we’d come to visit.

The day after we arrived was the 29th of August, anniversary of the day Wallis and Futuna became French Overseas Territories.  The day started with a mass at the main church, a quite colorful, flower-bedecked affair, with spear-carrying ushers in attendance who struck the floor with a spear butt whenever the people were to stand.  I’ve not been to that many Catholic masses, but I found myself wondering if the average western Catholic would have recognized this as their own religion.

The day continued with a flag ceremony, quite a bit less elaborate than for the 14th of July, and a kava ceremony for the VIPs of the island.  A succession of dancing, costumed school groups performed over the morning.  Then, a community feast was served.  “Served” doesn’t quite fit here, though.  Typically polynesian, the food was piled high on a long table.  People sat as space allowed, eating mostly with fingers from the heaped up dishes, then left, making room for others to sit down and eat.  Total chaos.  I am actually intimidated by this sort of thing.  I’m not sure why, but I am.  Were it not for Robyn, I would never have entered the room, let alone sat down.  Robyn and I are good at getting the other into good experiences which we would not otherwise have.

The afternoon then continued with groups of male dancers, deck out in an eclectic mix of leaves, other bits of foliage, and strips of brightly colored mylar.  These men clearly enjoyed this dance tradition, stomping, swinging, jumping in unison to the beat of makeshift drums.

We noticed that there were no local fruits in the grocery store — no coconuts, bananas, papayas, etc.  We asked where we could buy some, and were told to just ask at any house where we saw them growing.  We did so a couple of times, and were always told to just take what we wanted.  One of these times, we were also invited in for lunch.  After seeing the wretched conditions in which the pigs are kept, I wasn’t too keen on the roast pork.  Oh, well.  The roast taro wasn’t so great, either, but the encounter with the local man was great.  His French wasn’t so good — worse than mine — but we managed to communicate well enough.

Futuna is a pretty island, but there isn’t actually much to see or do as a tourist.  The only thing of interest in the Lonely Planet guide was the Pierre Chenal church at the other end of the island.  Chenal was a priest here in the early days, was killed by a jealous chief, and is now the patron saint of Oceania.  The church is a little different, with intricately woven tapa cloths lining the walls, and with the crucifix figure clothed in tapa cloths.  The chapel next door contains some of Chenal’s relics — bones, skull, the club that killed him, etc.  I get the feeling, visiting various Catholic churches around the islands, that Catholicism has not replaced the former paganism here so much as absorbed it.

We had wanted to go north from Futuna to visit Tuvalu, but a nasty weather system was parked between Futuna and Tuvalu, and didn’t look like it was going to move any time soon.  We were getting antsy to move on, and when the weather looked OK to go west to Vanuatu, but still bad to the north, we reluctantly decided to forget Tuvalu.  Unlike travel on land, we go where the weather allows us to go.

Passages from Wallis to Futuna to Vanuatu

We pulled in to Port Vila in Vanuatu late in the evening last Monday, the 11th.  We don’t like to enter new ports after dark — we don’t like to enter familiar ones after dark either — but Port Vila is an easy entry, even in the dark, and the full moon gave considerable light, despite the overcast.  It didn’t help, though, that the last of our three autopilots had become unreliable (occasionally generating an uncommanded hard turn, not a good thing in tight places), so I had to hand steer the last few miles.  The entry into the port follows what is called a lighted range.  That consists of two distinct lights, one above and further inland than the other.  If you are on the range, the two lights will appear one directly above the other.  If you are off the range, one light will appear to one side of the other.  This range defines a line with perfect accuracy, which is set up to ensure a safe enry.  It didn’t help, though, that only one of the lights was operating.  Fortunately, we have other means of following such a line.  It didn’t help, too, to find quite a few boats anchored in the small and awkward and dark quarantine anchorage, two quite large, and several of the others unlit (very bad form not to have an anchor light on at night).  Well, we finally found a suitable spot, and got the anchor down, six and a half rough, wet and salty days from Futuna.

I should go back to leaving Wallis, though, where I posted my last blog entry.

Wallis is an atoll with only one significant pass through the fringing reef.  The tidal currents in such a place can run quite strongly, so you have to time your transit of the pass accordingly.  With an unavoidably strong wind against us, we needed a bit of current behind us to help, so we left about an hour before low tide.  Wind against current can set up some impressive waves, which was the case here.  The tongue of water rushing out the pass bore a distinct resemblance to the log flume at Disney World.  Tall but short and steep waves sent us alternately soaring skyward or falling down, down, down.  Didn’t last too long, but it sure was wild.

The wind was at right angles to our course for Futuna, some hundred and thirty miles or so away, and was blowing around twenty-five knots.  This made for a fast but wet ride.  The waves were coming up beam on, with an occasional one peaking at just the right moment to smack hard against the side of the boat (sounds like a gun shot down below when one does that).  Well, the wave energy has to go somewhere, so it shoots straight up, whereupon the wind blows it onto the deck, into the cockpit, and now and then a bit down the hatch.  Didn’t take long to get very wet and salty.  The conditions eased just a bit along the way, but were still up when we arrived at Futuna.

The anchorage at Futuna is just a small notch in the fringing coral reef.  There was just enough protection to make the anchorage tenable, but not by much.  A heavy swell rolled in continuously, making us pitch uncomfortably.  And the wind was now at an angle to the swell, so it allowed us to roll miserably.  We wound up using three anchors, two off the bow to hold us in the notch, and one off the stern to hold us facing the swell to stop the rolling.  With the three anchors holding us in place, conditions were tolerable, but not very comfortable.  I was a little nervous the whole week we were there.

Futuna was nice enough — I’ll describe our time there in the next blog post — but when the weather allowed us to leave, I was quite ready.  The conditions had only dropped back down to what we had coming over from Wallis, though, still blowing 20-25 kts with rough seas.  Once again, it didn’t take long to get very wet and salty.

We had intended our first stop in Vanuatu to be at Tanna island, where there is an easily accessible active volcano.  You can get a ride by truck up to a short walk from the rim of the crater, where you can look down into Dante’s inferno.  The volcano bubbles and spits, and occasionally sends blobs of lava skyward to get the attention of visitors — the recommendation is not to run, but to look up so you can avoid the blobs as they land.  I can’t really say that it’s a safe, or smart thing to do, but countless tourists have gone up there over the years, with only a couple of accidents.

The problem is that the port of entry on Tanna is on the wrong side of the island, and doesn’t have much of an anchorage.  Considering the rough weather we were experiencing, we finally decided to skip Tanna for now, and head directly to Port Vila, the capitol of Vanuatu, where we are now.

We’ve had a couple of good night’s sleep now, washed all the salt off, and are enjoying the town and the company of other cruisers.  I’ll write about Futuna soon, as well as Port Vila.  Stay tuned.

Booted by the King

There is actually a king here in Wallis, although it's an elected position (by the council of chiefs) for a set term of years.  His "palace" is on the waterfront in the main town, facing the anchorage where we have been happily anchored off and on for the past two weeks.  Today, I got a message from the Gendarmerie that we had to move.  No reason, just move down to Gahi Bay, a few miles away.  It turns out that the king didn't want to see yachts in front of his palace any more, so we (and two others) got the boot.

Aground at Wallis

I took this photo a few days ago, looking straight down over the side.  How deep do you think the water is?  Just about five feet.  Our keel is five feet, ten inches deep.  Notice the black mark on the sand.  That's paint from our keel.

We had anchored the day before in an unusual position.  A broad, shallow sand bank blocked us from anchoring near a particular motu (a small peripheral island in an atoll).  At high tide, the bank was just deep enough for us, but not at low tide.  This bank dropped abruptly into very deep water, so we nosed over the bank at high tide, dropped the hook, and let the wind set us back into deeper water.  These being the Trade Winds (i.e. pretty constant), and having checked the immediate forecast, I felt secure.  What I failed to consider is that rain squalls can stop, or even reverse the wind briefly.  Well, we had some showers during the night, and one of them reversed the wind at just the wrong moment as the tide was ebbing.  I woke up about five a.m. to find us firmly aground and healing over about five degrees.  Bother.  You can't fry eggs with the stove not level.  Oh, well, Robyn had made some banana bread the day before, and coffee doesn't require a level stove.  Not to worry, we had just enough time for a crossword puzzle each before we floated off with the rising tide.

Grilled Chicken in Wallis

We had the most remarkable grilled chicken this evening.  We bought a "Grade A" frozen chicken at the supermarket here in Wallis a couple of days ago.  Don't know the provenance.  After defrosting, it seemed a bit scrawny, but Robyn cut it up and I grilled it.  The pieces were a bit small, so I didn't leave them on the grill very long, much less than ordinarily.  Well, I have on occasion bit into a tough cut of beef, but I have never eaten a chicken that exercised my jaw muscles anything like this one.  We laughed our way through dinner, making jokes at the poor bird's expense, wondering how anyone could have caught a bird fit to compete in the Olympics.  If we buy another such chicken here, I think it'll go in the stew pot, instead of on the grill.

Medical Care in Wallis

We had the occasion to seek medical care shortly after arriving here at Wallis (a small island west of Samoa).  This being a French overseas territory, there is both a dispensary and a hospital, staffed with French doctors.  The care is both good and free, but the waiting is endless.  At the first visit, we waited all morning, then were told to come back in the afternoon -- everything here shuts down from 12:30 till 3:00.  At the second visit, we were told to come at 6:50 a.m., which we did.  There were only three people there ahead of us when we arrived, but we still wound up waiting over four hours, while most of the rest of the later arrivals were seen.    The scheduling process mystified us.  Later, we found out that it runs on pure cronyism.  The secretary's family and friends get in first; we, as white and foreign, go last.  At least we understand now.