The Spirit of Santo

We arrived in the little town of Luganville on the northern Vanuatu island of Espiritu Santo with only a vague idea of how we wanted to spend our time, but we knew there were some great scuba diving spots around the island (including the WWII-era shipwreck of the USS Calvin Coolidge), a few sandy beaches worth seeing (how could a place called Champagne Beach not be beautiful?), and one crazy cave that Lonely Planet highly recommended we check out.

The first thing we noticed when got out of our cab from the Santo “international” “airport” was that Luganville seemed like a ghost town compared to Port Vila. Granted, we did arrive the day before Easter, but the laid-back vibe we’d already gotten used to in Vila was full-on sleepiness on Santo. Our first hotel (Hotel Santo) was literally deserted… we didn’t see one other guest there that day or night. The other thing we quickly realized is that every vehicle, and I do mean every vehicle, is a taxi cab in Luganville. Almost all of the cars and trucks had white or yellow TAXI signs on the top of them (we learned you could buy them at the local market, LOL), and even the ones that didn’t have a sign were happy to pick you up and take you where you wanted to go. There’s no culture of bargaining in Vanuatu, but it doesn’t really matter because everything (except restaurant meals) is very reasonably priced, and somehow consistently priced as well… cab from town to the airport: 1000VT (~$10), cab from Beachfront Resort to town: 300VT (~$3)… it doesn’t matter who you ask or bum a ride from, the price is always the same.

Our first order of business was to talk to the local dive shops and plan our scuba diving. We checked out two of three shops in town — Aquamarine and Alan Power — and immediately saw a difference. Aquamarine was very well-marketed, with a nicely decorated shop and a funny, logo-shirted Bermudan dive master named Rehan giving us the slick sales pitch on what they had to offer. Alan Power, on the other hand… well, Alan Power Dive Shop is pretty much run out of Alan Power’s house. He’s a 60-something Australian who’s been leading dives on Santo for almost 40 years, so at least he has a solid track record, right? Then again, the equipment room where wetsuits, BCDs, regulators, etc. are stored is just a side room off of his garage, which is where the air compressors and scuba tanks are stored. You sit on his back porch at the picnic table to go through the dive orientations and fill out your log books after diving. Even though it seemed a little sketchy (hard to compare levels of sketchiness in Vanuatu, though), we got a good friendly vibe from the dive master we talked to (Tony), and since their rates were nearly half of what Aquamarine was charging, we decided to go with them. (Note to self for future scuba diving excursions: do not compromise safety and quality of equipment for price!)

The other crazy thing we noticed about both dive shops is that they didn’t seem to give a rat’s ass about our level of certification. Since Laura and I are both newly certified PADI Open Water divers, we’re supposed to be limited to dives that go no deeper than 18 meters. The bow of the USS Calvin Coolidge, which is the main draw for most divers to Santo,is at 21 meters below the surface, and her stern is all the way down at 60+ meters. Neither shop seemed at all concerned about taking us down there to see the entire ship, though. Or to go inside it (another special certification you’re supposed to have from PADI). Both shops danced around the issue of PADI rules and regulations and basically told us that, unlike in other countries, the rules don’t really apply in Vanuatu. Interesting perspective.

So, in true developing world style, our scuba diving was a bit of a leap of faith. We never really felt unsafe because all the dives were guided, but there were just so many details about our experiences that made us wonder what we were doing. A few examples: depth gauges that didn’t work (neither one of us had a working depth gauge for *any* of our dives five dives); dives that were deeper than our certification level and longer than the PADI dive tables allowed (although we never had any issues with the bends, and all deco stops were taken seriously and made without fail); tanks that weren’t completely full, requiring a 20-minute delay while they drove back to the shop to get more tanks; regulators with leaky connectors (one of our dive buddies lost 30 bar of her air before she even got in the water); torches (flashlights) that kind of, sort of, mostly worked some of the time (not ideal when you’re in the cargo hold of a sunken ship at 25 meters below the surface). The list goes on and on. We certainly weren’t in Cairns anymore, and I guess it’s no wonder that none of the dive shops on Santo is rated as Five-Star by PADI.

We really enjoyed hanging out with our hike and dive buddies, Jay & RosieDespite all of our concerns about safety and rules, though, in the end we had some once-in-a-lifetime scuba diving experiences. We didn’t realize it when we were planning our big trip a few months ago, but Vanuatu, and the island of Espiritu Santo in particular, was a major strategic hub for the US military during World War II. There are still numerous remnants of the US military presence there. Case in point: Million Dollar Point, a place just offshore where the US dumped millions of dollars of equipment and supplies after the end of WWII because they couldn’t convince the French or British to pay for any of it (the two countries co-ruled the island chain at that time). It’s crazy to be scuba diving at the bottom of the ocean and see coral-covered jeeps, guns, cases of Coca Cola, and literally thousands of other discarded equipment and supplies. Diving around (and in!) the USS Calvin Coolidge was even more surreal. The Coolidge was a 200-meter luxury liner that was converted into a warship for 5,000 (!) troops during WWII, and it sunk after hitting a friendly mine near the island of Santo. Diving the wreck, we saw old rifles, gas masks, buckets, and 3” guns (that’s the diameter of the shells, not the length of the bullets; the shells are huge and heavy) just lying at the bottom of the ocean. We also did a dive where we swam inside a couple of the forward cargo holds of the ship. There are still jeeps and tanks (on their side, just like the ship) in the holds, and you can even swim by the old barber’s chair where countless GIs got their buzz cuts onboard. Swimming around inside the ship wasn’t Laura’s favorite underwater activity, but she made her way (cautiously) inside anyway and was glad she did.

For our last two dives, we opted to go with Aquamarine and rent a boat with Jay and Rosie, a very nice Aussie couple we’d done our other dives with, to head out to a couple of nearby reefs. We flopped into the water backwards off the side of the small banana boat and swam along Tutuba Point and Jessica’s and Charles Reef. The coral on these reefs is in very good condition, bright and healthy, unlike many of the other coral reefs in the world that we’ve read about. We saw all of the usual coral reef fish suspects (Nemos and Dorys and what have you), and some unusual ones as well including a giant napoleon fish and three beautiful spotted eagle rays gliding gracefully around the reef. It was on these dives that Laura says she finally found her “scuba groove” and relaxed enough to sit back and really take in the beauty of the underwater world. 

One of the many crazy bamboo ladders on the hikeOur other big adventure on the island of Espiritu Santo was a visit to Millennium Cave. When I say “visit”, what I really mean is a brain-shaking ride standing in the back of a 4WD truck driving over a rocky, muddy road for an hour (we got “bogged” once and had to get out and push), followed by two hours of hiking through the jungle in more mud, climbing up and down homemade bamboo ladders, scrambling over very slippery rocks, walking through a pitch-black 200 meter long cave in waist-to-chest high water over jagged rocks (that you couldn’t see) with more torches that didn’t really work, floating down a river with a Dora the Explorer kid’s floaty as a “floatation device”, scrambling over more mossy rocks, then climbing back out of the river valley up more homemade bamboo ladders and literally scrambling up steep rock waterfalls, then more muddy hiking, then the same 4WD trip back to our hotel. It was *way* more than we expected… at one point one of the Aussie women in our group, having made her way about half way up one of the last bamboo ladders climbing out of the river valley, turned back to everyone below her and said, “Are there any kids left back there? No? Good, because I fucking hate this!” We weren’t quite so grumpy about it as she was (I might have been at the beginning, but I was loving it by the end), but it was another crazy adventure on Vanuatu where safety was pretty much the last thing on the operators’ minds.

There were other memorable and funny encounters during our stay on Espiritu Santo — including a dog at our hotel (Beachfront Resort) that would literally sing for her supper (or more accurately, our supper) — but the diving and our day at Millennium Cave were definitely the highlights and definitely unforgettable. Of course, we hadn’t been to the island of Pentecost yet, or Tanna, but those will have to wait for another entry.

Check out all of our photos in our Espiritu Santo album!

Comments

[Greg F]

The hike to Millenium Cave sounds great. Really! Love stuff like that. Bamboo ladders?? :-)

Thanks for the great updates.

Greg F