The Diving Boys and the Shutterflies

We were on Pentecost Island for less than 24 hours, but it was easily one of the most memorable parts of our entire stay in Vanuatu — and not just because we were lucky enough to witness the amazing land-diving ceremony there. But before we get to land-diving, a few other highlights from our whirlwind trip to Pentecost…

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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.

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Island Time

We spent a lot of our first week in Vanuatu either watching cricket on TV (the spectator sport equivalent of waiting in line at the DMV), or sitting by the pool at our fancy-schmancy resort on Iririki Island. But we did try to get out and see something closer to the real Vanuatu while we were in Port Vila, mostly through hot and sticky walks around town that took us away from the main tourist strip, and by doing a full-island circumnavigation of Efate one day. Our Efate Island Tour photo album covers most of that ground, but we did want to mention a few facts and observations about Vanuatu that we’ve picked up since we arrived here.

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Follow That Blog!

Now that we’ve been at this travel blogging thing for a couple of months, it occurs to me that many of you are probably still checking the blog manually (daily, of course) to see what’s been posted. This works just fine if you’re only checking the Travel Log page, but there are also comments being added all the time (and not always to the most recent blog post), there’s the upcoming Books journal page (available Real Soon Now™), and we’ll add other pages in the future that you might like to follow without having to scour our entire website to see what’s new. Enter RSS feeds.

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Vanu-where??

When we started planning our big trip last year, we had a rough idea of most of the countries we wanted to visit, but there were a few holes in our itinerary that we figured we’d fill in along the way. One of those holes was the South Pacific. We knew we wanted to visit some islands in the South Pacific after our time in Australia, but we weren’t sure which ones. I’d already been to Fiji six years ago, and while it was lovely, I was eager to visit a new country. We’d heard good things about the Cook Islands, but they were farther east than even Fiji, and we were hoping to find some place closer to Australia if possible. After doing more research, we narrowed the list down to Samoa, American Samoa, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Tonga. In the end, we decided that Vanuatu had everything we were looking for…

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Magnum Cum Laude

As you no doubt remember, near the beginning of our trip I discovered that there are nine (NINE!) varieties of Magnum ice cream bars available in New Zealand and Australia, and Vanuatu as it turns out. (Check out my original Magnum P.I. blog post for the sweet details.) I made it my personal quest to sample all nine flavors before leaving Oz (two months seemed like plenty of time), and I nearly completed the task before leaving New Zealand. Only one flavor escaped me, the one that I saved (savored?) for last, hoping it would be the pinnacle of my glucosic gastronomic adventure: the exotically named Magnum Ecuador Dark.

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Roadtrippin' With Dr. Spacevan

What do you do when you learn that a Category 4 tropical cyclone is headed directly for the set of islands where you are planning to do a 3-day sailing trip? If you are Lustin — and especially if you are Lustin after just spending three days on a heaving, tossing ocean — you aren’t all that eager to tempt your fate with the seasickness gods again. Nor are you especially excited about sailing around normally sun-soaked tropical islands in the pouring rain. So, you do what any rational person would do — you change the entire itinerary for the remainder of your time in Australia less than 12 hours before your next flight is supposed to take off.

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Shout-outs From the Road!

When Laura and I worked at Room to Read, one of our favorite traditions was the “shout-out”. At the end of every bi-weekly all-hands meeting, the meeting moderator would open up the floor for people to publicly thank one or more of their co-workers for going above and beyond the call of duty in some way. Usually it involved someone who spent extra time helping them with a project, or someone who took on a particularly tough or unpleasant task and finished it with a smile on their face. It was a great way for people’s extra hard work to be recognized in front of the entire San Francisco team, and it always felt good to get an “attaboy” from a co-worker every once it a while. In that same spirit, Laura and I would like to give a few shout-outs to friends and family members who have, in their own way, helped to make our trip thus far a positive, healthy, and fun experience.

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Finding My Inner Nemo

Cairns (or “Canz” as it’s pronounced by a nation that seems to have a collective speech impediment when it comes to saying their r’s) was a shock to the senses after our week in the Outback. The stifling humidity and lush greenness of tropical Queensland was a stark contrast to the hot desert air and sparse vegetation of the Red Center. We stepped off the plane in Cairns and immediately began to sweat. But that was ok because the bush flies that had been the bane of our existence for a week were finally thousands of miles away. A little perspiration (or a lot, depending on which half of Lustin you’re talking about :) was a small price to pay for a “swat-free” lifestyle.

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John, Paul, Gorge and Dingo

It’s a bit easier to write about our Outback experience now that the constant, maddening (infuriating!) buzz of the flies in our faces is more of a fading memory than the recurring nightmare that it was in the moment. It’s really hard to describe how challenging it was dealing with the flies, the heat, sleep depravation, the flies… I kept thinking it was a lot like the game of golf: you endure many, many frustrating moments where you swear you’ll never play the game again, but you have *just* enough long, straight drives and sweet putts to make it all worthwhile (with the help of some selective memory). Despite our frustrations with the flies, sleeping on the ground exposed to the elements and creepy crawlies, and a few insanely early wake-up calls, we really did have a once-in-a-lifetime experience in the Red Center (although we both agree that we probably wouldn’t go back for more).

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