The First 100(ish) Days – LM Edition

I began writing this entry (when it was supposed to be our “three month update”) over a month and a half ago, back before I started having daily conversations with my husband about the status of our bowels. That is to say, back when this was a different kind of trip. The trip we are on now, on day #117, is not the same one we were on back then. Not better or worse, just different.

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Travel Blues

Lest you, our gentle readers, think that our Vanuatu travels were full of nothing but erupting volcanos, amazing shipwreck dives, rainforest cave spelunking, and crazy land-diving locals, we thought we should mention the other side of our time on the islands. This is the side of our travel adventures that rarely gets documented on our blog because, well, it’s kinda boring. It’s when the glamour of international travel gives way to monotony, routine, and the daily annoyances of being on the road. It’s when we start fantasizing about being back in our own home, eating a Mission burrito, and not having to worry about drinking out of the tap or where our passport currently is. It’s when we want to be anywhere but where we currently are.

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Lustin Versus the Volcano

It’s a little weird to still be writing about Vanuatu now — technically we’ve been to four different countries since we were on those lush tropical islands (though we probably shouldn’t count our brief overnight stays in Australia and Thailand). Such is the nature of travel blogging, I guess — we’re kind of always in a multi-dimensional temporal state: writing in the present from a new place about a place we’ve been to in the past, while also thinking about all of the plans we have to make for the next place we’re going. But I digress. We wanted to close out our Vanuatu entries with a few thoughts about our four-night stay on the fourth and final island we visited: Tanna. Tanna is famous for its volcano — Mt. Yasur — and after meeting this angry, spewing beast up close, it’s easy to see why.

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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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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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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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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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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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Bushwhacked

Our five days camping in the “bush” of Australia’s aptly named Red Center were hard. Very hard. At one particular low point, Dustin turned to me and said, “I’d like to take the Outback out back and shoot it.” We had thoughts like this fairly often. Among the various enemies we were battling were sleep deprivation (a 5:30am wake-up call was considered a “sleep in”); mozzies, which were especially annoying at night while we slept under the stars, unprotected in a “swag” (basically a padded sleeping bag); heat (it was summer in the desert after all); and water (thanks to the floods the week before, the ground was super-saturated, resulting in heavy dews at night. We literally woke up one night soaking wet in our swags).

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Sweet As

Greetings from a freakishly soggy Alice Springs! We arrived to gray skies this morning and learned that it’s been pouring here for the last 5 days. Everything is flooded and the normally 100+ degree temps have been in the 60’s. We’re about to head off on a 5-day 4WD tour of the “Red Center,” but before we go totally offline we wanted to close out with a few final thoughts on our month in New Zealand.

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