Vanuatu: a travel diary

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20.10.2014 Port Vila (VANUATU)

Three hours of flight westward... we fly over a sea of whipped-cream clouds... only a little earlier we had been enchanted, admiring the wonderful Mamanuca and Yasawa Islands of Fiji from above aboard our Fiji Airways ATR42...

The pilot announces that the descent is beginning, we fasten our seat belts and look outside... still clouds that slowly start to thin out like a light mist... The green little islands of Vanuatu below us... The vegetation is incredibly dense!

Descent path... welcome to Port Vila!

A small musical group welcomes us with little Fijian guitars and cheerful songs!

Outside the airport we bargain with a local van and dive straight into the chaotic traffic of the capital!

The people are jovial and many greet us with a smile! Sakaria, our driver, tells us a bit about the history of his island while he drives us to our guesthouse! Bags down, we're in Vanuatu!

In our lodge there's a Japanese woman from Fukuoka who has been here for months because she's studying anthropology, and a French woman from the island of Reunion who works on building water wells.

We relax, enjoying this peace...

21.10.2014 Iririki Island (VANUATU)

We have a thousand plans for today... in the end, drawn in by the beauty of Iririki Island, we decide to give ourselves a day of rest and so reach it in a few minutes by boat.

We set foot in yet another tropical paradise! Once again I feel like I'm living in an adventure book!

We spend the whole morning relaxing in the sun carefree and admiring the seabed while snorkelling!

Right now I'm writing from the restaurant terrace... Stefy is relaxing on a lounger by the pool... below us one of the most beautiful sights, the bay of Port Vila, that is a green strip between two masses of blue: the azure sky and the cobalt sea.

22.10.2014 Tanna (VANUATU)

The flight Vila – Tanna lasts 40 minutes. The island of Tanna is wild, we like it straight away. The airport formalities are very "easy", the roads aren't paved and the natives are "very spartan".

We stay at the Alofa Beach Resort, or rather, two bungalows on the beach facing the Pacific Ocean. The sound of the waves breaking on the rocks will be our soundtrack every night...

Lizzie, the formidable all-rounder of our lodge, proudly points out to us straight away that here they even have electricity 24 hours a day, seven days a week... but only in the two little bungalows! And I was hoping for free wi-fi...?

The roof is made of woven palm leaves; she tells us that the spiders, even though big, aren't venomous... good night!

23.10.2014 Tanna (VANUATU)

Lizzie takes us to Daniel Ringiau, one of those in charge of tourism on Tanna; we chat for a long time about our website, our travels and our way of getting to know the world! He's enthusiastic and writes us a letter that acts as a pass in all the villages we'll cross and visit. What luck!

On the road, many men with the faithful machete in hand, firewood on their shoulders, women with big banana leaves emerge from the bush and stop to greet these two white people who appear out of nowhere!

We stop at Yakel, where you can still admire the life of the village unfolding unchanged for centuries. One of the tribe's young men comes to meet us, one of the rare ones who speaks English; he's completely naked except for a small "penis sheath" called a "namba" dangling between his legs. He leads us into his little village, among his people, among the huts, among the naked children, among the girls in little skirts or the old men sitting around the banyan tree drinking kava...

They reject progress and are strongly bound and rooted to their origins, and they continue to live as their ancestors did.

We watch the Kastom dance and are literally captivated by their songs, their movements... women, men, children and elders dance in a circle raising clouds of dust that make this ceremony even more magical...

A little further on we meet the village chief of a tribe that lives in the mountains; we have many questions, his name is Yapa Nikiauris and he's one of the five lucky ones who, in 2007, had the fortune to be invited, by a British TV crew, to England to meet his own God: Prince Philip!

The interview is deeply felt and we get emotional many times. His answers reinforced my awareness of how far apart we are... He says he's about fifty, even though he doesn't know exactly (he looks much older, who knows how old he really is!), he went to the other side of the globe to ask just one question of his own God; Prince Philip, in fact, is from Tanna! We're a little surprised by this revelation! The translator explains to me that, in reality, it's just a belief of theirs, since the husband of Queen Elizabeth II has never been here! Decades earlier he had visited Port Vila but never Tanna. He continues, saying he didn't like what he saw there. It's inconceivable to him that we work to eat; here it's Nature that feeds you... Staying with some English families, they followed their life for a few weeks, accompanying them in every activity, even in grooming their pets.

The same day they saw, horrified, homeless people suffering on the street... he concludes, still saddened, that we love the animals that should live happily outdoors and then let our brothers die on the street.

"Animals should be on the street and those men, who are our 'brothers', should be helped!" - Yapa Nikiauris -

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