Luganville and Port Vila, Vanuatu

The part of our time in Vanuatu that I’ve yet to tell you about are our stays in Luganville, on the Island of Santo, and our second stay in the capital, Port Vila. First, Santo 🙂

The island of Santo, actually called Espiritu Santo (Holy Spirit), is where we found ourselves transitioning between islands on two occasions. The first time we were only in Santo for one evening, but during our second stop we stayed for three nights in hopes of doing some sightseeing. As I mentioned in our first Vanuatu blog, Santo is the island that Kirk often visited during his time on Ambae to stock up on groceries. While parts of the island still live tribal life at it’s fullest, Luganville itself is a town with just about any modern convenience you could need.

While in Luganville we were welcomed in by Jocelyn and Jack, the sister and brother-in-law of Reynold (from Kirk’s host family on Ambae). Though Kirk never met these two members of the family during his time in Vanuatu previously, with one phone call from Reynold, Jocelyn and Jack opened up their wonderful home to us, housing us, feeding us, helping us get around, introducing us to the rest of the family, and sharing stories and life with us. They even introduced me to one of my new favorite foods – coconut crab. I already knew I was a lover of crab, but I’ve never had a crab that had so much meat on it! Coconut crabs claws are large and strong enough to crack coconuts, one of their food sources (hence the name). While coconut crabs are mostly only found in The Banks islands in Vanuatu, they can be bought in the bigger city markets throughout the islands.

This coconut crab meal ended up being one of my favorite meals I’ve eaten on the trip so far, so of course I’m going to tell you a little more about it :). It was pretty simply prepared, but SO delicious! Jocelyn and Jack boiled this large coconut crab in fresh coconut milk and served it with boiled sweet potato chunks with the salty crabby coconut broth poured on top 😍 ( If you like sweet potatoes in the states, you’d be floored by how delicious the variety they have in Vanuatu is!). They also prepared some boiled island cabbage for us, about which I previously described our love. It was too kind of them, and I am so thankful to have experienced that meal :). I wish we had gotten a before picture – while the crab was still alive, he was blue! He turned red after being boiled.

That’s a platter, not a plate, and they grow bigger than this!

Most of our time in Santo was filled with visiting, relaxing, or walking around town. Though there are a few places tourists in the area usually hit up (like the blue hole or Millennium Caves), we found ourselves needing to save up money for Tanna and only did one touristy attraction, Million Dollar Point.

If you haven’t heard of it, Million Dollar Point has a pretty interesting story behind it. In WWII the U.S. had troops stationed throughout Vanuatu and with the troops came plenty of expensive equipment. At the end of the war, the French plantation owners on Santo were interested in some of the jeeps and equipment from the U.S., and the U.S. named a price. The French turned down the offer because they believed that the equipment would simply be left behind for the taking (because the cost of getting it all the way back to the U.S. wasn’t worth it). To prove a point, the U.S. generals stationed there built a wharf for the sole purpose of driving all the equipment into the ocean – and did. There are now millions of dollars worth of equipment buried in the sea, and you can pay the local owner of the land $5 USD to go snorkel amongst the equipment and reef at what is now known as “Million Dollar Point.” It’s a cheap attraction, and well worth the visit (though a bit ridiculous that all this stuff was wasted, it has made a source of income for the owner of the land). Thankfully Kirk and I invested in a cheap underwater camera for our first trip together to Mexico, so we can share a few pictures from our time snorkeling there :). I mostly just have guesses of all the stuff we were looking at – so much time has passed since this stuff was dumped!

The marking point for where the wharf once was.

Wheels of something

Maybe an old Jeep?

The reef is gradually taking back over its area 🙂

—

A canon

More wheels.

Nearby all the sunken equipment there is a large reef area. Though it’s not as bright or filled with fish as some of the other areas we’ve been in, it is the only place we saw clown fish (and that’s including the Great Barrier Reef, which I’ll post pictures of in the next blog :)!)

There were three, including the little yellowish one on the left! The one in the middle was funny. As Kirk was taking pictures, he looked up and swam closer…

And closer…

And closer…

I was watching from a few feet away as he swam right up to Kirk as if to say, “get out of my anemone!” 😂 I say “he,” but maybe this was momma fish :). We promptly moved on.

One bright colored piece of coral we saw!

These are called Christmas Tree Worms, and if you wave you hand in front of them, they quickly close up into the rock.

Over all Million Dollar Point was a lovely place to visit – and if you are ever in Vanuatu and find yourself wanting a little more adventure, one of the largest, accessible sunken ships in the world, the U.S.S. President Coolidge, is right down the beach. It was sunk by friendly mines (accidentally hitting our own mines) in WWII. We didn’t go this time because I’m not a certified diver, but Kirk went previously and says it’s awesome!

Our final night on Santo, Jocelyn and Jack organized a big celebration for us, inviting along some of Kirk’s family and friends from his time in Ambae to come see us off. The ladies spent all day cooking bunia and it was fascinating to watch. This particular dish is cooked in a way similar to laplap, but the taste is completely different. Chunks of sweet potatoes, manioc, small bananas and island cabbage are placed in lap lap leaves with meat and fresh coconut milk squeezed on top. If you don’t know (as I didn’t), coconut “milk” comes from fined grated coconut fruit being mixed with the coconut’s water, then squeezing the “water” back out. It’s pretty impressive to watch because they do it all by hand! Here’s a short clip of Jocelyn squeezing the coconut milk out onto the bunia.

Here are a couple of other photos of the bunia process.

Placing it all in the leaves to be cooked.

All wrapped up and ready to place on the hot stones. Those leaves are incredibly sturdy!

The food package covered in the hot stones. They then added several layers of insulation to keep the stones hot and cookin’ – lots of leaves, burlap bags, some wood. This was the final “oven”:

It was left to cook for hours, and the finished product was delicious! This was my favorite traditional island food we had. The flavors of the lap lap leaves seep into everything and it’s quite tasty!

This is an array of the food we had that night –

Two chicken curries, the bunia, fresh watermelon, papaya and coconut scones! 😍

Not a great picture, but a great memory of part of the group sitting and eating. It was a wonderful night! We truly felt like we had new family by the end of our time with them :).

We took one final selfie before jumping in the car to go to the airport the next day.

Don’t be fooled by some of those frowny faces. They all took selfies on their phones too :).

The next morning we headed to Tanna (see previous blog to read about that) and then we headed back to Port Vila for our final few days in Vanuatu.

We planned on our final week in Port Vila being relaxing and fun. After living the village life for several weeks, we decided to get our own room by the sea. We found a nice hostel with a kitchenette and private bathroom in each room that was right on the beach. We were so excited and made plans of things we wanted to do during our final days, but our first morning in Port Vila, I woke up with a crazy severe migraine. I couldn’t move without tears coming to my eyes and the migraine lasted a day and a half! It turned out to be severe dehydration brought on by a fever – a fever that lasted four of our five final days. While talking with one of Kirk’s Peace Corps friends who now lives in Vanuatu, we learned that lots of local people are having the same thing happen, and no one knows what it is.

Our final day in Vila, I finally got out of the house a bit. Kirk and I visited the Peace Corps office where he saw some old friends, and that night we dressed up and went out for a nice dinner at Erakor Island. It was too dark to get a good picture, but I think you’ll still get an idea of how handsome this guy looked in his dress shirt :).

Right next to our table was incredibly clear, shallow water filled with hundreds of starfish (most of them tiny, but a few big ones!). We watched as they swayed with the tide and as two eels eventually made there way through the corals. Again, terrible picture, but awesome memory.

The red star is over one of the biggest starfish. There are tons of other white little ones in the sand, but they camouflage well against their home! Also, it was eerie watching those eels slither through their surroundings. They even attacked each other once!

Earlier that day I also snapped some pictures of our hostel by the beach.

It was called Blue Pango, and the owner was lovely!

🙂

A selfie of me finally outside our room!

A view of the beach in front of the hostel – this is where we were sitting in the above pictures.

And finally, a couple of pictures from around Port Vila from the couple of times we wandered into town between flights.

Tropical flowers for sale at the city market.

The beach front area near the main town strip – restaurants overlook this around less than a block away.

Kirk cutting into his first Vanuatu pineapple in 12 years :). We sat and ate this in the beach/park area beside the ocean.

A final picture with one of my favorite moments in Port Vila before I got sick. This is a rainy day view of the beach in front of the city park. When it’s sunny, this is the same bright aqua the other photo! Right before I took this picture I watched as something large splashed to the left. I tapped Kirk an said, “There is something big over there.” We got closer and kept watching in that area when suddenly, to my delight, 40-50 foot long fish leapt out of the water in unison! I wish I had had my camera ready then! We watched as they went along skipping down the bay, jumping 5 more times before they were out of sight! It’s amazing how in unison they are!

Going into this trip we knew that Vanuatu would be a highlight of the trip – after all, it was once where Kirk called home. It’s taken me a long time to gather all my thoughts about our visit there, but this blog brings that time to an end. Vanuatu is a special place and I hope the blog has brought some of that to life!

We’ve actually been in three other countries since we left Vanuatu, so stay tuned! I’m working on trying to catch up – next blog: Cairns, Australia (Great Barrier Reef).