Vanuatu 2014

by Lynnette Lounsbury

There is a stereotype to Vanuatu… I know you already thought of it when you read the title. I’m just as guilty. We think – white sand, clear bathwater oceans, happy Disney fish living predator free lives, friendly locals, excessive amounts of both pineapple adorned cocktails and sleep.
I am happy to say most of this is true. But if it doesn’t float your boat and you’ve been avoiding Vanuatu and its surround islands because of that – I’m here to tell you to think again. If you are the type who finds beach lazing mind-numbing, let me salvage this destination for you. How does jetboating, ziplining and buggy riding through the jungle sound? I thought so.

This January was my third trip to Vanuatu. I am working as much as holidaying – spending my morning working with an aid organisation (ADRA) to help local school teachers, who have almost no access to tertiary education, gain a certificate in teaching. It’s another article altogether, but suffice to say it left me with only afternoons to go exploring.

As someone who tends to wander my way around new worlds, this lack of time aroused a new sense of organisation. I researched, asked around, read the flight magazine and chose carefully the few things I could fit into my schedule. And I started with the Zego boats down on the wharf in Port Vila. These I really just stumbled upon. They looked like fun and the people climbing off raved about them. I booked in on the spot. Despite an incomprehensible safety talk (really, I had no idea what the guide was saying, he spoke so fast), I managed to figure out how to drive the beast and took off into the harbour. Zego boats look like jet skis. They aren’t. They are pontoon boats that are very hard to flip, which makes them good for families and beginners and probably less offensive to all the harbourside dwellers of Port Vila. I only did the half hour tour but I still saw the entirety of the harbour, sailed around Iririki Island (a fancy resort to someone staying in an Aid organisation’s spare room) and then back around passed the markets, the boat club and into town. The water was as you would expect – clear, warm, slippery. Yes, I said slippery, the boats slide quite a bit which would have been even more fun had I not been carrying a passenger who screamed at me to “Stop trying to murder me!” (True story).
You can read more about the Zego Boats here… but you don’t need to book, they are down on the wharf behind the fruit markets.

One thing you find as a traveller is that it really is a chain reaction. At the Zego Boat reception I found a flyer for Ziplining. If there is a person on the planet who can resist a good zipline, I haven’t met them. It’s a niggling desire ingrained in us from when we were five and used the tiny death-defying flying foxes in the local park. This one? The Vanuatu Jungle Zipline: six ziplines, two that are over 200 meters long and 80 (eighty!!) metres above the ground. You will of course spend at least half the trip wondering how the hell they managed to build it, but the rest of the time you are in awe. I arrived for the afternoon session after catching a ride from Port Vila wharf. (Yes – near the Zego boats). It was a half hour drive that showed me a great deal of the island and went up one of the steepest driveways I’ve ever encountered. Safety, I’ll admit, was a concern, as I am well aware of the (usually) wonderful local “she’ll be right” attitude. I did not have to be concerned. I’ve done plenty of rock climbing in my time so I recognised a good quality harness and a guide who knew what he was doing. For a group of 12 of us, there were six guides and not only were they well trained, but it was also a constant comedy routine.

The safety system is Swiss made (something about that makes you relax. It shouldn’t since they also invented the very concealable pocket weapon, but hey…) and you click onto a safety line at the beginning of the trip and don’t click off until after you have completed the entire zipline.
I found this adventure breath taking. The views of the island were one thing, but the actual zipline takes you over a waterfall and a canyon. It is high enough to make your fingers tingle and yet you never feel that other fear, the darker one you sometimes get on international holidays where you realise you are taking your life into your own hands (street food in Mexico for example). There is more to do at Summit Gardens when you finish your zipline – a beautiful garden and essential oil refinery for example, but I was too late for that. I caught the truck back to town and because it was knock-off time also got a tour of Mele Village as the guides were dropped to their respective homes. It was a great experience – I have a thing for spotty little piglets.

Two days later, when my shoulders were functioning again (you get a workout slowing yourself down on that zipline), I joined the Buggy Fun Rental company on one of their buggy tours. Now these people know that appearances are everything and I found myself sporting steampunk goggles and a Viking-horned safety helmet before we headed off through Vila and into the centre of the island. I was warned I would be covered in mud so I had prepped accordingly. This was what is known as a “lie”. I was not covered in mud. I was covered in poo. Granted if you had to choose a type of poo to be covered in, it would probably be the grassy excrement of a healthy cow, and this it was, but still… Someone should have mentioned the poo.

We drove wildly through the cattle farms of interior Vila, terrifying said cows and contributing to the “mud” problem, and then visiting a local village for refreshments and a tour of their personal stretch of the beach. It was a criminal amount of fun and once again despite driving something distinctly unroadworthy through the streets of the capital city, I never felt unsafe – there were kids as young as six on the tour and we had guides making sure we safely turned blind corners and crossed main roads without incident. In fact, next time, I’m going to do the day long tour instead.

And then… Well, then I ran out of time. With only one afternoon left, I did what any self-respecting Vanuatu tourist does with their time, I drank a coconut on a deck chair on the white sand of Erakor Island while happy fish swam nearby. And one deadly coral snake – I found that hard to ignore. But nevertheless… Be assured there is adventure to be had in Vanuatu and it is high quality, reasonably priced and safe. And when your adventurous side is satisfied, the stereotype is quite lovely too.

Author’s Bio: Lynnette Lounsbury is the Editor of YTraveller and lectures in Communications at Avondale College. She never got the poo out of her clothes, they have unfortunately become part of Vanuatu’s landfill. Mud… They said it would be mud.