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In April 2002 Geoff's sister
Susan, her husband Nadir and Sarrah and Sam came to visit. As this
was their third trip to see us in Vanuatu we decided to take them to Epi
Island to experience life in the outer islands.
Epi Island is about a 35 minute flight north of Efate. (Click on the map to get
a better view). |
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We spent three nights at the
Paradise Sunset Bungalows situated on the beach at Lamen Bay. The
Bungalows are owned and operated by a local man (Tasso) and his
family. On the left is a photo of Tasso and one of his children in
front of the village church.
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Tasso's wife and some other
family members did all the cooking for us and we enjoyed some wonderful
local food. The kids really enjoyed the manioc and kumala chips plus
there was plenty of fish, lobster, beef, rice and local fruits. The
four children in this photo are some of Tasso's children and
grandchildren.
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Lopevi Volcano which erupted
last year is an island just to the east of Epi. Tasso
organised a truck to drive us around to where you can get a good view of
Lopevi's cone which rises straight out of the sea to a height of 1413m. Unfortunately the rain set in and all we could see was
cloud. However we were able to see Lopevi from Lamen Island situated
across the bay from where we were staying. We hired a speed boat and
two local guys who took us over and showed us around. Lamen island has 4
villages and around 600 people living on it. There is a school and a
mission and each village is separated by stone walls. As the island
is very small and there is
not enough room for food gardens the villagers make their gardens on the
mainland and paddle across each day. Every afternoon we watched
scores of outriggers set out into the setting sun, some with "sails" made from
coconut fronds, laden with people, coconuts, bananas and other food.
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The boys spent a great deal of
their time making sand cities on the black sand beach while Geoff
organised sand bombing games with the local children. In the photo
at left, Jeremy is
proudly posing with some of his sandbombs. Later we noticed up and
down the beach similar sandbombs made by village children who must have
been watching the activities from a distance. Some of the children
built a big sand mountain, dug a tunnel underneath and then lit a fire
inside to turn it into a volcano.
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It rained off and on for most of
our stay. On the morning that Geoff, Nadir, Sam, Jeremy and Simon
went out on their deep sea fishing expedition the weather was looking very
dicey. Simon was prepared for any downpour with his Aussie umbrella
hat. The 2 hour trip turned into 4.5 hours (much to the concern of
the girls who had elected to stay behind). The guys motored around
to the other side of Epi, nearer to Lopevi and caught some fish which we
ate for dinner.
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One of the other big attractions at
Epi is the tame Dugong called "Pondas". Every morning he
swam just offshore from our bungalows and fed on seagrass.
On our second last day we finally managed to catch up with him and swam
really close and were able to touch him before he eventually disappeared
out of sight.
Because we haven't got any digital photos of "Pondas" I have slipped in some
other dugong photos for you. The photo on the left is not "Pondas"
(who is 3 metres long) but is a trick photo of us with "Chully"
the baby dugong who lives in the aquarium at Blue Water Resort near Port
Vila. The other photo is of "Chully" and a turtle he has
adopted as his Mum. They spend most of the time swimming
together. We also saw several turtles swimming in Lamen Bay
while we were looking for "Pondas".
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For most of our time at the
Bungalows we were the only guests. The pace was relaxingly slow with
plenty of time for reading, sleeping, fishing and snorkeling. The
villagers just went about us carrying on their simple lifestyle, gathering
enough food for day, swimming, sitting around and talking. Somehow
it made the hectic pace of the western lifestyle seem silly.
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On our final day we were awoken
quite early by the sound of heavy rain, thunder and gusting wind. We
were a little nervous about flying in bad weather, (we were supposed to be
on a small 9 seater plane), and knew if conditions were too dangerous the
plane wouldn't come and we might have to wait days until the next
flight. We got news that a bigger plane was coming for us via Ambrym
later in the afternoon. We arrived at the airstrip only to be told
that the flight had been further delayed another 2 1/2 hours to give the
weather more time to clear. The building slowly filled up with
people coming to collect passengers or parcels from Efate and everyone sat
and waited. Finally after many games of cards and attempts to nap on
the concrete benches the plane arrived. Although the weather had
improved we still had a rather turbulent trip home and were glad when we
touched down in Vila.. |
. . .
in Vanuatu
Click
a photo to enlarge
