It’s my day five on Espiritu Santo in Vanuatu. A lot to do here! Yesterday I spent the whole day on this wild adventure consisting of: climbing up waterfalls, hiking for kilometers and kilometers through waist deep white water, white-water rafting sans raft. (Think Paquare in Costa Rica but no raft only life jacket), canyoning steep slippery rock sides of the most glorious canyon, and tracking through some near impossible paths. Exhilarating and tough and miraculously I survived 😃 Google: Millennium Cave!
Today i dove to 49 meters inside the WW2 wreck SS Coolidge. A posh Titanic-level oceanliner which somehow ended up on the Pacific front. Briefly. It sank shortly upon deployment. It was caught in the American’s own mine field 😱
Diving to 49 meters, I saw some beautiful chandiers, 1930s paint which survives under water, a porcelain relief sculpture a lady on a unicorn.
More importantly, on that dive, I saw a skeleton shrimp, a bended shrimp, some mega cute clowns and some gorgeous nudis.
Now, I’m off on a 2tank dive to some reef sites. (Report post reef dives: not nearly as pretty as the Solomons but still very beautiful)
A couple of days ago, i went to the legendary village of Fonafo to explore the legacy of the infamously legendary Jimmy Stevens. Google him too! The most unbelievable story!!!
While hastily scribbling this, I’ve been engorging on fresh made plantain chips. Best ever – other than these mythical plantain chips i accidentally bought from a lovely old lady in Quito, Equador, and I then never managed to find again.
This photo on a bamboo bridge was the beginning of one of the most crazy adventure rides the locals call Millennium Cave trek. A walk between villages amidst horse riding farmers quickly turned into a vertical climb, then steep descent down a waterfall then a half-kilometer pitch-dark cave with a white-water stream rushing through waist deep and bats looking down at you from a 30-meter tall cathedral ceiling – ceiling covered in majestic and still-forming stalactites. Then crossing a white-water river with a rope a couple of times, then scaling a vertical canyon for good 600 meters. Then swimming down a deep rushing whitewater to the next canyoning section. Then swimming then canyoning then swimming… for some 4 km. Finally, you leave the river and climb up another waterfall and then just a kilometer or two of strolling through forests of passionfruit, banana and mango trees, while greeting villagers who look at your muddy ass and snicker 🤭The lady on a unicorn: a painted relief still hanging in the 1st class saloon of the sunk ocean-liner-turn-military-transport-ship SS Coolidge. At 42 meters depthAlana was 1 of 30 kids going house to house caroling happy-new-year songs in gorgeous harmonies
Cow, pig, cow, tree house
A house in Fonafo, Jimmy Stevens’ cult and legacy village (look him up: crazy story!)Kava! The pride and joy of the Santo folksGrave of the legendary if infamous Jimmy Stevens, loved and detested by manyPicture of Jimmy Stevens. He dressed in Western clothing while insisting that everyone who joined him in Fonafo, flocking to the charismatic leader’s compound from deferent Vanuatu islands, wears traditional banana-leaf and straw costumes and that women go as had been customary in Vanuatu before the Christianity encroached: bare-breastedFamous Fonafo Nakamal center of the short-lived Venama RepublicNakamal wallRoofSacrificial alterGreat granddaughter of the infamous Jimmy Stevens insisted on having her photo taken. 😃Kids in Fonafo Village (in)famous for being a stronghold of the charismatic Tongan leader Jimmy Stevens who appealed to Vanuatu’s desire for freedom from the dual French-British government. People came from all islands to join Jimmy in his fight. Alas, there was a lot more to this movement then the liberation… in fact, Jimmy was working with the French to make Santo an independent French territory. today, a few of Jimmy’s wives and numerous offspring still live in Fonafo. I bet some of these kids, perhaps even all of them, are related to the Prime Minister/King/PreacherBanyan templeTracy is 18. She is the cook and the waitress in her grandparents’ restaurant for the summer. She is attending a tourism college and wants to become a world-renowned chef.Scenic outhouseKipim klin mo grin oltaem! I love Vanuatu Pijin aka BislamaBlue lake in the rain The famous Santo blue holes are really blueThe food pyramid is alive!
Vagabonding Zwindling 