Friday 13 June – a big effort for a little geriatric dancing!

Rowan had tried calling Jesse who was organising our dance/activity morning, that we had moved to Craig’s Cove because of the sea conditions and we got no reply. He had said he could pick us up here if necessary, but we had no confirmation. We were all ready at 8:30 am and no sign of anyone, Rowan considered dinghy-ing around but it is 5 miles away, we certainly couldn’t fit everyone on. Finally just after 9am we spotted a boat coming around the headland, it was Jesse’s son Jimmy, he picked us all up, which was a relief. Turned out Jesse’s phone had run out of data! So amazing that they still live so relatively primitively but have mobile phones and signal.

It was quite a long ride in the little boat, passing lots of black volcanic beaches. The highlight was spotting dolphins, Jimmy told us to bang the boat with our hands which brought the whole pod roaring over. Quite incredible they entertained us for ages. They had loads of tiny babies that were too cute, doing over zealous jumps out of the water.

We finally got to the anchorage which we had abandoned yesterday, and agreed we made the right move. We hung around for ages with Jesse, under the big trees on the beach. Turned out Jimmy had to go and collect the dancers. Only Jesse’s family lives here, so there is no village. There is a brackish inland lake, created by an erupting volcano in 1913, the caldera breached the sea, and sea water flooded in. Then they had a cyclone and the breach to the sea was filled in with sand creating the lake.

The dancers finally arrived, it was a pretty geriatric collection of men, they looked the part, but it wasn’t really dancing, just rhythmic singing with a little jig! We had about 20 minutes of that and the show was over. All very jolly, no doubt very happy to be paid for the little outing. The black magic, sand drawing and basket weaving did not materialise, although we were shown some wood carvings to buy. We bought a lovely carving, the only down side it smells like they’ve covered it with WD40. He said it is to guarantee that it can be taken to other countries as it kills all the bugs!

Jesse then took us to his home next to the lake, a short walk away. He has a lot of crops growing, I was impressed when he said he doesn’t farm the land on the lake side, so that the 36 species of birds can nest undisturbed. We saw lots of their local parrots about. We were very surprised to see his storyboard of the eruption of the volcano in 1913. A missionary had built a substantial mission station here with a hospital, and a sizeable village, it was all destroyed by the volcano eruption. It certainly looked a lot more sophisticated back then than now! We had lunch next to the lake, tuna with grated cucumber, sweet potato and coconut sauce.

We headed back to the beach just after 1pm to get our ride back to the boats. We had to wait a couple of hours before Jimmy turned up, he had been returning dancers! The wind had really picked up and we were all rather concerned about our boats. Alia Vita were quite close to us and we were not too confident of our holding. It was a relief to get back and find it once again a lot calmer in Craig’s Cove.

Everyone came over around at 5pm for farewell drinks as everyone goes their separate ways early tomorrow morning.

View from Craig’s Cove over to Malekula, where we came from yesterday

Jimmy finally arrives

Huge black volcanic boulders make the sea look black too

Black volcanic beach

Interesting cliffs

Dolphins join us

Sorry about the angle

Getting Jimmy’s boat up the beach

Steep beach, they have a clever way of rolling the boat up the beach on round fenders

Waiting in the shade

The dancers gather

The line up

Jesse’s house on the lake

Jesse’s impressive organic tomato plot, sadly non ripe to purchase

His house on the lake side with a mango tree, a wonderfully productive bit of land

His storyboard. Just look at the fancy hospital that was here before the volcano erupted

The lake

Lunch

A relief to find conditions in Craig’s cove much calmer. An Argentinian boat arrived in the middle of the night last night, which seemed an incredibly brave thing to do in this bommie filled anchorage