We started the day with a few chores, starting with getting the new pink sail out the bag and tying it up with wool, so that when we get the furler fixed we can hoist it up easily and then hopefully re-furl it. A good job to do with Phil around as it is a big sail. Phil has had such bad luck with getting back to NZ. We have discovered direct flights to NZ from Vanuatu only start in June, so he has to fly to Fiji from Port Villa, the capital. He couldn’t make the midday flight yesterday as Immigration only came at 10am and it is a 2.5 hour drive to the little airport. Today’s flight was cancelled, and they hoped he could get on the flight to Port Villa tomorrow, but it might be full with today’s flight being cancelled. He couldn’t pay on the website, so it was all a bit stressful, but finally sorted we hope. He has a taxi booked from here at 7am, so should be in the queue early. He has to overnight in Fiji and then finally on to Auckland.
The weather has got incredibly hot as the wind has gone, we finally saw the top of the mountain in front of us. We had thought it was the volcano before we visited yesterday and realised Yasur volcano is quite low and not visible from the bay, although pretty close as the crow flies. We went for a walk to Shark Bay with Rob and Frances, it was a good hour’s walk there mainly along the road we went on yesterday, a lot more comfortable walking it! We finally got all the way to the Chinese road, it was only about 400m along the new road that we found the sign to Shark Bay on a Banyan tree. We wound our way through the village passing some lovely homes with neat gardens and fences. All very traditional, we are pretty far from any town. We wonder how it will change now with the new road.
The path to an abandoned house was easy to follow, but getting to the cliff edge to see over into Shark’s Bay, we had to bash our way through long grass. Having got there it was slightly underwhelming, a very rough inaccessible little beach and no sign of sharks!
We didn’t stay long as we were booked in for supper at the local little restaurant in Port Resolution. We definitely needed a shower on the boat before going out as we were drenched with sweat from our fast walk back.
It was quite a mission finding the little house/restaurant in the pitch dark. There were a few solar lights in the village but all very spread out. We finally found the place, it was pitch dark, we found some people and they assured us they were expecting us. Sadly they had run out of beers, after our long walk we were all rather worked up for a nice cold beer. The Belgians joined us for dinner too, they speak such good English, its embarrassing we don’t speak any other language. The meal was village fare, a chicken stew with all the chopped up bones, plantains, taro, rice and local cabbage. The chicken had a very tasty sauce which was very useful to cover all the less tasty bits like the taro. All finished off with papaya. We were in and out in an hour. We stopped off at Alia Vita for a few drinks before heading home to PolePole.
Rowan and Phil sorting out the pink sail
Clouds lifted we can finally see the mountain, initially we mistakenly thought it was the volcano
The volcano is on our right, where we have been watching the steam vents, the puffy white cloud above is from the volcano
Up to 10 boats in the bay now
The village gardens were wonderful, loads of Papaya
Lovely tidy gardens
Very quaint little houses
The only painted house we have seen
The equivalent of the Village Green, with an enormous Banyan tree
Finally our sign to Shark Bay!
Another dramatic Banyan tree
Looking over the cliff at Shark Bay
Shark Bay
A monster Banyan tree with so many support branches, it is a Strangler fig, but called Banyan trees here
Local girls playing volley ball
Our walk back along the black volcanic beach
Sunset clouds
Restaurant supper!
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