Wednesday 11 feb – exploring the island in an ancient old bus

Rowan had been recommended Finus a driver by some other yachts and had arranged with him to take us to a couple of sites in the mountains. Rowan gave him an itinerary that included going to some crazy volcanic lakes, Finus replied saying that would take 5 days! We should have been a hint as to what was coming. We met Finus at 9am, Aaron and Daiana joined us, we clambered into an ancient old mini bus, that had bench seats down the sides and a door on the side that was permanently open. We soon left LBJ and started climbing up the mountain, we spent the next 5 hours going up and down amazing mountain passes with hairpin corners, in this ancient old jalopy that we were very concerned would not make the journey. We went through amazing scenery, mainly rice paddy fields in the valleys and loads of villages. It is the main road down the centre of the island, skirting high mountains and volcanoes, the roads were in pretty good condition and with plenty of traffic. Finus did an incredible job of coaxing the old vehicle to overtake even slower vehicles on some pretty blind corners! We were all clutching the hand rails running along the roof. The roof was so low that Rowan and Aaron had to stoop to fit on the benches, not ideal for looking out the window. Rowan eventually sat up front with Finus.

Our first stop was a view of the spiderweb rice fields. Someone has cottoned onto this view which was impressive. The rice fields are laid out like a spiderweb and each section is owned by a different family. Having paid our entrance fee, there was nobody to explain anything and judging from the way Finus asked for directions he had never been there before. Some kids in very smart school uniform took us up the hill to the view point and gave us a little information with their school english. We got here just after 1pm and our hearts sank when he said it was still another couple of hours to the next site an ancient traditional village. We happily bounced back along the road we had just come from for another hour and then took a tiny fork left winding steeply along for another 40 minute. Passing vehicles coming the other way was an incredibly skilful manoeuvre, just brushing wing mirrors. We finally made it up to the Todo village having descended into a deep valley and up the other side. The first thing we passed was an enormous cathedral, Finus told us everyone here is Catholic, no Muslims live up here, which made sense as we saw our last Mosque at the coast. This village belonged to an old kingdom, we could not get much information out of our guide but at least a couple of hundred years old. The houses are cone shaped and built around a ceremonial sacrifice stone altar, just for animals! The walled area around was used for gladiator style spectator sports. It was very atmospheric as we were in thick mist, apparently on a clear day you can see the coast. To go into the historic area we all had to dress in their floor length traditional dress, thankfully up here in the mountains it was lovely and cool so the thick woven sarong was bearable. We did a little ceremony with the chief which was just like Sevusevu in Fiji. We had to tell him where we were from, he was obviously very taken with Brazil (where Daiana is originally from) as we kept hearing the word during his welcome. We were given hot drinks, the coffee was very good, we had seen coffee growing along the roadside. The main house is used for ceremonial functions and a few of the other traditional houses are lived in. The ladies brought out all their weaving fabrics for us to buy, beautifully done but with modern (most probably Chinese) thread.

We left there around 4pm which meant it was nearly 8pm by the time we got back to LBJ. We had also booked in a family call at 4:30 pm for Phoebe’s birthday, miraculously on the mountain pass we managed to get a little signal and chat to all the kids briefly. Phoebe called back after a while and we were able to video call her which was incredible, watching her unwrap presents while we were in the back of an old minibus on a remote mountain pass.

We were all starving as we did not stop for lunch, we ate at a burger restaurant that came highly recommended on our NFL app, it was a delicious meal, maybe the cold beers and the fact we were starving helped! It was such a relief to arrive back in one piece with no dramas along the road.