The Masterplan
Sightseeing in a modern city is so easy: Public transport covers all places you want to go to, all sights are clearly indicated, and you can pick up a map just about anywhere. Life is grand, except for the weather. It looks like it's going to rain soon, but we have a 4-step plan to complete.
1: The ANZAC memorial in Hyde Park. An impressive starry ceiling looked down upon me in the building, each of the 120,000 gold stars representing a New South Wales volunteer soldier during WWI. Uncharacteristically, Blandine gets teary-eyed from the emotional weight of this building and walks out. Weird. I find her outside, in the park, want to ask what she's thinking about, but refrain in the end. Let's focus on other things altogether.
2: On the way to the Hyde Park Barracks museum, the beginnings of a Sydney drizzle chases us into St Mary's Cathedral. A quick look around this bastion of Catholic religion is all we need. Sure, it's a nice place, but 5 minutes peeking around is all we really need to figure this place out: we got cathedrals of this splendour in my very home town. What we don't have is a huge statue of Cardinal Moran in front of the cathedral. Would his congregation be called the Morans?
Faced with the option to remain in this refuge of prayer until the rain stops or dashing up the street, we choose for the latter and make it to the Barracks museum without too much trouble. The barracks compound is a fair brick building, yet the museum really surprised me. The ground floor of the museum deals with life on Hulks, prison ships that lay moored in front of the Sydney coast. Upstairs you'll find information of Irish single women who undertook what must have been an exhausting, adventurous voyage. The top floor has a section with nothing but hammocks used by a group of destitute women, housed here in the second half of the 19th century. A great place to have a 5-minute personal chill out session. When we come out of the museum, the rain has subsided and we continue our way toward Circular Quay.
3: Circular Quay and Sydney Opera House: Every big city has a touristy central hub where folks from all walks of life hang out. For Sydney this is Circular Quay. We watch a man juggling a chainsaw; his colleague artist plays house music on a didgeridoo. Interesting stuff to say the least. After a quick snack we continue our walk and spot the Sydney Opera House. No need to walk all the way around the harbour to go in it, a building of this size is best seen from a distance. As good tourists do, we whip out our camera and take turns posing in front of what must be Australia's most photographed landmark. After that we stock up on a bit of energy in "The Rocks", a cutesy upscale area just west of circular quay, then climb up the toll road bridge for...you guessed it...more pictures of the opera house. We're lucky; a rainbow provides a perfect background.
4: A walk through the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney. Okay, that's it: we want to walk back through the gardens, yet it's too late, they close rather early. Oh well, we'll have reason to come back.
The one thing I'd like to accomplish here that didn't work out in Chile is to get a local basketball team jersey. I go through several sports stores, but it's not the season, it's not a big seller, it's...whatever it is, they just don't seem to sell basketball jerseys here.
Blue? Code red!
Exhausted, we make our way back to the hostel along George Street. Halfway down Blandine tells me that she's still not had her period and she's seriously overdue. I fend off her fears: "There's nothing to worry about, sweetie, we've spent a lot of time a serious height in Bolivia, we crossed the Pacific flying not so long ago." She's not convinced and I'm getting annoyed. "Fine, why don't we burn some Australian dollars on a pregnancy test in the nearest pharmacy, then you can find out the obvious and start worrying about something else. Jeez!"
We get to the hostel; I jump on the bottom bunk of our bed and flip on the TV, while Blandine runs into the bathroom. Not even 30 seconds later, I hear: "Jan, can you come over here for a second?" Pfff, what is it now? No toilet paper? I make my way past the bathroom door to find Blandine, trousers at her ankles and in tears. Has this something to do with her emotional moment at the ANZAC memorial earlier? Her right hand shakily holds up a white stick and she snotters "I'm pregnant."
When these words hit my eardrums, an alarm goes off inside my head. Code RED! Oh my flippin' god! I am gob smacked. Oh my flippin', flippin', flippin' god! I look at the box, read the instructions in record time and verify the meaning of the blue colour: yup, she's not kidding. My eye falls on another one of these test-thingies inside the pregnancy test package. Great! We're going to redo the test right now, in my presence, and rule out beyond the shadow of a doubt that this may be the one faulty test that the test makers warn you about with "The results of this test are 99.9% accurate". Blandine feels we should wait until tomorrow morning, maybe she's eaten something today that influences the test result. You never know with these things and redoing the test tomorrow on a sober stomach will indeed be better. I walk out of the bathroom, and look at the city traffic down below. My mind is drunk with joy and stress of this new perspective and trying to grasp implications on this trip, the upcoming PSE camp, the rest of our lives together, the possible reality of it all.
Blandine emerges from the bathroom and I turn away from the hostel room window to look at her in the fading daylight. We study each other’s face for an eternity, as if we've just met. A smile, a tear, a hug, and time stands still. This is one of those moments that can't be defined by a single emotion, rather an incredulous blending together of many. We smile goofily at each other, barely grasping how profoundly our lives have just gotten entwined. Blandine grabs the camera, passes it to me and bares her stomach: the perfect background for a blue pregnancy stick. The sun is setting behind the double-glazed hostel window and I take pictures of my girlfriend's belly. It's hard to concentrate, but finally the applicator stick and her belly are in focus enough to rectify a decent photograph.
Mentally exhausted by emotion, we walk along Sydney's darkening streets and stop at Mc Donald’s. Is it Blandine's first conscious craving? Who knows, who cares? We eat in near silence, giggling to ourselves once in a while. Night has fallen by now and Sydney gets colder by the minute. Neither of us really feels like being a tourist, a jetsetter, or even a computer nerd: this night requires just each other’s company, no more. Back in the hostel room we watch a bit of telly, holding each other as tight as humanly possible. The goofy grin from earlier is still on my face and not about to go.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
Wednesday, July 21st: Ekasuper Cultural Experience!
Ekasup village
After another nice breakfast we get picked up and driven over to Ekasup cultural village, where we are joined by over 100 Australians on a P&O cruise. There wouldn't be this many ugly tattooed people at a local skinhead concert. The jokes that fly around are cheap, peroxide blond hair is omnipresent. We walk through the jungle and are soon "hunted" by scary-looking tribal warriors. Screams come from seemingly everywhere around us (for a flavour, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZdY4-PjylA). The village chief takes us through different aspects of the traditional village life and customs. We learn about medicine and herbs, hunting, trap making, food preservation, and more. At one point we see how spiders wire is used to make fishing nets. Half the crowd it horrified at the sight of these big spiders and the way a kid from the cultural village plays with them as pets; I'm part of the intrigued half. Fantastic how the locals use all that Mother Nature gives them to their advantage. And all information is served with a nice ladle of humour. These Ni-Vanuatu (=people from Vanuatu) know how to entertain a crowd of Ozzies, that much is clear. The village plays a few songs for us, then we head back to Port Vila. It's a great excursion, really, I'm happy to have gone through this experience. We arrive at "Room with a View" three hours before our flight, check out, then spend our last Vatus on a taxi to the airport.
On to Oz
The flight to Sydney is incident-less: it leaves on time and arrives even a bit early. We set foot in a hyper-modern airport, without an orchestra of sweaty, colourful locals entertaining us. Customs gives us no trouble whatsoever, Australia feels laid-back from the start. I snap a "Krispy Kream" donut from the arrivals hall before we hop on the shuttle bus to our downtown hostel.
Wake Up! (www.wakeup.com.au/) has all you can expect from a travellers hostel: friendly, helpful staff, an internet café in the lobby, keys that give access to your floor only, a student-priced restaurant/bar in the basement. We stumble into our squeaky clean room, tired as a three toed sloth running a marathon ("tired as a whore on nickel night", anyone?). Blandine runs into the bathroom, I look around the room for a place to sit, then "Bammm!" a flashback to high school pinches me in the cheek: we'll sleep in bunk beds with a blue metal frame! Correction, in boarding school there were bunk beds, but not with a double bed on the bottom and a single bed on the top. This will be a cool night.
Enough pho you?
But first we have to eat something. The night air is cool, much cooler than we've gotten used to, the wind is forced between the high-rise buildings and, irritated, she blows straight through our jackets. Vanuatu was "cool" with night temperatures in the lower twenties, here the thermometers read 5C currently. A Vietnamese-owned pho shop is the closest place to our hostel, and it will do just fine. Blandine is starving and orders the big portion, I point at the picture for the small portion. I can barely finish mine, after twenty minutes Blandine gives up: her bowl looks like it is barely touched. We can't take any with us, what a waste, but we console ourselves with the fact that this delicious meal cost us next to nothing. Bye-bye Pacific prices! We pay and hurry back along the chilly boulevard to the warmth of our hostel, hugging each other closely.
At the reception I make an international phone call to ASUS in Bangkok, and agree we bring the netbook for repair. The guy on the other side of the phone speaks English with a thick Asian accent and doesn't always understand what I ask him, but I get through to him that they need to send the repaired unit on to Cambodia. A dead weight is lifter from my shoulders, and soon from my backpack as well.
After another nice breakfast we get picked up and driven over to Ekasup cultural village, where we are joined by over 100 Australians on a P&O cruise. There wouldn't be this many ugly tattooed people at a local skinhead concert. The jokes that fly around are cheap, peroxide blond hair is omnipresent. We walk through the jungle and are soon "hunted" by scary-looking tribal warriors. Screams come from seemingly everywhere around us (for a flavour, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZdY4-PjylA). The village chief takes us through different aspects of the traditional village life and customs. We learn about medicine and herbs, hunting, trap making, food preservation, and more. At one point we see how spiders wire is used to make fishing nets. Half the crowd it horrified at the sight of these big spiders and the way a kid from the cultural village plays with them as pets; I'm part of the intrigued half. Fantastic how the locals use all that Mother Nature gives them to their advantage. And all information is served with a nice ladle of humour. These Ni-Vanuatu (=people from Vanuatu) know how to entertain a crowd of Ozzies, that much is clear. The village plays a few songs for us, then we head back to Port Vila. It's a great excursion, really, I'm happy to have gone through this experience. We arrive at "Room with a View" three hours before our flight, check out, then spend our last Vatus on a taxi to the airport.
On to Oz
The flight to Sydney is incident-less: it leaves on time and arrives even a bit early. We set foot in a hyper-modern airport, without an orchestra of sweaty, colourful locals entertaining us. Customs gives us no trouble whatsoever, Australia feels laid-back from the start. I snap a "Krispy Kream" donut from the arrivals hall before we hop on the shuttle bus to our downtown hostel.
Wake Up! (www.wakeup.com.au/) has all you can expect from a travellers hostel: friendly, helpful staff, an internet café in the lobby, keys that give access to your floor only, a student-priced restaurant/bar in the basement. We stumble into our squeaky clean room, tired as a three toed sloth running a marathon ("tired as a whore on nickel night", anyone?). Blandine runs into the bathroom, I look around the room for a place to sit, then "Bammm!" a flashback to high school pinches me in the cheek: we'll sleep in bunk beds with a blue metal frame! Correction, in boarding school there were bunk beds, but not with a double bed on the bottom and a single bed on the top. This will be a cool night.
Enough pho you?
But first we have to eat something. The night air is cool, much cooler than we've gotten used to, the wind is forced between the high-rise buildings and, irritated, she blows straight through our jackets. Vanuatu was "cool" with night temperatures in the lower twenties, here the thermometers read 5C currently. A Vietnamese-owned pho shop is the closest place to our hostel, and it will do just fine. Blandine is starving and orders the big portion, I point at the picture for the small portion. I can barely finish mine, after twenty minutes Blandine gives up: her bowl looks like it is barely touched. We can't take any with us, what a waste, but we console ourselves with the fact that this delicious meal cost us next to nothing. Bye-bye Pacific prices! We pay and hurry back along the chilly boulevard to the warmth of our hostel, hugging each other closely.
At the reception I make an international phone call to ASUS in Bangkok, and agree we bring the netbook for repair. The guy on the other side of the phone speaks English with a thick Asian accent and doesn't always understand what I ask him, but I get through to him that they need to send the repaired unit on to Cambodia. A dead weight is lifter from my shoulders, and soon from my backpack as well.
Tuesday, July 20th: Kava, Lap Lap, Dance
The best laid plans
Could I describe a truly regular sightseeing day to excruciating boring detail? Yes. If only I'd get a chance. It's 6AM, Blandine is still sleeping. Two fans rotate occasional shreds of coolness in the room, while I go over our day in my mind. The plan is to drive around the island, either by taxi, or by motorbike. Or any other way we can sort out for a decent price, really. Having spent all our time on Moso, it is high time we get to know the main island and we have just today and tomorrow morning to do so. Damn, this incessant downpour is raining on our parade. I turn over, thinking that a little extra sleep might clear up things.
We have breakfast on the villa's patio overlooking Port Vila bay. The Pacific weather gods have finished draining their main vein over this island, yet a stinging little drizzle inhibits a smile on our tourist faces. The locals passing by on the street underneath the patio don't mind: only a few people sport umbrellas, the majority of flashy T-shirts pass by without rain protection. The breakfast is good: all-you-can-eat fresh fruit, cheese or jam on toast and coffee. It's too late to sort out reasonably priced transport; anyways rushing around this tropical island while it's raining never inspired anyone.
It's decided, we'll take it easy: window shopping and looking for post cards in town must have its charm too, no? We walk down into town, drop off a week's worth of laundry, then make a first official stop at ....a travel agency, where we book a tour to a cultural village for tomorrow morning, and an island feast for tonight. Nope, we're not trying to compensate for anything. =p
We fill up on the latest news from Europe at an air-conditioned internet café, it's been more than a week since we've been connected! Funnily, the sun has come out now that we are in a curtained room. We rush out into the main street light and continue our shopping, hurrying from one shady spot to the next, holding hands until they get too sweaty for comfort.
My name is Mud
A nice lunch will help our feet recover from all that walking, The local mud crab in coconut sauce on the suggestion board of the Café du Village lures me in. We sit on a patio overlooking the harbour, from the wooden framework above us purple bougainvillea flower strings hang down in ample veils. A Vanuatu Tusker will keep my mud crab company. At 4400 Vatu (=EUR 36), the mud crab is far from cheap, but we're on holidays, right? Moreover, could I really leave this place without eating one of its most advertised gourmet treasures? Exactly.
This heavenly lunch finishes in style with a 1000 Vatu chocolate mousse Blandine manages to eat in record time. Why am I worried about what things cost? After yesterday's seriously steep bill for our exploits on Moso, we must at all cost do a better job not to ruin ourselves before the end of this career break. Bellies filled to the limit with happiness, we start heading back to the hotel. Along the way we decide to walk through the local market, curious to see what's on sale here. Coconuts, wood, unusual veggies like meter-long strings named snake beans, pineapples, bananas and fresh banana crisps all sold by smiling locals who still have most of their teeth. We can't buy a thing as we fly to Sydney tomorrow afternoon, so we take pictures instead. As we get back in view of the front gate of "Room with a view", a minivan stops across the street. Rats! That must be the van for our evening activity! We rush upstairs, drop off our shopping and bag with fresh laundry, storm down the stairs and into the waiting van.
Island feast
This is it; we've bought ourselves tickets to the culinary highlight of the week: a local feast with music spectacle and a cultural experience. Okay, it's a tourist's tour and authenticity will be missing, but with the time left in this place we have no illusion that we could befriend locals and get ourselves invited to one of their official functions instead. Arrived at the "cultural village", we look at a few caged parrots, geckoes, spiders, then I pose with a Pacific boa around my body while the park guide (cultural village guide?) in typical Pacific island-style uniform puts her tanned hands behind her back and explains that it's not a deadly species. Blandine kindly refuses to take over the vertebrate from me, snakes aren't her favourite animal, lets say.
The tour takes us to a cave with photos about some of the island's cannibalistic history, the occupation of the French and the English, and some of the local mythology. There's too much to read and twilight is turning into darkness. I rush through beds of local vegetables to catch up with the rest of the group, on its way to the festival area. The guide has us all seated on benches in a half circle, just before the sun has completely set, and states in an apologetic way that we can come back to the cultural village tomorrow on the same ticket. It's the first time she speaks with confidence, apparently it's not the first time this happens. The place is worthy of more exploration, but I imagine Blandine and I rushing back, from our morning tour to make it on time to the airport, so revisiting this place is not an option.
Kava, lap-lap, dance
A local music band keeps us entertained, under a setting sun, and in the distinguished company of voracious mosquitoes. The spray on our legs will hold off most of the mozzies, others have started scratching the minute they sat down. This doesn't discourage some of us to pull out our dancing shoes while the locals continue to cook our feast. While blandine and I slowdance, I get a closer look at the band and "darn", I seem to recognise the guys in the band, where have I seen them before? I dig deep into my Pacific music bands memory and then I remember: they're the same guys that entertained us when we arrived at the airport!
Then the park hostess invites us to drink kava. Kava is a bitter, milky drink made from roots of the pepper tree. It doesn't look appetizing, so why should we try it? It's the big hit all over the Pacific, used in all official ceremonies and is rumoured to have special properties. You'll find kava bars all over the islands, some have legendary status. It's mainly a drink for real men I'm told, so, after having verified it's not the drink that ferments with woman's spit, I give it a go. Woow, within seconds my lips start numbing a bit, I get the tingly feeling of a sleeping limb, but on both my lips. I start laughing and rush back to Blandine, half a cocunut of lipnumbing liquid in hand. She doesn't share my enthusiasm and only after my insisting for 2 minutes she caves in an has a quick slurp. "Brrrwaaah, how can you drink this?!?" is all she can utter. It's a man's drink, I understand.
All this drinking and dancing makes us tourists rather hungry. Then, finally after a good 15 minutes, we're invited, to come and see our food being dug up. Yes, that's right. Our food has been wrapped in banana leaves and place over hot coals, then covered with earth. For hours it has slow-cooked to perfection. First we get to taste lap-lap, a Vanuatu delicacy that looks like a type of glutinous pudding. It's made from grated vegetables (such as manioc, taro or yam), soaked in coconut milk to form a paste. Our guide tells us that on special occasions, pork, beef, chicken, fish or even flying fox (a large fruit eating bat) may be added, or the paste may be sweetened with a few bananas. We taste the one with banana. Bummer, I could have had a bit of bat, really. We sit down and eat our heart's content of island pork and marinated fish while chatting with our Australian neighbours, who are impressed with our story about our upcoming volunteer job. The food is good, the company as well, and inevitably time starts moving faster than ever. Before we know it, the buffet is closed and the park guide points in the direction of the van. Stuffed like pigs we are returned to our tourist hotels. Mission accomplished, goodnight!
Could I describe a truly regular sightseeing day to excruciating boring detail? Yes. If only I'd get a chance. It's 6AM, Blandine is still sleeping. Two fans rotate occasional shreds of coolness in the room, while I go over our day in my mind. The plan is to drive around the island, either by taxi, or by motorbike. Or any other way we can sort out for a decent price, really. Having spent all our time on Moso, it is high time we get to know the main island and we have just today and tomorrow morning to do so. Damn, this incessant downpour is raining on our parade. I turn over, thinking that a little extra sleep might clear up things.
We have breakfast on the villa's patio overlooking Port Vila bay. The Pacific weather gods have finished draining their main vein over this island, yet a stinging little drizzle inhibits a smile on our tourist faces. The locals passing by on the street underneath the patio don't mind: only a few people sport umbrellas, the majority of flashy T-shirts pass by without rain protection. The breakfast is good: all-you-can-eat fresh fruit, cheese or jam on toast and coffee. It's too late to sort out reasonably priced transport; anyways rushing around this tropical island while it's raining never inspired anyone.
It's decided, we'll take it easy: window shopping and looking for post cards in town must have its charm too, no? We walk down into town, drop off a week's worth of laundry, then make a first official stop at ....a travel agency, where we book a tour to a cultural village for tomorrow morning, and an island feast for tonight. Nope, we're not trying to compensate for anything. =p
We fill up on the latest news from Europe at an air-conditioned internet café, it's been more than a week since we've been connected! Funnily, the sun has come out now that we are in a curtained room. We rush out into the main street light and continue our shopping, hurrying from one shady spot to the next, holding hands until they get too sweaty for comfort.
My name is Mud
A nice lunch will help our feet recover from all that walking, The local mud crab in coconut sauce on the suggestion board of the Café du Village lures me in. We sit on a patio overlooking the harbour, from the wooden framework above us purple bougainvillea flower strings hang down in ample veils. A Vanuatu Tusker will keep my mud crab company. At 4400 Vatu (=EUR 36), the mud crab is far from cheap, but we're on holidays, right? Moreover, could I really leave this place without eating one of its most advertised gourmet treasures? Exactly.
This heavenly lunch finishes in style with a 1000 Vatu chocolate mousse Blandine manages to eat in record time. Why am I worried about what things cost? After yesterday's seriously steep bill for our exploits on Moso, we must at all cost do a better job not to ruin ourselves before the end of this career break. Bellies filled to the limit with happiness, we start heading back to the hotel. Along the way we decide to walk through the local market, curious to see what's on sale here. Coconuts, wood, unusual veggies like meter-long strings named snake beans, pineapples, bananas and fresh banana crisps all sold by smiling locals who still have most of their teeth. We can't buy a thing as we fly to Sydney tomorrow afternoon, so we take pictures instead. As we get back in view of the front gate of "Room with a view", a minivan stops across the street. Rats! That must be the van for our evening activity! We rush upstairs, drop off our shopping and bag with fresh laundry, storm down the stairs and into the waiting van.
Island feast
This is it; we've bought ourselves tickets to the culinary highlight of the week: a local feast with music spectacle and a cultural experience. Okay, it's a tourist's tour and authenticity will be missing, but with the time left in this place we have no illusion that we could befriend locals and get ourselves invited to one of their official functions instead. Arrived at the "cultural village", we look at a few caged parrots, geckoes, spiders, then I pose with a Pacific boa around my body while the park guide (cultural village guide?) in typical Pacific island-style uniform puts her tanned hands behind her back and explains that it's not a deadly species. Blandine kindly refuses to take over the vertebrate from me, snakes aren't her favourite animal, lets say.
The tour takes us to a cave with photos about some of the island's cannibalistic history, the occupation of the French and the English, and some of the local mythology. There's too much to read and twilight is turning into darkness. I rush through beds of local vegetables to catch up with the rest of the group, on its way to the festival area. The guide has us all seated on benches in a half circle, just before the sun has completely set, and states in an apologetic way that we can come back to the cultural village tomorrow on the same ticket. It's the first time she speaks with confidence, apparently it's not the first time this happens. The place is worthy of more exploration, but I imagine Blandine and I rushing back, from our morning tour to make it on time to the airport, so revisiting this place is not an option.
Kava, lap-lap, dance
A local music band keeps us entertained, under a setting sun, and in the distinguished company of voracious mosquitoes. The spray on our legs will hold off most of the mozzies, others have started scratching the minute they sat down. This doesn't discourage some of us to pull out our dancing shoes while the locals continue to cook our feast. While blandine and I slowdance, I get a closer look at the band and "darn", I seem to recognise the guys in the band, where have I seen them before? I dig deep into my Pacific music bands memory and then I remember: they're the same guys that entertained us when we arrived at the airport!
Then the park hostess invites us to drink kava. Kava is a bitter, milky drink made from roots of the pepper tree. It doesn't look appetizing, so why should we try it? It's the big hit all over the Pacific, used in all official ceremonies and is rumoured to have special properties. You'll find kava bars all over the islands, some have legendary status. It's mainly a drink for real men I'm told, so, after having verified it's not the drink that ferments with woman's spit, I give it a go. Woow, within seconds my lips start numbing a bit, I get the tingly feeling of a sleeping limb, but on both my lips. I start laughing and rush back to Blandine, half a cocunut of lipnumbing liquid in hand. She doesn't share my enthusiasm and only after my insisting for 2 minutes she caves in an has a quick slurp. "Brrrwaaah, how can you drink this?!?" is all she can utter. It's a man's drink, I understand.
All this drinking and dancing makes us tourists rather hungry. Then, finally after a good 15 minutes, we're invited, to come and see our food being dug up. Yes, that's right. Our food has been wrapped in banana leaves and place over hot coals, then covered with earth. For hours it has slow-cooked to perfection. First we get to taste lap-lap, a Vanuatu delicacy that looks like a type of glutinous pudding. It's made from grated vegetables (such as manioc, taro or yam), soaked in coconut milk to form a paste. Our guide tells us that on special occasions, pork, beef, chicken, fish or even flying fox (a large fruit eating bat) may be added, or the paste may be sweetened with a few bananas. We taste the one with banana. Bummer, I could have had a bit of bat, really. We sit down and eat our heart's content of island pork and marinated fish while chatting with our Australian neighbours, who are impressed with our story about our upcoming volunteer job. The food is good, the company as well, and inevitably time starts moving faster than ever. Before we know it, the buffet is closed and the park guide points in the direction of the van. Stuffed like pigs we are returned to our tourist hotels. Mission accomplished, goodnight!
Monday, November 8, 2010
Monday, July 19th: Last Day in Paradise
Owen's Reef
Dive number 5. Just like experienced divers would, I leisurely chit chat with Greg and his father, it's a pretty picture, all of us sipping instant coffee, enjoying the morning sun, the boat engine gently approaching Owen's Reef. Owen's reef? Yup, you lease an island, then name your favourite diving spot in the area after yourself. Not too shabby, I say. There are a few differences with regular divers, easily noticed by the trained eye: my wetsuit is on way before the boat gets to the site and I'm a bit giddy all the way. It IS my first official "fun" dive after all, a dive without any teaching or exercises attached. Once the boat turns off its engines over the dive spot I throw on my tank, mask and fins, and with the official big stride off a small platform at the back of the boat I fall in the water, more than ready for another underwater adventure.
It's better down here
The water is warm, we see schools of unbelievably colourful fish and Steve, my eternal trainer/dive buddy, takes me down to 21 meters, my personal record. Yes! On the way back to the island I put my IPOD on shuffle and before I can stop it Dido has me humming "I still got gand in my shoes".
We eat lunch as rainclouds gather over the island. It's been overcast off and on for a few days now, not the kind of weather you'd associate with a paradisiacal island.
See or use kayaks?
It's now or never. It's a bit windy, clouds are still gathering, yet if we ever want to use these sea-kayaks then we have to do it now, at 5PM we're heading back to mainland. The first part is deceptively easy. We make good speed downwind and only worry about not getting rocked off the boat by the growing waves. 20 minutes later, as limbs begin to ache, we beach our kayak and look at our desolate surroundings. Palm trees swaying in the breeze, nobody on the beach as far as you can see in both directions. Silence is golden. Then a shell moves toward me. It's a hermit crab, crawling over bits of washed up coral, continuing its business, now that the humans have immobilised their huge beach sandals in the sand. We take some pictures, then stick the camera back in a waterproof compartment of the kayak and paddle back through a drizzle. Splashing each other would not change a thing, within minutes we're soaked and the paradisiacal ideas of this island wash away. There should be a ban on rain during expensive island vacations.
All good songs come to an end
We turn the nose of the kayak and log it back into the sea, the holiday on Moso has come to an end, this is the first stage of our leaving Vanuatu. The song we chant to encourage ourselves to paddle is just a notch too enthusiastic to sound genuine. We reach the resort again, bring the kayak back on land, and get ready to leave paradise.
My backpack only has to carry my diving book on top of the stuff it contained when I arrived on Moso, yet it feels 5kg heavier. Once the Congoola drops us off on mainland, we transfer our backpacks to a waiting van. Greg's dad and his wife are in the van and accompany us all on the way to Port Vila, the capital> Naturally we end up chatting a bit about diving, but I give up quickly in favour of silence. My arms are a bit tired from the kayaking (muscles rarely used) and could just doze off, but who would then play cool for Blandine who is worried about us finding a place to stay? Without internet on Moso, we haven't had a chance to book anything, we have just two tips of hotels to go on, scribbled down on a scrap of paper. And the Moso drizzle has translated into full-fledged Efate rain. At Owen's dive-shop it's rush hour, just before close. We sort out the payment, Owen even suggests to give us a 5% discount (Ok Owen, how can I argue about that?), and his wife gives us free "Tranquillity Island Resort" baseball caps while we wait for him to recalculate the bill total.
Fan of room with a view
Still recovering from the amount we spent on accommodation over the last week, we decide to go for something on the lower end of the price scale. Praised for its delicious breakfast, "Room with a View" sounds corny enough and fits the bill at around 3500 Vatu (about 38 USD). The owner, a Korean woman with designer sunglasses and a thick accent, makes it understood she's real happy to have us and puts in the effort to come pick us up in person. Let's hope the rooms are up to scratch, neither of us has any interest in wandering around in the rain with heavy gear on our backs. We soon settle into an upstairs room of what must be her private villa, life is good!
Anything but nirvana
To satisfy our hunger we'll have to go outside, so we put on our rain gear, walk into town, then have some Thai food in Nirvana restaurant. It's the worst service I've had so far on the trip. The waitress doesn't understand my English until I point to the item on the menu, can't explain anything and forgets to bring me my beer. The food is ok, but not copious and rather overpriced. We need to get back to Bolivian spending habits if we want to keep this trip from derailing financially. Whatever, we're too tired to care about service at this point; the only thing we care for at this point is our room with a comfortable bed. Tomorrow we'll see what Port Vila has to offer us, all we have energy to do before we fall asleep is concoct a balanced Port Vila sightseeing plan.
Dive number 5. Just like experienced divers would, I leisurely chit chat with Greg and his father, it's a pretty picture, all of us sipping instant coffee, enjoying the morning sun, the boat engine gently approaching Owen's Reef. Owen's reef? Yup, you lease an island, then name your favourite diving spot in the area after yourself. Not too shabby, I say. There are a few differences with regular divers, easily noticed by the trained eye: my wetsuit is on way before the boat gets to the site and I'm a bit giddy all the way. It IS my first official "fun" dive after all, a dive without any teaching or exercises attached. Once the boat turns off its engines over the dive spot I throw on my tank, mask and fins, and with the official big stride off a small platform at the back of the boat I fall in the water, more than ready for another underwater adventure.
It's better down here
The water is warm, we see schools of unbelievably colourful fish and Steve, my eternal trainer/dive buddy, takes me down to 21 meters, my personal record. Yes! On the way back to the island I put my IPOD on shuffle and before I can stop it Dido has me humming "I still got gand in my shoes".
We eat lunch as rainclouds gather over the island. It's been overcast off and on for a few days now, not the kind of weather you'd associate with a paradisiacal island.
See or use kayaks?
It's now or never. It's a bit windy, clouds are still gathering, yet if we ever want to use these sea-kayaks then we have to do it now, at 5PM we're heading back to mainland. The first part is deceptively easy. We make good speed downwind and only worry about not getting rocked off the boat by the growing waves. 20 minutes later, as limbs begin to ache, we beach our kayak and look at our desolate surroundings. Palm trees swaying in the breeze, nobody on the beach as far as you can see in both directions. Silence is golden. Then a shell moves toward me. It's a hermit crab, crawling over bits of washed up coral, continuing its business, now that the humans have immobilised their huge beach sandals in the sand. We take some pictures, then stick the camera back in a waterproof compartment of the kayak and paddle back through a drizzle. Splashing each other would not change a thing, within minutes we're soaked and the paradisiacal ideas of this island wash away. There should be a ban on rain during expensive island vacations.
All good songs come to an end
We turn the nose of the kayak and log it back into the sea, the holiday on Moso has come to an end, this is the first stage of our leaving Vanuatu. The song we chant to encourage ourselves to paddle is just a notch too enthusiastic to sound genuine. We reach the resort again, bring the kayak back on land, and get ready to leave paradise.
My backpack only has to carry my diving book on top of the stuff it contained when I arrived on Moso, yet it feels 5kg heavier. Once the Congoola drops us off on mainland, we transfer our backpacks to a waiting van. Greg's dad and his wife are in the van and accompany us all on the way to Port Vila, the capital> Naturally we end up chatting a bit about diving, but I give up quickly in favour of silence. My arms are a bit tired from the kayaking (muscles rarely used) and could just doze off, but who would then play cool for Blandine who is worried about us finding a place to stay? Without internet on Moso, we haven't had a chance to book anything, we have just two tips of hotels to go on, scribbled down on a scrap of paper. And the Moso drizzle has translated into full-fledged Efate rain. At Owen's dive-shop it's rush hour, just before close. We sort out the payment, Owen even suggests to give us a 5% discount (Ok Owen, how can I argue about that?), and his wife gives us free "Tranquillity Island Resort" baseball caps while we wait for him to recalculate the bill total.
Fan of room with a view
Still recovering from the amount we spent on accommodation over the last week, we decide to go for something on the lower end of the price scale. Praised for its delicious breakfast, "Room with a View" sounds corny enough and fits the bill at around 3500 Vatu (about 38 USD). The owner, a Korean woman with designer sunglasses and a thick accent, makes it understood she's real happy to have us and puts in the effort to come pick us up in person. Let's hope the rooms are up to scratch, neither of us has any interest in wandering around in the rain with heavy gear on our backs. We soon settle into an upstairs room of what must be her private villa, life is good!
Anything but nirvana
To satisfy our hunger we'll have to go outside, so we put on our rain gear, walk into town, then have some Thai food in Nirvana restaurant. It's the worst service I've had so far on the trip. The waitress doesn't understand my English until I point to the item on the menu, can't explain anything and forgets to bring me my beer. The food is ok, but not copious and rather overpriced. We need to get back to Bolivian spending habits if we want to keep this trip from derailing financially. Whatever, we're too tired to care about service at this point; the only thing we care for at this point is our room with a comfortable bed. Tomorrow we'll see what Port Vila has to offer us, all we have energy to do before we fall asleep is concoct a balanced Port Vila sightseeing plan.
Monday, November 1, 2010
Sunday, July 18th: Certification's the name of the game
Mourning till lunch
I stand to get certified today, yet we have breakfast in silence. On the way to breakfast we see Kim and Garth climb into the Congoola and leave the island. We're too far away for them to notice us. We're the only guests now. Steve and Sarah are also a bit sad, I can tell. There's good news though: a new family will arrive today.
The rest of the morning is spent sweating over the final, comprehensive exam, I pass it with flying colours, only a few remaining dive skills stand in the way of my first PADI title. The first set of skills we do just in front of the Tranquillity resort jetty, for the last ones we'll need to take the boat out in the afternoon.
Afternoon
Blandine comes along on the boat for the afternoon dive on the Bottlefish Caves site. We dive at 15:22, 35 minutes later I'm officially certified. Crack open the champagne if you have any, captain! There's no alcohol on board, so we settle for the free coffee. All this diving has made me real hungry, I can barely wait for dinner. And to see the new arrivals of course.
Evening encounters
Meet Natasha, or Tash for short, loving hubby Greg and their 10 year old son Tom. They're a happy family from Newcastle, Australia out on a diving holiday here. Correction: Greg is. Tash can't dive because she's pregnant and Tom is really eager, but still too young to get certified. Tash's father, a longtime diver, stays in a nearby hotel on the mainland and will come out on day trips to dive with us. We introduce ourselves to each other and before I know it I'm having fun playing cards with Tom while Blandine chats with the adults about her job at Caritas. The evening passes by in a jiffy, the excitement of my achievement still makes my blood pump faster. It's our last day on the island tomorrow, so I simply MUST take advantage of my time here and go on as many dives as possible, without alienating Blandine of course. We are on this island together after all. So, tomorrow I'll go diving in the morning, then after lunch - if the weather's decent enough we'll take out the sea kayaks for a little cruise, then get back in time to say goodbye to Moso island and take the boat to mainland.
I stand to get certified today, yet we have breakfast in silence. On the way to breakfast we see Kim and Garth climb into the Congoola and leave the island. We're too far away for them to notice us. We're the only guests now. Steve and Sarah are also a bit sad, I can tell. There's good news though: a new family will arrive today.
The rest of the morning is spent sweating over the final, comprehensive exam, I pass it with flying colours, only a few remaining dive skills stand in the way of my first PADI title. The first set of skills we do just in front of the Tranquillity resort jetty, for the last ones we'll need to take the boat out in the afternoon.
Afternoon
Blandine comes along on the boat for the afternoon dive on the Bottlefish Caves site. We dive at 15:22, 35 minutes later I'm officially certified. Crack open the champagne if you have any, captain! There's no alcohol on board, so we settle for the free coffee. All this diving has made me real hungry, I can barely wait for dinner. And to see the new arrivals of course.
Evening encounters
Meet Natasha, or Tash for short, loving hubby Greg and their 10 year old son Tom. They're a happy family from Newcastle, Australia out on a diving holiday here. Correction: Greg is. Tash can't dive because she's pregnant and Tom is really eager, but still too young to get certified. Tash's father, a longtime diver, stays in a nearby hotel on the mainland and will come out on day trips to dive with us. We introduce ourselves to each other and before I know it I'm having fun playing cards with Tom while Blandine chats with the adults about her job at Caritas. The evening passes by in a jiffy, the excitement of my achievement still makes my blood pump faster. It's our last day on the island tomorrow, so I simply MUST take advantage of my time here and go on as many dives as possible, without alienating Blandine of course. We are on this island together after all. So, tomorrow I'll go diving in the morning, then after lunch - if the weather's decent enough we'll take out the sea kayaks for a little cruise, then get back in time to say goodbye to Moso island and take the boat to mainland.
Saturday, July 17th: On The Road To Certification
Breakfast of champions
Pancakes for breakfast, pancakes with sugar and lemon juice. And the usual two cups of coffee to properly wake me up. It's the best eco-resort breakfast to date, and a welcome change after the toast-and-jam-heavy month in South America. I eat three, then Garth tells me he's had five, then burps to his own delight. The idea of a pancake-eating contest flashes up in my mind, but I decide I'm too old for that. And I'm on a diving course, no need to feel sick to my stomach at the bottom of the ocean. I haven't passed the what-to-do-when you-puke-in-your-mask test, and have no need to find out any time soon. With caffeine properly running through my veins, I axe the last two chapters in the PADI course book.
Grouper Gutter greatness
We have a quick lunch, you guessed it - steak sandwiches again -then I hop on the Congoola, and head to "Grouper Gutter" in the company of some day-tripper divers and Garth. Pitter patter pitter patter. Always up for a bit of comedy, Garth jumps off the boat sideways in a quirky, nonchalant, completely unorthodox way. I could have guessed. He's a boy stuck in a man's body in my opinion, but he calms my nerves about diving. If he can do it, so can I.
This time things go so smooth I forget what I was worried about the first time around. I spend 32 minutes under water, mainly at 12 meter. Sure, I perform skills toward my Open Water certification, but we're done with them in record time and I spend most of my bottom time looking at all the treasures this open-air aquarium called Grouper Gutter has to offer. Surrounded by virgin reef and tons of fish I feel like a kid in a candy store. What a rush!
Diving for overland treasure
Steve is playing with a shiny coin over dinner. He tells us he's got from a geo-caching adventure, a sort of treasure hunt that involves locating hidden items with a GPS, then logging your experience online. Some treasure boxes contain a cool item that you can take with you if you leave something else for the next geo-cacher that completes this treasure hunt. Can you believe it, there are loads of geo-caches placed all over the world. Glad we uncovered that, I'm never going to go hiking aimlessly again! This kind of discovery really boggles my mind and makes me wish I was a teenager again, so I could go hunt for treasure with friends. Once I get back to Belgium I'm so going to try this out.
Fire it up
It's Garth and Kim's last night, so after dinner we invite them over for a goodbye camp fire by our bungalow. Garth's got half a forest worth of firewood pulled out of the surrounding jungle in a matter of minutes and a huge fire is blazing shortly after. It's a chilly, somewhat breezy night once again (we're just feet away from the water), yet the fire keeps us all real warm. We chat about all kinds of things until our eyelids get heavy, then say our goodbyes. Chances are that we won't see them before they leave tomorrow morning. It was great meeting them.
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