May 27

May 27, 2013
Birds are beautiful weavers of friendships. I told Naomi that I wanted to see birds. The children heard and ran off gleefully to climb up the corner post of their thatch house. There they had a birdcage made from vines and a stick with 2 young Coconut Lorikeets. We spent about an hour playing and posing with those birds which are an abundant resident breeding species in Vanuatu. There were 50 Common Mynas in the village. At least the locals know that those birds came from far away, China they thought but really India, and are harming the local birds and that the native birds have declined since the myna's arrival. After the birds Naomi showed us a steaming heap of dirt where lap lap was being cooked - it's the national dish and is made from cassava (or taro or yam) dough wrapped in leaves and maybe containing bits of meat.

We cruisers, 2 French couples, ourselves and a 16 year old (about) named Tonga, arranged for transportation to see the volcano. We rode together in a Toyota 4WD driven by John on a road made of volcanic ash and lined with steaming vents. The ash turns to slush when it rains and so the road had impassable gullies here and there. We managed. As we traveled we stopped and picked up more and more niVan until the truck was overflowing. Through jungle we bumped. We saw flocks of Yellow-fronted White-eyes, a Vanuatu endemic. In Bislama (pidgin) they are called yelo sma fella pigeon. (All birds are called pigeon in Bislama.) As night fell we began to see flying foxes (fruitbats that they eat) and 100s of Glossy Swiftlets, abundant breeding birds. We discussed languages because Tonga speaks fluent French, English and Greek and the locals speak at least 3 languages. Tok tok is talk in Bislama. Love it.

The volcano! We parked and hiked up to the rim through a barren red and black ash landscape. I was think of running to stand under a tree in case one of those lava bombs headed my way but, alas, there was not a living thing there. We stood on the rim with perhaps 50 other people and watched, heard and felt old Mt Yasur belch and explode high into the air. Most of the lava bombs fell nowhere near us and the few that came close were so high that you had plenty of time to … duck? I don't know. We have photos and movies. Spectacular!!

It was pitch black on the way back. How wonderful to live in a place that's dark when it's dark! People sitting in groups with glowing branches from the fire to use as a torch (flashlight). Everything and everyone is quiet and still. EEK! Some boys jump out of the jungle and yell the equivalent of "Boo!" and our whole truck erupts in laughter. So so funny. It was 8:30pm when we got back to the boat. Nothing to see at all except the slowly rocking masthead lights of the 8 boats in the bay and trillions of bright bright stars. Amazing what we give up for our lights.

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