Little Visited Islands and Coves

July 24 & 25 Visited by chief this evening and in morning by Elizabeth, his wife, who brought island cabbage and green beans. They said they are visited by about 30 yachts per year. They are well set up and enthusiastic about providing walks, meals, letting you swim and do laundry in the waterfall for a fee. Again, sweet people. Left this morning to return to Lanova Bay and village of Tolav/Tolop which they pronounce Dolob. Politely discouraged the many visitors from coming aboard as they were all still coughing. Half way between Vanua Lava and the next island, Gaua, we saw Gaua's volcano erupt. We read that Gaua's volcano is particularly dangerous because the crater is filled with water and that water would add to the explosion. The lake is a tourist attraction but there is no way you could get us paddling across a lake which sits on an active volcano. Anyway, the belching steam and smoke put on a spectacular show and we hope no one was there.

July 26 Pleasant, long and beautiful sail from Gaua Island to NW point of Santo. Anchor at Wunpuko, one of our favorite stops. We were met by Barry, an elected official of his local area, a counselor. Visited aboard, took us for a tour of the village, laundry, pandanus factory, pig operation, copra industry, boat building facility and agricultural lands. You will laugh when you see the photos of these sites - just the usual beach and jungle settings where people work in groups of 3 or 4, usually sitting. Laundry done on the stones of the beach next to ladies sitting on the beach stripping the pandanus with little knives in preparation for weaving. In a pig sty are the pigs with tusks raised for buying a bride. The logic escapes me. Boat building consists of cutting down a tree about 40 ft tall and 2 feet in diameter and hollowing it out. It sounded like you only got one canoe (what they call their dugout outriggers) and you have to make a new canoe every 2 or 3 years. I hope these trees grow fast! NiVan Barry was an excellent bird guide with very sharp eyes. We added the Polynesian Triller and Long-tailed Triller to our list plus many of the usual. We have the Gray Fantail and are looking for the Streaked Fantail but our look at a few fantails was not good enough to differentiate. The copra Wait! Have to go out and look at the dolphins. Long-nosed Spinner Dolphin, many, riding our bow wake. Fun.

OK. The copra. Each family has their own plot of trees and their own drying ovens. The women and children pry the dry coconut from the shells and put in big burlap bags and the men haul the 70 kilo bags of what is now copra to the boats. The boat that comes is a little outboard and we have no idea where they take the copra or how they manage the trip in the open ocean. Aside from the periodic skiff there are no vehicles here and if you need something you walk. They don't measure in miles or hours but in all day, half day, 2 days, etc. They say white man takes twice as long. Humph! But it is true. By the way, in all our cruising there is always a word for European type people - pakeha in Maori or papalangi or kavalangi and here it is "white man". We asked how often they get a boat like ours visiting and they said once a year. We sailed down this coast for that very reason.

We dinghied along the shore looking down into the crystal clear water and up into the trees searching for and photographing birds. Totally wild and unpopulated and why we sail all the way out here.

On down the coast we move to the next possible place to anchor - Nokuku. This time we are visited by sweet and shy Rota. He comes aboard. He wants rice. We trade for 1 taro root and 7 pamplemousse. He offered much more but we told him that was all we could get eat. He told us how to cook taro root. We eat all the local food we can so we'll give this a try.

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