Blogs from Port Vila, Efate, Vanuatu, Oceania

I've dragged myself to write today's blog, and yesterdays blog for what I can remember of it - well most of it was spent in the office so not much to say! I think there will be more periods where i'm just unable to write a blog every night, mainly due to being too tired or just too busy. So I might do it every other day or so. Yesterday (19/08/11) consisted of waking up at 6am again (naturally) packing my bags, having breakfast in my room, sorting out a few things with important things in safe pockets/distance from me and so on. I then checked out from the over priced hotel, 7,500 vatu per night. Which comes to something like £40-50 per night! Really isn't as cheap as i expected it to be at all. ... read more

So today I touched down in Vanuatu (17th Aug) it's some time in the evening here... must remember to change time on my phone. I feel like i've been travelling for years. It was so good to finally have a shower and brush my teeth after finally putting my bags down. Flight from London to Dubai went fine. Dubai to Brisbane was fine, I just didn't remember how long it took.. it went on forever.. was at least 12 hours flying.. the good thing was that it wasn't fully booked and i managed to secure 3 seats to myself next to a window... so yeah I was able to lie down and get a fair amount of sleep. Might go off on a rant now but I hate Australian customs, it's the most fuss in the ... read more

Hello again everyone! Today I find myself back in Port Vila in the hospitality of good friends and familiar faces. Project MARC's 2011 season will officially kick off in a couple weeks, but Dr. Hilbert and I are here early for prep and planning of our August expedition. Keep up with us here for further updates on our progress with the expeditions or follow us on Twitter for blurbs from the bush! Thanks for the support and for keeping interested in Vanuatu! ... read more

We spent our last morning going to town. Grace had her hair braided again and Tom went looking for a string guitar and fireworks. Tom and Dad had lunch in the market, Dad had a fish curry and Tom had steak. There was some chilling sauce that was quite possibly the hottest thing on the planet, even hotter than Mt Yasur! In the afternoon we packed up and spent time sitting on the beanbags watching the sunset. We found a copy of a tv show called "meet the natives" which was all about some men from Tanna going to England. We had met the chief when we visited the custom village, the most unusual reality tv star you could ever expect to meet! Another night of strange beasts; seeing off a bin-raiding dog in the middle ... read more

We had to get up very early and rush around in order to wait a lot. We took a bus up over the top of the ranges, very slow and steep hill. Finally we reached the boat, a gorgeous old yacht built in 1949. There were 27 people on board. First stop was the hawkbill turtle sanctuary and on the way some dolphins came to play in the bow wave. At the turtle sanctuary they collect eggs from the beach and raise the youngsters until they are over a year old when they can be release into the wild. At that age they are large enough to be same from most predators. They are measured and tagged for research. They release one at a time and it may be another thirty years before they mate and ... read more

Vanuatu life starts early and we were up at six in the morning which was five in Australian time. We didn't do too much, just lots of lazing around and swimming in the pool. We did go into town to buy some more food. We went to the market where there was lots of strange fruit and vegetables. We bought stuff for vegetable risottos that we made over the next two nights. The nicest stuff was a pawpaw and some native raspberries. We also bought some more bootleg DVDs, naughty us! Grace had her hair braided and Tom tried out the string band guitars. We played petanque with some ni-Vanuatu and Dad managed to hit the ball. The locals pretended to be very impressed. Dad had his first local beer. Mi wantem Tusker! Beer blong yumi! ... read more