When we were in Port Vila looking at the possibilities here in Vanuatu, we wanted to do it all: dive in Santo, climb a volcano or two in Ambrym, watch the land diving in Pentecost, spend some time in the bush in Epi. Then we started to check the prices and flight schedules and realised we’d need to make choices, because Air Vanuatu’s schedule is not exactly that of say, Swiss. Their twin otters fly only twice weekly to each destination and there are no direct connections between the islands, which means you need to fly back and forth through the capital to get anywhere. Try seeing 3-4 islands in 3 weeks on a budget….impossible. All that to say, we opted to start by going to Santo to dive, since that had been the main reason that attracted us here. Once our diving done there, we planned to go to the volcanoes in Ambrym, but youpdidoo my neck was kaput for 3 days and then our possible connection there was gone, we had no more time to go anywhere. Adieu hiking in the jungle and visiting the locals in the bush. But then….

A group of locals attending a training on accomodation management stayed overnight at our hostel. And we met this lady who was getting organised to start welcoming visitors in her village. Happy as can be Ben, Marcel and I booked a trip to go hiking in the bush with Celia, we were going to be her first guests ever. At 8h00 on the agreed morning Celia and her niece Pascaline, 18, arrived at our hostel to pick us up. We threw our backpacks in and hopped on the back of the pickup truck for a 45 minutes ride on a forest road. We were dropped off in the last village accessible by vehicule and set out for the 2 ½ hour trek in the jungle up to Celia’s village. The path was nice enough, a few ups and downs but nothing too hard, except for the amount of mud…. In this forest the trees are quite high, so the sun rarely makes it down to the ground to dry the mud created by the daily rain. This means it was slippery, swampy, and we sometimes walked ankle deep in mud puddles. Good thing we had to cross a couple rivers, it took care of cleaning our boots a bit.

When we arrived at Celia’s village we were welcomed by her family (sister, brother-in-law and their three sons) and were offered juice (the best ever: grapefruit and passion fruit from their trees) fruits, salad and rice for lunch. Our stomachs full we went into our bamboo hut for a rest, lulled into sleep by the noise of the river flowing next to us. Later on they offered to take us to a waterfall, so we put our shoes back on (oh I forgot to say: they walked the whole time either barefeet or in thongs) and Pascaline and 2 of the young guys (the 3rd having stopped on the way to cut a bamboo) lead us down the river to a rock at the top of the river. We were told to please wait a bit, and the 2 young guys (17 and 15 years old) went in the thick bush with a machete to clear a path for us. They came back 10 minutes later and showed us the way down to a clear pool at the base of the fall where we jumped in the cool water. After a swim we climbed back up the newly made path (complete with a vine attached to a tree to help us up and down) back to the village, where the other family members were just finishing making a table out of the freshly cut bamboo.

For dinner we were served manioc patties, salad, bush cabbage, rice and fresh water prawns. Call me silly but I didn’t even know there were such things as fresh water prawns. And what a discovery! They were the best prawns I had ever eaten, much better then salt water prawns. We spent the evening talking by the fire in the bush kitchen (an open air space only covered by a roof, with a couple tables, some benches and a fire place to cook on). Celia told me that we were very special guests for her: her sister and brother-in-law were starting to complain and say that no white people would want to go to their place, etc. But then we arrived, and now they were already making plans to finish the 2nd and 3rd hut soon and believed this could work.

The next morning I asked if we could see their garden, where they showed us manioc plants, island cabbage, taro root plants, sweet potatoes, lots of banana trees, etc. After tasting sugar cane (you chew a piece of it to suck the sweet liquid out) we left with our lunch wrapped up in banana leaves (the Tupperware of the forest!) to go back for the Millenium Cave adventure.

This cave was supposedly discovered by a German TV crew in 2000, hence the name Millenium Cave. What the locals have made of it is a 3 hours adventure through river, jungle and bat inhabited cave: yahoo! And since Vanuatu is far off the beaten track, you may meet a couple other tourists along the way, but basically you have the place to yourself and the guide, which adds to the Indiana Jones feeling. We met our guide at a crossroads in the forest where Celia had agreed with the custom owners the previous day. From there we started down a muddy and slippery (sounds familiar) path, and stopped at a small clearing. to get our faces painted in mud color. The locals believe the spirits of their ancestors live in the cave, the painting when you first visit should protect you. After a while the path disappeared and we started going down towards the cave on wooden laders fixed to rocks or steep forest walls. Down and down, backwards on steep laders, until we reached the huge rocks marking the entrance to the cave. We turned our headlights on and started climbing down the river, up and through rocks, sometimes thigh high in water, through the cave. We couldn’t see them but we could smell the bats, having to put our hands in their droppings everywhere on the rocks we had to hold on to. Half an hour we went through the river in the cave, 3-6m wide and maybe 10m or more high. Then we reached the opening where the river drops into a wider one, and sat down on stones to admire the scenery. After a short stop to eat our lunch of boiled plantain bananas our guide distributed swim aids (kid sized inflatable rings) and we headed down the river. And for about an hour we alternated between drifting down on our pink and orange rings, climbing up and down escarpments and going through narrow passages through rocks and water. The whole time holding our dropping jaws in front of the so beautiful scenery: from the river we looked up the 30m high rocks carved by thousands of years of erosion surrounded by the most abundant vegetation we had ever seen. For the Quebecois: c’etait comme l’Amazone au Village des Sports mais en vrai et en 100 fois mieux).

The water being quite fresh we were not so sad to reach the end of the floating part, and climbed back up laders and steep hills to go back to the village. Another short hike brought us to our pick up point where we waited for our transport for a while. This gave us time to search our bag for ballons and distribute them to the local kids before going back to our hostel as wet and dirty but also happy as can be.