Written by Monday morning consisted of a quick brekkie and a trip into town on the free shuttle. On the way in, it started to get busier on the roads and there was a lot more people outside on the streets. We past a lot of stalls and a couple bigger fruit and veg markets. There was also quite a bit of construction of new buildings/hotels.
The bus driver dropped us off in the middle of Port Villa. We wandered off into the streets. The shopping was very different to back home. There wasn’t really any clothing shops or really any cafes, just a lot of buildings. We stumbled upon a huge building that was filled with a hundred stalls selling local styled clothing garments, homewares, art, henna and hair services. I was so excited to get my hair braided as I hadn’t had it done before. I started with a section on the side but then proceeded to get my whole head braided. Whilst Jordan waited patiently, I played hand clapping games and magic tricks with two kids – I’m guessing they were the children of the lady who was doing my hair.
After a bit of looking around, we made our way to the farmers market. It was huge and a central part of the city where a lot of people came to sell their produce. There were also stalls selling gifts, art, clothing, flowers and food. I loved seeing all the hand woven baskets. So skilful to hold that much weight!
Starting to get peckish (how unusual), we sat down at a tavern that served wood oven pizza – and also because it had a really groovy sugar skull stuck to the side of building. We were served by a very friendly chef, as we listened to covers of old school rock songs. Once finished, we grabbed an ice cream and began our climb up a giant hill to find a mysterious (very difficult to find) bike/car hire place.
Nearly dying of dehydration (not really, but it felt like it) we made it to the hire place to hear that all of the quad bikes had been hired out by some people on the cruise ship that had come in, but were soon to be returned. We went and checked out the supermarket across the road (air conditioned) and had fun looking at the different products. We left with an iced tea.
Back at the hire place, we hopped onto a bright red quad bike after Jordan got a safety run down on how to use the bike by someone half his size (hehe it was kind of funny).
Jordan jumped on the front to drive and I hopped behind him with the bags and camera. We spent a solid half an hour trying to get out of Port Vila with a very colourful (Dora the Explorer type style) map and hit a number of dead ends – we must have said ‘that trail we blaze’ about three or four times (Eldorado, anyone?). It was nice when we finally got out of the hustle and bustle, it was starting to get confusing driving on the wrong side of the road (on the left) and going around roundabouts; “Jordan! Give way! Give way! Give way to your left! GO!”
The one thing that was a definite on the map was the one road that went around the island. It was bitumen for the most part and went through the costal towns.
At first there was a lot of green jungle. It reminded me of a scene out of Avatar. It was magical. We pulled the quad bike over and took a couple happy snaps. There were barely any cars. And the only one that actually did past us, stopped and asked if we were okay and if we needed any help #whatevenisthisplace.
On our adventure, there was this crazy time where we past a very friendly group of people, waving and yelling out something we couldn’t hear, as we neared a bridge. Thinking nothing of it, we continued, weaving around fallen down palm trees and debris. Right as we were crossing the bridge, we saw a bit of a gap. As we got closer, we realised that it had been damaged, most likely in a storm/cyclone, and hadn’t been repaired, thus the palm trees to stop cars and trucks from crossing – not helpful when your riding a small, powerful quad bike. We were so close to crossing the bridge, but decided that we’d best not as it was quite a drop down into the gorge and we wanted to go back to Australia in one piece. Giggling, we made our way back to our friendly group of locals. They directed us down a detour that put us back on our path.
One of my favourite things about driving around Vanuatu was the people. I haven’t had so many waves in my direction – like ever. There were kids running up besides the quad bike, holding their hands out for high fives, people in the cars coming the opposite direction flashing their lights and waving, even people deep into the town that you wouldn’t even think could see us were saying hi. Literally, every single person we past, without a doubt, waved and/or said hi. It was really warming and we felt super comfortable exploring their island.
It was quite an ordeal to find petrol. There were no petrol stations in any of the towns that we could see. Starting to get a little worried, we asked some friendly people that pointed us in the direction of a small shop. It was the last building, right on the outskirts of the town. It was filled with approximately two of every basic need. Tampons, chocolate, tuna, and even pizza shapes – yes, we did get some for the road. We asked the shop assistant for petrol and he nodded, turned and headed out the back door. He returned five minutes later with a large glass bottle and proceeded to fill up our quad bike – the last place we would’ve thought to look.
Oh and that’s just some cute piccy’s of Jord drinking some cocktails.