Cruising from Tanna Island, Vanuatu to Noumea in New Caledonia.

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TANNA, VANUATU TO NEW CALEDONIA

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October, 1993
Along with about 15 other yachts, we had arranged for Customs and Immigration in Vila to fly down to Tanna Island so that we could visit Tanna and then check out from there directly to New Caledonia. Although the trip to Tanna was not great, Tanna was well worth the effort to get there (and anyway, it was only about 36 hours, and we can survive anything for 36 hours).

Vanuatu is the most unusual of the island groups we have visited in the Pacific - it has one of the loveliest capitals, Vila, and it also has some of the most primitive villages still flourishing in the South Pacific. Tanna is one example of the differences and contradictions of this country. Tanna is quite a large island, about 390 square miles, and although about 36,000 people live there, it is quite primitive. Its claim to fame is its active volcano, Yasur. Along with some other cruisers we hired a "car" and guide to take us to various places on Tanna. Our "car" was a pickup truck, and off we bounced. The roads aren't paved, but are in surprisingly good shape, so we were reasonably comfortable as we traveled for an hour and a half to the Custom Village. A Custom Village is a village where the people still adhere to their old customs - the women wear only grass skirts, the men only a penis sheath, called a namba. Although there are quite a few custom villages on Tanna, only one allows tourists to visit and take pictures, for a small fee. I gave all the children balloons, which made me a big hit with them. At the end of our visit they performed traditional dances, a few of which included the children (balloons and all). Friends of ours on another boat videotaped them, and made the disgusted comment on the tape, "and the balloons courtesy of Watermelon". She was even more outraged that I was the only person that received a gift from the villagers. But I enjoyed myself tremendously.

Also on Tanna is the cargo cult - the Jon Frum movement which was first reported in April, 1940 - natives who believe that "John From the United States" (only one interpretation of the origin of his name) - is going to arrive and answer all their material desires and there will be no more sickness - but all Europeans have to leave the island before this can happen. Some Tannese believe that Jon Frum lives in Yasur. We were told by our guide, who comes from the Christian village near Port Resolution, that people from the custom villages and the Jon Frum villages can intermarry, but neither can marry a Christian. Considering the terrible things done to many of the natives in the name of Christianity a hundred years ago, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

The highlight of the day was our trip to the volcano. The truck took us up to within a 1/4 mile of the rim of the volcano; the short walk over the cinder-seared slope did nothing to prepare us for the sight of this hole in the ground. Yasur is a god that sits in the ground, grumbling angrily and occasionally spitting fire up at you. The weather the day we visited was quite calm and windless, but Yasur seemed to breathe. Just before one of the larger eruptions a strong wind blew past us, as if Yasur were taking a deep breath before exhaling his fire. The eruptions, even as periodic as they were, seemed to catch us by surprise each time. We stayed from about an hour before sunset until about an hour after sunset, when the darkness made the fireworks look even more dramatic. The guides, however, left before the sun set - they are respectful, even a bit frightened, of this incredible force flexing its muscles in their midst.

After we left and rode back to Port Resolution, one of the guides told Peter that a Japanese vulcanologist had visited Yasur last year and told the residents that it was getting much more active and there was going to be a major eruption in the near future. Peter asked the fellow if that worried them, to which the answer, of course, was 'yes'. The last serious eruption, in 1963, is remembered by all the islanders, and even the young people, who weren't born until years later, recount the terror and damage Yasur did. For us, the most significant observation was that there are fumaroles - gas and steam vents - 3 to 5 miles distant from the volcano. When Yasur next throws a major tantrum, a huge chunk of Tanna Island is going to be affected.

We left Tanna on October 12 for Noumea, New Caledonia, arriving two days later. Noumea is quite sophisticated (a Kiwi, arriving a few days after us, commented that you wouldn't find anything like Noumea anywhere else in the South Pacific), and New Caledonia is apparently a wealthy place (Peter found a car dealer that floor-planned Ferraris - impressed him no end). Check in, as in Vila, was pleasant and efficient, but then all French islands are good that way (it's their Post Office that drives people to distraction). As I've said before, the French seem to do much better with their overseas territories than most other countries do, and they are, in the Pacific as in the Caribbean, islands of order in a disordered world. It was great being in a real marina for the first time since we left Cumana, Venezuela in November of 1990.

New Caledonia, with an area of 6,530 square miles (about 1,000 square miles larger than the state of Connecticut), is a French Overseas Territory, and enjoys the high standard of living that the French bring to all its territories that we've visited. The island has huge deposits of nickel, and the French are literally tearing the island down to mine them. For all that, it is surprisingly lovely, and warrants more than the short ten day visit we were able to allot to it.

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