Day 10 (March 15, 2025): Two-thirds of the way around Efate
Before leaving for our road trip, we couldn’t resist more pool pictures, because the water was incredibly still this morning.
This is the 170km route we covered today - in both directions.
But before we get into today’s trip, let’s address the highway. Efate has one highway that encircles the island. We left Port Villa and drove in a counterclockwise direction. Although driving here is on the right hand side, as at home, driving here is not for the faint of heart!
If only the entire highway was like this!
Hazard #1: Out of the blue, potholes appear that will quickly flatten your tire.
Hazard #2: Pick-up trucks filled with people are a common sight.
Hazard #3: People walk everywhere on the highway.
Hazard #4: When driving through villages, packs of dogs will chase your vehicle.
We saw acres and acres of palm trees, which have been planted in rows. We aren’t sure if they are being grown to harvest the coconuts or for lumber or both.
Another type of tree - but we could not determine the name.
Vanuatu is so lush, vines cover everything. Entire mountain sides are covered in vines, which seem to gobble up everything in their path.
Morning glories.
We’re not sure what these are! Mangoes?
Emaal Lahkeh Nap Beach - our first beach stop
Eton Beach - amazing lava rock formations!
One certainly doesn’t see coconuts washing up on the beach in Nova Scotia!
As we said in our blog entry from yesterday, we are purposefully, avoiding swimming here, due to the snakes. However, this is proof that we both did put our toes in the Vanatuan waters!
This lava formation at Eton Beach was fascinating. It looked like an animal skull, but it is actually a mixture of coral and lava rock.
The beautiful Ewor River, north of Eton Beach.
There are several islands off the northeast and north coasts of Efate. This is the island of Emao.
One of our favourite pictures of the entire vacation. Thanks to Pam’s creative eye.
A village Presbyterian Church.
A typical primary school in a village enroute
Throughout the entire journey, the roadside had examples of such vegetable stalls.
Beef production is one of the top agricultural industries of Vanuatu.
A traditional dugout canoe on a beach near Emua.
By the time we rounded the northeast corner of the island, the rain started. And it kept coming and coming and coming! Very soon, we started to see the effects on the roadway.
The highway has cement floodways at various places, where small rivers or creeks are prone to overflow during rain storms. This was the first example we saw where one of the floodways was actually overflowing. It was a little disconcerting, but it proved to be nothing compared to what we saw later on in the drive.
In this situation, coconuts and large rocks had been pushed onto the road by the current. In our tiny Suzuki, we were very worried about getting a flat tire on the sharp rocks, hidden by the water.
Things got really difficult by the time we got to the Marona River on the north part of the island. The rain and the runoff from the mountain was so heavy
that the road had washed out. We had two choices: to wait until the rain ended and the mountain runoff subsided, in the hopes that not too much debris would be blocking the road to enable us to pass, or to turn around and to redo the three hours of driving we had already done. We chose the latter. Check out this video clip to see amount of water we were up against:
Ch-Something Beach (yes, that is the name!)
As we retraced all our kilometres after having to turn around, the rain eventually dry up, and we enjoyed a stop at “Ch-something Beach”.
The Avi Bay Turtle Sanctuary.
It was interesting to see many foreign aid programs at work in Vanuatu, including Japan Aid (the above bridge project is being funded by Japan Aid), China Aid, Australian Aid, and Canada‘s aid program through Global Affairs Canada, were all evident. Noticeably missing was USAid. And now, that will never be seen again anywhere, thanks to Trump.
It made us proud to see the Government of Canada logo on this project in Emua.
By the time we got back to the hotel, we were in real need of some decompression. We spent the rest of the afternoon by the pool and enjoyed a paddle in the lagoon.
The hotel was supposed to have a torch lighting ceremony at 6 PM, for which we waited and waited and waited, only to find they cancelled it because the torches were dampened from all the rain. But we enjoyed the sunset, all the same.
And, we enjoyed some piña colada mocktails
(i.e., alcohol free).
Comments
Post a Comment