3/12/20
We had a very early twin otter flight to Tanna Island. We were picked up by Phillip in a 4x4 truck to be taken to the treehouse we had reserved. Phillip is the brother of Jackson who runs the treehouse. It was a bumpy and rough ride to the other side of the island, crossing the famous ash plain, to get to the treehouse, known as Yasur backpacker treehouse. On a pass going over the island, we were delighted to see our first glimpse of active Yasur volcano. It was cool driving across the ash plain, as it had no road, you just drive straight across the ash at the foot of the erupting volcano. We then reached a vegetated area where we saw the awesome treehouse we'd be staying in! Way up in a banyan tree. There are 34 wooden steps and 12 ground steps up to the treehouse. I would say its 40 or 50 feet off the ground and has a little balcony with great views of the volcano. You can see it nearly constantly erupting and sending ash into the air! Also, you can hear the eruptions, and thus are constantly reminded that it is there. It sounds like thunder and makes the earth shake a bit. Wow! What a fantastic place to be. Sleeping in a treehouse with views of an actively erupting volcano!
We were telling Jackson about Antarctica. Most people in warm places can't fathom the cold and snow, but Jackson couldn't possibly imagine people live in a place with no trees. "How is that even possible?" he asked and then added "So are you telling me you are healthy 6 months of the year and unhealthy for 6 months?" For the people here, trees are life. They provide the food, the shelter, the shade, and more. We had a nice local lunch, then hung out in our treehouse for a while, watching the volcano erupt.
In the afternoon we headed to the Yasur Volcano Park Entrance. We had a tour of the museum by Phillip, who works there, then boarded trucks that drove us up near the crater. We then hiked the last bit up to the crater rim. There we watched the volcano erupting right in front of us, sending ash into the sky. Super powerful!! The earth would shake and the noise was loud and would shake you on the bigger eruptions. Sometimes you could see lava bombs being shot into the air. Because the eruption was happening way down deep in the crater, by the time the lava bombs, if they even were able to, reached our elevation, they were moving really slow due to gravity counteracting their flight up. The bombs were flung straight up, so they didn't come our way, though of course it was possible. So we were told to be wary of them and to stand still and watch them and to step out of the way if one was coming your way. Again, it would have been going rather slow as we were at about the elevation of the pinnacle of their flight.
As it started to get dark, we could start to see the glow of lava in the crater. There were at least 4 holes of it. When an eruption would occur, you'd get a heart thumping boom and then a fireworks display of glowing lava bombs thrown into the air. One of the most amazing, awe-inspiring, and powerful things I have ever experienced or witnessed. Wow! Wowee! I had to be told many times it was time to go, because I just really didn't want to go. The same couldn't be said for Elisha. She found it very cool, but she was nervous and ready to go down.
Back at the tree house we had a local dinner, then watched the glow of the volcano from our balcony. Two incredible experiences both happening at once--staying in a legit treehouse and watching an exploding volcano. So Magical!!
3/13/20 Friday the 13th in the shadow of an erupting volcano. We heard the volcano rumbling all night. It was a cool feeling to wake up in a tree, with birds at eye level.
After breakfast, we hiked to the tiny village of Port Resolution through the jungle where we swam at the beautiful white sand beach there. A member of Jackson's family, a young girl with a baby, went with us on our way to Port Resolution. After our swim, we had a delicious lunch in the village before going back for a swim again. We then hiked to a black sand beach that had hot springs suitable for cooking. Next we hiked to shark bay, a nice overlook, but we saw no sharks.
After dinner, as it was a Friday night, we visited a John Frum village where they were singing worship songs. The John Frum movements worship and sing and dance all night long on Friday nights. The John Frum movement is one of the famous cargo cults of Vanuatu. Google John Frum or cargo cults & Vanuatu for more info, but the gist is that various people that had landed on Vanuatu hundreds of years ago were considered to be messengers/prophets of God. Then when WWII happened and similar looking people arrived to Vanuatu and were super generous with their food and gear, these earlier prophets were reaffirmed. And these people that were so generous were often cargo handlers from the army. In fact, the people of Tanna even built makeshift runways to encourage the cargo men to come back and land.
3/14/20
We did a cultural heritage tour put on by the nearest village. We learned about how they used to trap animals, care for the sick, and set up ambushes back when they were cannibals. The tour was great! (and even a bit frightening) as we got mock ambushed and attached by villagers dressed in traditional wear. Elisha got so frightened that she pushed me in front of the attackers with their clubs and spears! The funny thing is they were mostly children. Normally it's even scarier, but almost all of the men of the village were at a political rally. We were eventually accepted to the village, met the chief (again the real chief was at the political rally), and had our faced painted. A super cool experience!
It's windy today, and there is a shift in the wind direction: a shift from the normal prevailing winds. At the time we didn't really know what this meant, but we would later find out it meant a tropical storm was on its way. The change in the prevailing wind meant that the ash wasn't blowing to the dead ash plain, but was instead blowing towards our vegetated area. This mean that we were getting a layer of ash on everything! Before going to bed, we'd have to shake out our sheets. My ears are maybe feeling a bit better. We did a bunch of chatting with Jackson today as well as reading and volcano viewing up on the treehouse balcony. An interesting thing that we learned is that Will Smith (the actor/musician) stayed here and that Jackson helped him during his "One Strange Rock" filming. "One Strange Rock" also filmed in Antarctica, though due to strict rules of who can come to Antarctica by the NSF (essential people only), Will Smith did not come, just his camera crew. Lots of the things that Jackson had there were donated by Will Smith: chairs, tables, lawn chair, goggles, gas mask.
Today we walked out to the ash plain after a rain. It's pretty crazy. It's this flat area devoid of anything but ash. The slopes of the volcano here are more like an ash dune (I had wanted to go ash boarding, but I saved it for later in the trip, but then ran out of time/weather). There was a cool river canyon carved into the ash that we followed down until we reached the ocean. At the ocean there was a hot spring river running into the ocean. There were many locals down here bathing and women washing clothes. For us the weather seemed kind of hot to need to sit in the hot spring, but playing in the waves on the beach would have been fun (if it wasn't for my ear-water restrictions).
After dinner I donned a headlamp and went up a trail with Jackson's boys. The trail eventually met the road to the volcano crater. Once we got to the road, we had to turn off our headlamps. The volcano company has a monopoly on the volcano and sometimes puts security guards up there. None of the locals like the company because it is expensive (way way way too expensive!) and doesn't give back to the community at all, other than some jobs. They don't even know who owns it, but whoever does is getting rich while the community living in the shadow of this volcano lives in poverty. And the expense of the volcano keeps a lot of tourists from even visiting, which further hurts the people here. Even Phillip who works for the volcano company doesn't like it. Thus, the locals will guide you up after dark for a considerable discount. I was really excited to go, and hang out with the volcano in pure dark, but as mentioned, the wind had switched to a wrong direction, so it was blowing sulphur gas and ash right at us, in the pitch black.. We reached the crater by use of goggles and gas masks (Thanks Will Smith!), but we couldn't see a thing b/c of the gas, smoke, and ash. On the way back down, it started to ash rain on us.
3/15/20
It was quite windy and dumping ash on us again. After our last delicious lunch from Jackson's wife Florean, we hopped in a truck for a crazily steep ride up to the treehouse of Charlie. Charlie was in Vila, but his wife Marri and brother Johnson received us. They had 2 treehouses, and the one we were staying in was AWESOME! It was really high, 37 steps (~40-50 ft), but built over a ravine, so it was more like 100 feet up. It had a flush toilet inside with a little wash basin and a big window looking out at the volcano. It also had lights, solar powered.
We took a hike with Marri to a nice waterfall where we swam. She then made a tasty dinner. We spent the rest of the evening checking out the corona virus stuff on our phone (Vanuatu has good 4G cell service). This, sadly, has been a major part of this trip--reading the news, checking social media, and talking about Covid-19. It was a bit stormy and quite windy as Cyclone Pam was passing nearby. Because of this, Elisha got quite nervous up in the treehouse and didn't sleep at all that night. I slept like a baby. I felt pretty secure in the huge, strong banyan tree, which happened to be in a nook/ravine of the mountain so it got much less wind. I imagine that huge and old tree has stood strong through hundreds of huge cyclones and tropical storms.
3/16/20
Because of the continued windy weather predicted (it did actually tapir today), Elisha decided she wanted to leave the tree house and instead head to the main town of Lenekel. I was sad to go and didn't want to, but I also wanted Elisha to be able to sleep. We had to walk the 3/4 of a mile out because some bamboo trees had fallen across the road. When we got to our guesthouse in Lenekel, no one was there, possibly because of all the campaigning. We were actually staying in an airbnb already reserved and paid for by our friends Alex and Ellie, but they were stranded in Vila because of the weather as they had canceled flights to Tanna. In fact, they were supposed to be checking into the tree house the day we checked out.
The seas were quite rough, and we could tell the ocean had come right up to the bungalows, about 100m further up than the water normally would be. That's pretty significant! We walked into town and ran into the guy who owned the guesthouse. Well he knew it must be us, as we were the only gringos in town. We had a nice local dinner in the open air by the ocean cooked by the bungalow family. Despite not being in the treehouse, Elisha still had some trouble sleeping b/c the ocean sounded loud and was pounding, and she was worried about high swells and a tidal type wave coming up. But looking at models of the storm on the radar, I could tell it was past, and that we would be fine. Indeed, by the morning, the sea was rather calm.
Unfortunately the corona virus (Covid-19), has been a factor on this trip. For me, I've been spending way too much time reading about it (b/c it is interesting) as opposed to reading my fun books or even in some cases taking a walk. I'm not really scared about it, but it's on my mind more than I wish. And I'm pretty sure it will affect our plans. My plans to visit my friends in Boise, Elisha's to visit her grandma, and our trip to Europe. I think it's worse for Elisha because she does have some fear of the actual virus, of getting sick, and she has mentioned that the virus was "stealing some of her joy on the trip".
We had a very early twin otter flight to Tanna Island. We were picked up by Phillip in a 4x4 truck to be taken to the treehouse we had reserved. Phillip is the brother of Jackson who runs the treehouse. It was a bumpy and rough ride to the other side of the island, crossing the famous ash plain, to get to the treehouse, known as Yasur backpacker treehouse. On a pass going over the island, we were delighted to see our first glimpse of active Yasur volcano. It was cool driving across the ash plain, as it had no road, you just drive straight across the ash at the foot of the erupting volcano. We then reached a vegetated area where we saw the awesome treehouse we'd be staying in! Way up in a banyan tree. There are 34 wooden steps and 12 ground steps up to the treehouse. I would say its 40 or 50 feet off the ground and has a little balcony with great views of the volcano. You can see it nearly constantly erupting and sending ash into the air! Also, you can hear the eruptions, and thus are constantly reminded that it is there. It sounds like thunder and makes the earth shake a bit. Wow! What a fantastic place to be. Sleeping in a treehouse with views of an actively erupting volcano!
We were telling Jackson about Antarctica. Most people in warm places can't fathom the cold and snow, but Jackson couldn't possibly imagine people live in a place with no trees. "How is that even possible?" he asked and then added "So are you telling me you are healthy 6 months of the year and unhealthy for 6 months?" For the people here, trees are life. They provide the food, the shelter, the shade, and more. We had a nice local lunch, then hung out in our treehouse for a while, watching the volcano erupt.
In the afternoon we headed to the Yasur Volcano Park Entrance. We had a tour of the museum by Phillip, who works there, then boarded trucks that drove us up near the crater. We then hiked the last bit up to the crater rim. There we watched the volcano erupting right in front of us, sending ash into the sky. Super powerful!! The earth would shake and the noise was loud and would shake you on the bigger eruptions. Sometimes you could see lava bombs being shot into the air. Because the eruption was happening way down deep in the crater, by the time the lava bombs, if they even were able to, reached our elevation, they were moving really slow due to gravity counteracting their flight up. The bombs were flung straight up, so they didn't come our way, though of course it was possible. So we were told to be wary of them and to stand still and watch them and to step out of the way if one was coming your way. Again, it would have been going rather slow as we were at about the elevation of the pinnacle of their flight.
As it started to get dark, we could start to see the glow of lava in the crater. There were at least 4 holes of it. When an eruption would occur, you'd get a heart thumping boom and then a fireworks display of glowing lava bombs thrown into the air. One of the most amazing, awe-inspiring, and powerful things I have ever experienced or witnessed. Wow! Wowee! I had to be told many times it was time to go, because I just really didn't want to go. The same couldn't be said for Elisha. She found it very cool, but she was nervous and ready to go down.
Back at the tree house we had a local dinner, then watched the glow of the volcano from our balcony. Two incredible experiences both happening at once--staying in a legit treehouse and watching an exploding volcano. So Magical!!
3/13/20 Friday the 13th in the shadow of an erupting volcano. We heard the volcano rumbling all night. It was a cool feeling to wake up in a tree, with birds at eye level.
After breakfast, we hiked to the tiny village of Port Resolution through the jungle where we swam at the beautiful white sand beach there. A member of Jackson's family, a young girl with a baby, went with us on our way to Port Resolution. After our swim, we had a delicious lunch in the village before going back for a swim again. We then hiked to a black sand beach that had hot springs suitable for cooking. Next we hiked to shark bay, a nice overlook, but we saw no sharks.
After dinner, as it was a Friday night, we visited a John Frum village where they were singing worship songs. The John Frum movements worship and sing and dance all night long on Friday nights. The John Frum movement is one of the famous cargo cults of Vanuatu. Google John Frum or cargo cults & Vanuatu for more info, but the gist is that various people that had landed on Vanuatu hundreds of years ago were considered to be messengers/prophets of God. Then when WWII happened and similar looking people arrived to Vanuatu and were super generous with their food and gear, these earlier prophets were reaffirmed. And these people that were so generous were often cargo handlers from the army. In fact, the people of Tanna even built makeshift runways to encourage the cargo men to come back and land.
3/14/20
We did a cultural heritage tour put on by the nearest village. We learned about how they used to trap animals, care for the sick, and set up ambushes back when they were cannibals. The tour was great! (and even a bit frightening) as we got mock ambushed and attached by villagers dressed in traditional wear. Elisha got so frightened that she pushed me in front of the attackers with their clubs and spears! The funny thing is they were mostly children. Normally it's even scarier, but almost all of the men of the village were at a political rally. We were eventually accepted to the village, met the chief (again the real chief was at the political rally), and had our faced painted. A super cool experience!
It's windy today, and there is a shift in the wind direction: a shift from the normal prevailing winds. At the time we didn't really know what this meant, but we would later find out it meant a tropical storm was on its way. The change in the prevailing wind meant that the ash wasn't blowing to the dead ash plain, but was instead blowing towards our vegetated area. This mean that we were getting a layer of ash on everything! Before going to bed, we'd have to shake out our sheets. My ears are maybe feeling a bit better. We did a bunch of chatting with Jackson today as well as reading and volcano viewing up on the treehouse balcony. An interesting thing that we learned is that Will Smith (the actor/musician) stayed here and that Jackson helped him during his "One Strange Rock" filming. "One Strange Rock" also filmed in Antarctica, though due to strict rules of who can come to Antarctica by the NSF (essential people only), Will Smith did not come, just his camera crew. Lots of the things that Jackson had there were donated by Will Smith: chairs, tables, lawn chair, goggles, gas mask.
Today we walked out to the ash plain after a rain. It's pretty crazy. It's this flat area devoid of anything but ash. The slopes of the volcano here are more like an ash dune (I had wanted to go ash boarding, but I saved it for later in the trip, but then ran out of time/weather). There was a cool river canyon carved into the ash that we followed down until we reached the ocean. At the ocean there was a hot spring river running into the ocean. There were many locals down here bathing and women washing clothes. For us the weather seemed kind of hot to need to sit in the hot spring, but playing in the waves on the beach would have been fun (if it wasn't for my ear-water restrictions).
After dinner I donned a headlamp and went up a trail with Jackson's boys. The trail eventually met the road to the volcano crater. Once we got to the road, we had to turn off our headlamps. The volcano company has a monopoly on the volcano and sometimes puts security guards up there. None of the locals like the company because it is expensive (way way way too expensive!) and doesn't give back to the community at all, other than some jobs. They don't even know who owns it, but whoever does is getting rich while the community living in the shadow of this volcano lives in poverty. And the expense of the volcano keeps a lot of tourists from even visiting, which further hurts the people here. Even Phillip who works for the volcano company doesn't like it. Thus, the locals will guide you up after dark for a considerable discount. I was really excited to go, and hang out with the volcano in pure dark, but as mentioned, the wind had switched to a wrong direction, so it was blowing sulphur gas and ash right at us, in the pitch black.. We reached the crater by use of goggles and gas masks (Thanks Will Smith!), but we couldn't see a thing b/c of the gas, smoke, and ash. On the way back down, it started to ash rain on us.
3/15/20
It was quite windy and dumping ash on us again. After our last delicious lunch from Jackson's wife Florean, we hopped in a truck for a crazily steep ride up to the treehouse of Charlie. Charlie was in Vila, but his wife Marri and brother Johnson received us. They had 2 treehouses, and the one we were staying in was AWESOME! It was really high, 37 steps (~40-50 ft), but built over a ravine, so it was more like 100 feet up. It had a flush toilet inside with a little wash basin and a big window looking out at the volcano. It also had lights, solar powered.
We took a hike with Marri to a nice waterfall where we swam. She then made a tasty dinner. We spent the rest of the evening checking out the corona virus stuff on our phone (Vanuatu has good 4G cell service). This, sadly, has been a major part of this trip--reading the news, checking social media, and talking about Covid-19. It was a bit stormy and quite windy as Cyclone Pam was passing nearby. Because of this, Elisha got quite nervous up in the treehouse and didn't sleep at all that night. I slept like a baby. I felt pretty secure in the huge, strong banyan tree, which happened to be in a nook/ravine of the mountain so it got much less wind. I imagine that huge and old tree has stood strong through hundreds of huge cyclones and tropical storms.
3/16/20
Because of the continued windy weather predicted (it did actually tapir today), Elisha decided she wanted to leave the tree house and instead head to the main town of Lenekel. I was sad to go and didn't want to, but I also wanted Elisha to be able to sleep. We had to walk the 3/4 of a mile out because some bamboo trees had fallen across the road. When we got to our guesthouse in Lenekel, no one was there, possibly because of all the campaigning. We were actually staying in an airbnb already reserved and paid for by our friends Alex and Ellie, but they were stranded in Vila because of the weather as they had canceled flights to Tanna. In fact, they were supposed to be checking into the tree house the day we checked out.
The seas were quite rough, and we could tell the ocean had come right up to the bungalows, about 100m further up than the water normally would be. That's pretty significant! We walked into town and ran into the guy who owned the guesthouse. Well he knew it must be us, as we were the only gringos in town. We had a nice local dinner in the open air by the ocean cooked by the bungalow family. Despite not being in the treehouse, Elisha still had some trouble sleeping b/c the ocean sounded loud and was pounding, and she was worried about high swells and a tidal type wave coming up. But looking at models of the storm on the radar, I could tell it was past, and that we would be fine. Indeed, by the morning, the sea was rather calm.
Unfortunately the corona virus (Covid-19), has been a factor on this trip. For me, I've been spending way too much time reading about it (b/c it is interesting) as opposed to reading my fun books or even in some cases taking a walk. I'm not really scared about it, but it's on my mind more than I wish. And I'm pretty sure it will affect our plans. My plans to visit my friends in Boise, Elisha's to visit her grandma, and our trip to Europe. I think it's worse for Elisha because she does have some fear of the actual virus, of getting sick, and she has mentioned that the virus was "stealing some of her joy on the trip".
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| Yasur Volcano |
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| chilling in the tree house |
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| sitting in Will Smith's chair |
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| View of the Volcano from our tree house |
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| our first tree house |
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| on the crater rim of Yasur |
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| Nature's fireworks on Yasur |
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| waking up at bird level |
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| Port Resolution beach |
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| view at night from our tree house |
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| the kids who gave Elisha quite the fright! |
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| at the hot springs beach |
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| 2nd tree house |
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| arriving to the 2nd tree house |
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| watching the volcano from the tree house |
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| the 2nd tree house we stayed in |
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| getting water was a challenge pat parts of the island |
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| walking the ash plain after the rain |
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| Thanks Will Smith for the gas masks! |
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