Pentecost Island, Vanuatu (Aug/Sep 2012)

Pentecost

Pentecost is famous around the world for its land divers, the precursor to bunging jumping.  Every year, at the beginning of the yam harvest between April and June, the islanders of Pentecost build impressive towers reaching as high as 27 meters.  They climb to the top and jump off with vines tied around their ankles.  Once a boy has been circumcised at the age of eight, he is eligible to participate in this ancient tradition.  What’s even more interesting are the “Namba’s” that divers wear or translated into English – a namba is a penis wrapper – that’s all they have on; the question is whether the outfit or the dive is of more interest?  Wish we were here to have witness this event.

Wali Bay – we were disappointed with this anchorage as the villagers were very unfriendly and did not even take the time of day to greet us.  Later that evening ‘ole Lardo was attacked by a swarm of insects that literally covered our entire boat.  We had to pull our anchor rather abruptly and get of Wali Bay.  We were able to hose down the entire boat with salt water to get rid of these nasty pests.  Fortunately we were able to re-anchored approximately ten miles north in Melsisa (Waterfall) Bay in the dark – luckily we had a full moon, calm sea and weather conditions and good navigation to get us safely into this anchorage.  

Melsisa (Waterfall) Bay – we could see the lovely waterfall from our boat but we chose not to go to shore as we were quite eager to find another anchorage further away from Wali Bay.

Loltong Bay – we only stayed one evening because (1) a front was moving through the South Pacific and we needed to get to Asanvari Bay, Maewo Island with a more protected anchorage and (2) there were strong gusts of wind funneling down the hillside in the evening making this an uncomfortable anchorage.  Needless to say, we stayed long enough to make a quick shopping trip into Loltong village.  Loltong, the seat of the Pentecost government had no banks or post office just a few small stores with sprites, bread, some tinnies and very limited supplies.  At least this village was very friendly and the kids picked grapefruit and papaya for us.  This village was pretty poor, it seems the further north you go in Vanuatu, the poorer the villages.  If we had stayed longer, we would have checked out the guesthouse/restaurant with a string band.