Santo

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Well we arrived in Santo at about 6pm on Friday night. We did not really know where to go, but my PCMO had recommended the Decos Stop hotel. BY my pis kops standards this place is flas we flas. It has a restaurant, bar, and a swimming pool that all looks over the harbor. We got settled into our room and then came out and sat by the pool drinking a tusker before going and eating dinner. The food was alright. It was way better then beachcombers in Efate. My dad ordered the creamy curry fish and I got the steak. It was a fat steak but had very little flavor to it. There were muscles on top so that was a nice surprise.

I think we both ended up asleep by 9pm. This morning we both got p and lounged around while eating the continental breakfast, which consisted of popo, pineapple, grapefruit, bread, and juice. Afta breakfast we slowly got ready to head to town. Not knowing what Luganville had to offer we just walked from one end to the other. It is noticeably smaller then Vila but still much larger then Lenakel.


We found a spot to swim by Unity Park and ended up storian with three tourists. One was an Aussie, the other from Toronto, and a girl from Dublin. We had a nice chat with them until the rain came and we decided it was time for lunch. We found the Ocean King Café just in time. As we sat down the sky unloaded and dumped rain for about an hour and a half. After eating our fish and chips we decided to wait out the rain by having another tusker. About the time we decided to go the rain cleared up and we were able to walk home.


On the way home we found Aquamarine dive shop. There is an ex-PCV that works as a dive master there so we got set up to dive the SS Coolidge tomorrow. I am pretty excited about this dive. I do not think the visibility will be that great due to the recent rain fall, but it will be nice to dive none the less. Now we are just back at the hotel resting until it is time to go get some kava.


Well it is almost lunch time on Sunday. We just finished our first dive on the SS Coolidge. The first dive was awesome. It felt so good to throw on the tanks and get in the water. This ship is huge. Saw some cool sea life in there. There are also the old 3” guns and gas masks down there. The history of the ship is pretty cool.


Man after diving the Coolidge twice I completely understand why Rob quit the PC to become a dive master here. What a life he has. He dives twice a day, six times a week! Yeah I could handle that.


On our second dive we dove with Dan. He took us down to the medical supply cabinet of the ship. This was very cool because we actually penetrated the ship. This was my second time doing a penetration dive, the first being on the wreck of the Rhone, in the BVI. This apparently was my dads first. It was incredible. You get to a certain hole in the ship and then you just begin letting your air out of your BC and just drop into the cargo hold area. The only problem with the dives is that you are at about 30 meters so your dive time is not very long. Oh well it was incredible. I think both me and my dad felt like little kids down there. You could actually pick up the old medicine bottles which still had the prescription drugs in them. These were the drugs that soldiers in Vanuatu were waiting for during WWII. The history of the ship is pretty incredible. A brief synopsis is that the captain was a civilian so the military never told him the top secret info that there were mines places in the harbor and that there was only one safe route. The captain was worried about attack so he just put the petal to the metal and rammed to mines before beaching the ship on the shores of Santo. It was a very orderly evacuation of about 5,000 soldiers. Then as the tide began to go out the ship fell on its side and rolled back into the harbor, where it still sits today. I believe there were only two fatalities on the whole blunder.


Later that night I went stayed out in the hotel dining area drinking a beer and talking with some fellow travelers. I spent most of the time talking with a German man named Wolfgang. We just storied about what I am doing here in Vanuatu and if there was any hope for this country.


The next day we were up early to go to the Millennium Cave. Wolfgang decided to come with us. It turned out to only be the three of us on the tour. This is one tour I did not mind paying top dollar for. There are so many things here that I feel I should not have to pay for because I live here. This was worth every penny. Our driver Jonathan picked us up from the hotel and then we headed into town to grab some bread for lunch.


The first store we went to had no bread. The second store I went to had no bread. The third store I went to had two loaves of bread so I grabbed them, but before I got to the counter Chinese man came and said that bread was not fresh. I thought maybe it was just baguette or something. The fourth store had no bread. Finally Jonathon decided we should just got to the baker. So we bought our bread straight from the bakery. To this moment I regret not buying bread to eat on the way out there. Because I only bought one loaf for me and one for my dad, I had to suffer the whole ride out there sitting next to fresh baked bread that smelled incredible!


The truck ride out there was about an hour or so. We parked close to small village where we found our guide. Jonathon and he walked us into the bush to find the cave. The hike in took about an hour and half. The olfalas did good. The running joke was it was only a half hour a way. On Tanna everything is “long we little bit,” but I guess on Santo everything is “only 30 minutes away.”


We had to climb down old bamboo ladders in some areas. It was pretty sketchy! When we arrived to the entrance of the cave I realized we had made the right decision. This thing was amazing! I do not have the vocabulary to even describe this thing. We had to bring flashlights because once inside the cave it is blacker than black! Not only are we hiking through a cave, it is a cave with a running river through it. At many times we were waist deep wading through the water. It took about an hour to get to the other side of the cave. The cave is about 30-60 feet high, depending on which part of the cave.


When we got to the other side we had lunch and swam in the stream. It was nice end to a great hike. Well it really was not the end because we had a two hour hike back out of there. When we got back to the bus we were all wiped out. I looked back and my dad was passed out in the bus. I rode up front and storied with Jonathon. When we got back to Luganville we dropped Wolfgang off at his hotel and then Jonathon, my dad, and myself all went to Nemos Nakamal. Jonathon parked his bus on the other side of the Nakamal because we did not want his friends to see his truck in front of the Nakamal. When I asked him why he said if they knew he was there they would come find him, knowing that he had been giving a tour that day, i.e.., he had fulap money! This is known as finding a sponsor. This is not like an AA sponsor. People come to the Nakamal with no money and look for a sponsor, someone to buy them a shell.