Mt Taputaora

Pour les francais: aujourd'hui nous sommes alles sur une ile au nord de l'ile d'Efate (ou nous habitons). C'est en fait un ancien volcan, le Mt Taputaora (ca c'est un nom qui semble dire, me fait pas ch## petit car si je veux, je te reduit en cendres), qui est entourre d'une foret tropicale et de cannes a sucre. Kala a ecrit le reste en anglais car elle est plus courageuse que moi et c'est pour cela que je ne peux pas mettre les accents sur les mots; le clavier est anglophone. La marche vers le haut du cratere nous a donne l'occasion d'avoir une petite lecon de botanique de la part du guide que nous avons trouve dans un petit village a notre arrivee. Voila, je vous laisse lire le reste dans la langue de Benny Hill.

Today we set out to climb Mt Taputaora - an extinct volcano on Nguna (noona) Island - seen here looming behind this intrepid traveller.

Together with 4 other members of the newly formed Adventure Club (slogan: if you like adventure, you'll love Adventure Club!) we hired a mini bus to drive us about 60 km north of Port Vila to the Nguna Is. wharf. Then we phoned a guy on the island to come and pick us up in his spid bot and ferry us across.

We set out on our journey to the top, passing on the way some beach goats...

...a jungle cow....

...and a lovely little village where we met up with our guide, Kirk. Poor Kirk didn't realise that he was going to be our guide until we came traipsing through the Sunday morning stillness of his village asking after him. One of the group members had heard from a work mate that finding your way to the top of the volcano was nigh impossible without the skills and local knowledge of Kirk, so we had no choice but to razzle him out of his jarmies and convince him (with the help of a fair wad of vatu) to take us to the top!

The flowers along the way were quite spectacular..

... as were the tips and tricks provided by Kirk. Here he is giving us the low down-on a bit of Nguna black magic. Apparently, if you get tired of the local playboy cutting your grass, you can take the leaves of this wild kava plant and with a bit of ceremony (involving a lot of wrist swirling and puffing) you can blow the knobbly warty things off the leaves of the plant and onto the face of the would-be Casanova, rendering him too ugly to pull chicks ever again. Kirk assured us that this very thing had, in fact, happened to a local chap he knows. Hmmm.

We battled our way through swathes of bush cane....

And finally made it to the top!

This is a shot of the crater. Kirk couldn't remember how long it had been since it last blew its top, but it must have been quite a while, at least long enough to let a forest of palm trees flourish. There are actually nine active volcanoes in Vanuatu. I reckon next time we'll climb an active one, because I bet that looking over the rim into a bubbling broiling pit of lava would be just that bit more gratifying.

We were still pretty stoked to have reached the top nonetheless.

The End.