If you haven’t had a chance, make sure to see the photos and story of our visit to Mount Yasur volcano. This is the closest you can “safely” get to an actively erupting volcano in the world. It was an amazing experience, and the photos show it! We also took a bunch of HD video, but the Internet in Vanuatu has been too slow to upload any.
Fortunately, a reader of our blog (Craig Stanton of New Zealand) shared with us an HD video clip he took of the same volcano a month ago that really gives you a taste of what our experience was like. Watch the video here:
Pretty amazing isn’t it? It’s too bad it was so windy when Craig went – it kind of drowns out the sounds of the volcano. But, crank up the sound for a taste of what it was like. And, imagine ash falling all over you, in your eyes, grit between your teeth. Adrenaline surges as you worry about exploding lava shooting above your head. It was an amazing experience!
Meanwhile, it’s time to update you folks on our current status and plans. We have been in Port Vila for a week. We have done provisioning, visited the local restaurants, visited with other boats we know (Northfork, Kilkea II, Tyee III, Callisto, Stray Kitty, and others), done some maintenance work on the boat, etc. Everything is ready for us to move to our next destinations. But, we also have been waiting for some bad weather to pass for the last few days.
Here are some photos of our time in and around Port Vila:
It looks like tomorrow the weather will clear enough that we can start moving north. Our plan is to join up with s/v Stray Kitty and make our way up to Espirito Santo. We hope to do some snorkeling/diving, cultural sightseeing, hikes, photography, and kayaking along the way. Then we’ll decide whether we’ll leave for New Caledonia directly from there, or head back down to Port Vila first (depends on the weather).
We have to leave Vanuatu by the 5th of September since our visa is only good for 30 days. Otherwise we incur a bunch of paperwork hassle and about US$100 in additional fees.
We will be parting ways with our friends on Stray Kitty when we leave Vanuatu. They intend to head straight for the NE coast of Australia and then head around to Darwin over the next couple of months before heading up to Indonesia for the cyclone season. This puts them a year ahead of our plans, as we will be staying several months in Australia and waiting until next July for Indonesia. So, we may not see them again on this trip. As often happens, we’ll have to say goodbye to our friends and look forward to making new friends again.
Glad you liked the vid. I had one with less wind but there’s some guy leaving in to the camera and saying “ohhh, it’ a video” right into the microphone @#!%$!!!!