A Honeymoon Story (part one)

FYI, I’ve decided to break this up into two or three smaller posts. Much easier for you and me both.



In a post-wedding haze, we headed off to the airport at 6am. It sucked, in case you wondered, but no pain, no gain. After all the busyness of the wedding, it was nice knowing we had 11 days to ourselves to do nothing at all but eat and swim. It’s amazing how easily you can slip into what I call Island Life, which consists mainly of those two things, with cocktails and beer thrown in at any given hour. Jo ditched his watch as soon as we arrived, and before long, we really had no idea what time of day it was. When we were hungry, we ate. When we were tired, we slept. In short, it was fabulous.




We stayed at two resorts while we were in Vanuatu. The first was Erakor Island, which (as you can tell by the name), was, indeed, on its own Island. A 24 hour ferry service connected you to the mainland, and from there we were only about 5 minutes out of town (or as the locals call it, ‘town town’). Actually, we hardly visited town town at all – it was as you would expect, fairly dilapidated, with bad roads and a lot of slums. Still, I couldn’t resist the duty free shopping forever (just so you know, alcohol is CHEAP, and we made good use of our combined 4.25L limit) and there were markets and restaurants to try if we wanted. Mainly though, we drove through it on our way to somewhere else.

The resort had its own beach lagoon, so we spent a lot of time snorkelling and swimming, or laying back in a beach chair with a book and a cocktail (Erakor made the BEST Pina Colada’s I’ve ever had.) Unfortunately, Jo went a little snorkel-crazy on the first day and got what I describe as third-degree burns on his back. And I KNOW I have a penchant for exaggeration, but this was really and truly the worst sunburn I have ever seen (must be the Anglo skin). He had no choice by to suffer through it for a couple of days until the worse was over, but I did feel for him. I mean it was freaking hot, for one thing. We went in the wet season, so the humidity was pretty bad too, but we didn’t see much rain. On some days it was so hot it would have been a welcome relief, but most of the time, it never happened.

I ate fresh seafood like, every day. Lobster and the local fish, poulet, and prawns and squid. I’m a fan of crab, but they serve mostly coconut crab over there. It’s a local delicacy, but its also an endangered species, so I steered clear. Of course, everywhere we went, our resorts included, we encountered lovely locals. They seem a happy, friendly people, and we found they went out of their way to help us or answer any of our questions.



OK, yes, sometimes you see some gentlemen with bandana’s wrapped around their heads on the side of the road hacking away at something with a machete. And yes, you can vaguely feel as though your in Somalia during these moments. But the only reason they’re wearing a bandana is because its bloody boiling and their sweating like animals, and the only reason they have machetes is because the vegetation (fruits or vegetables or roots) they’re hacking at are pretty damn tough, and hey, they gotta eat. If a machete makes that possible, so be it.




Tipping is very much against Melanesian culture, but if we had a particularly good guide or staff member, we would donate money towards the village they came from instead, which is put towards the local school or fresh water tanks or other amenities that are needed. We did do a few day trips (which I’ll tell you about in another post), but our time at Erakor was mainly spent lounging around by the lagoon, swimming or drinking. Jo developed a deep and lasting love for the local beer, called Tusker, and Kava. Kava is drink made from a local root which has…lets say sedative qualities. It’s apparently almost drug-like, very relaxing I’m told, and he took great pleasure in sampling it.




The resort put on a cultural night, with dancing and singing and traditional food (kinda touristy I guess, but we enjoyed it), and with no TV’s on hand, we spent evenings playing scrabble or scattegories (What? You thought I’d actually discuss other after-dark activities with you?)

After having had such a good time at Erakor, we wondered how our next resort would stack up. But we reeeeeally needn’t have worried…