Vanuatu used to be the New Hebrides Islands, which were jointly occupied by France and England until 1980 and is now independent. How many islands are there in Vanuatu? The guide book says “80 or so”--our driver said 135. A map of Vanuatu looks like someone tossed a handful of marbles across the Pacific between the Solomon Islands and New Caledonia.
The islands were actually founded by the Spanish, who thought they had reached the great southern continent. The ever-present Captain Cook followed. And even Captain William Bligh, the commander of HMS Bounty fame, visited these islands. But to the Hubers, the most famous visitor here was SURVIVOR. Being Survivor junkies, we were interested to find out that one of the series was filmed on Efate Island.
We visited Port Vila on Efate Island, the capital of Vanuatu. We snorkeled, as the first picture of Rick shows. (Betsy avoids pictures in bathing suit!) As the second picture shows, Paradise Cove is not much of a beach, but has a large amount of coral fairly close to shore. Unfortunately, much of the coral has been damaged and we had to move away from the sight where they were feeding the fish to see healthy living coral. Because they feed the fish, we got to see a lot of colorful small fish, however. In addition we got to see a bright blue starfish about 6 inches in diameter. We also saw a Sea Pineapple, which is a type of Sea Cucumber that was over 12 inches long and 3-4 inches in diameter, rust in color—a treat to see, but kind of nasty to look at!
We’ve snorkeled in much better sites, but it was still wonderful to see the sea life and spend some time sailing around the bay in a smaller boat. Picture 3 shows the island behind an interesting little boat. The last picture shows some interesting shore erosion that has created little rock “islands”.
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