29 days until the wedding...
It's essential after a break-up to make sure that you do something excellent to take your mind of it and attempt to convince yourself that you're better off. Otherwise, you could find yourself getting depressed or suicidal. Or worse still, getting in to another relationship. Vanuatu seemed an ideal place for me to spend the next couple of weeks.
But my first couple of days were spent in the capital, Vila, wandering around aimlessly trying to get to grips with being alone again, visiting some disappointing sites, not too sure what to do or how to do it. And Vila is not a good place to wander aimlessly. There's alot of traffic on the bitumen roads but no pavements. So thanks to the constant rain I was generally trekking through mud trying to avoid being hit by cars (the ones which don't slow down through puddles are the ones driven by white people). I misjudged one flow of water and nearly got sucked down a storm drain.
The Ni-Van people are nice enough, although not quite as open as the Fijians & Tongans - they look at me suspiciously (perhaps because I'm no longer with the penguin). Some of them don't say hello. Most of them smile but it's the sly one-side-of-the-mouth smile I always associate with my brother, that makes you wonder what they're thinking (and leaves you wondering where your wallet is).
Still, I've gotten in to some decent conversations and am working on my Bislama, a form of Pidgin English introduced to bridge the gap between the hundred or so local languages.
People say to me, "Gud moning, yu orate?"
"Halo. I orate, tank yu. Yu orate?"
To which they reply something really complicated which I have no comprehension of, usually containing lots of 'blongs' and 'gudfalas'. Most conversations end with me saying "Mi no save. Tata!"
I caught a 12 hour boat up to Luganville on the island of Santo, where I've been couchsurfing with a Kiwi girl who's been a volunteer teacher trainer here for the last 4 years. In that time she's gotten malaria four times, dengue fever once, and has become fluent in Bislama.
I had trouble finding the house and asked 2 girls with no English. Through 10 minutes of hand gestures we were able to figure out we needed someone who spoke English. They called out to a neighbour (I heard the word 'whiteman') and he and his whole family escorted me.
My host introduced me to a Japanese friend of hers who has very little English, so they communicate in Bislama. They speak slower than the locals so it made it easier to understand what was going on, which was cool.
We went to a Kava bar. The whole place is lit by one red light and the barmen serve you shells of Kava - the bar has special shell holders. You down the kava, which is stronger than Fijian kava, and then chill out in a darkened corner. The white people sit and chat, while the Ni-Van people hock up and spit until they're ready for another shell.
I took a walk up to Million Dollar Point, a beach where the U.S. military, as thoughtful as ever, dumped hundreds of tonnes of military equipment (and a lot of glass) in to the water.
I also decided to do another scuba dive. The S.S. President Coolidge sunk here after hitting a 'friendly mine' and it seemed an ideal place to do my first wreck dive since it's supposedly the world's largest. Having said that, I haven't seen the news lately and I know the U.S. and Britain have been busy liberating people.
The dive instructor running the show was a sound lad from Portmarnock, and my guide was a Ni-Van guy named Dave. We headed under until the bow came in to view and it was phenomenal. We moved along the side of the ship, spotting the crow's nest stretching down to the sea floor. Torches on, we then swam in to one of the cargo holds where there were jeeps and tyres and all sorts of other shit.
It was so eery to be enclosed underwater, surrounded by the ship and not being able to see up to the surface, trying to avoid hitting walls. Freaky to think people used to live and walk around on this thing. And 5 people died on it! It was so awesome swimming through passages and seeing streaks of blue light coming in. Definitely the best dive I've done yet. Would love to keep doing it as there's so much to explore: rooms and kitches and toilets and the bar and statues and everything a luxury liner has. Even a swimming pool - I can't decide if that would be really cool or totally redundant and boring.
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