[The Blue Lagoon.]We woke up relatively early on Saturday to go on the Blue Lagoon Tour. This consisted of going to a beautiful blue lagoon, where you could swim and kayak, and where a villager dressed as Brooke Shields reenacted scenes from the 1980 movie Blue Lagoon. (OK, that last part isn’t true.)
The tour consisted of only five people, the guide, me and S, and another couple, much older than us (they were retired), who lived in Australia, although the man was Scottish. They were pretty cool, but the man was so concerned with “getting his money’s worth” instead of just enjoying this little Eden in front of us. Whenever things weren’t exactly as he thought they would be – like they only had two kayaks instead of four, so we’d have to take turns – he would tell the guide, “You should have told us that before we made the booking.” The guide, to his credit, mostly just shrugged his shoulders and ignored him. The best part about the Blue Lagoon Tour was that I got to swing Indian Jones-style off a bank into the water.
[Another scene from the Blue Lagoon.]After the Blue Lagoon we went to another beautiful spot where we had some “light refreshments” (cookies and juice) and swam some more. It started to rain there, but I didn’t mind too much, because it was still quite warm. The Scotsman stayed in the van when he saw the rain saying, “The only people who go out in weather like this are lunatics and Englishmen.” On the way back, he and I were discussing the local beer Tusker, saying it was pretty good, and he turned to his wife and said, “I hope you haven’t anything planned, because it’s a six pack of Tusker and a newspaper, and that’s me for the day.”
[The other spot we went to on the Blue Lagoon Tour.]Going to and from the lagoon we used a road built as part of a project that S helped manage (from the States) a few years ago. The driver even showed her a sign commemorating the road that said the project’s name on it. She screamed with excitement when she saw this, jolting to attention the Scotsman who had dozed off a bit, but now thought he was missing something extremely interesting, “What? What? What is it? What is it?” He chuckled when he saw it was just a road sign.
[A bottle of Tusker, the only beer brewed in Vanuatu.]That night we went to a fancy resort called Iririki for dinner. It was great, but we forgot to bring some sort of time telling device, so instead of constantly bothering people to tell us the time, I came up with the idea of using the time-seal on our camera. I stand by it that this was an ingenuous idea, but it didn’t really work out. I got the wrong initial time difference between the camera and reality (it wasn’t my fault, some woman gave me the wrong current time), and then we just ended up taking a lot of pics like this one, so we could see the time.
[A picture of my foot I took so that I could see the time.]The next day we went dune buggy driving, which is quite awesome to do in a country with virtually no vehicular safety regulations. You just bomb around in these little go-karts through the streets, on the beach, and through the trails of the villages. The latter is a bit nerve racking, because the village kids will frequently mob your buggy, while it’s moving, to ask for “lollies” (they sell candy at the shop to throw out to them and the proceeds supposedly go to the village). They get so close and they are so young, sometimes not much older than 3 or 4 years, that it’s a wonder they still have two feet.
[A pic from the website of the dune buggy company we used.]I did all the driving. S wanted to drive, but I don’t think she was ready for the trial by fire that would ensue. She would have liked some practice and instruction, instead of, “That peddle is go, that peddle is stop, keep up with the pack, see ya,” which is what we got. The whole time I kept thinking about how this would never be allowed in the States without tons of waivers, a closed course, insurance, etc. which frustrated me a bit. Obviously it’s not a good idea to let little kids get within inches of fast moving vehicles, but there must be a happy medium between that and all the bullshit safety regulations we have in the States. I use the adjective bullshit, because that’s what they are. I think the overwhelming majority of our regulations in the US aren’t about safety. They are about power and money (big surprise, I know). Either it’s a politician wanting to give you the illusion they are making you safer (even if they aren’t), or it’s somebody covering their ass so that somebody else won’t sue, or it’s somebody trying to rip you off in the name of “safety” with inspection fees, fines for violation, and insurance costs. (And often that somebody is the government.) It’s a fine system we’ve worked out for ourselves, and by fine I mean completely crappy. I’ll leave it at that before I start to sound like some anti-government, anti-regulation zealot (which I’m definitely not). Actually, I’ll say one more thing. Guess where our buggy tour guides took us for a break – a bar to get a beer. Not in the US.
[The writing below "ANZ" is example of Bislama, a pidgin English language. I couldn't understand it at all when it was spoken.]Anyway, the buggy tour was our last real event of the vacation. The next morning we took the long and boring flight back to Sydney followed by the long and boring train ride back to Newcastle. I definitely could have a stayed a few more days in Vanuatu.
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