Vanuatu… ever heard of it? It’s located east of Australia between the South Pacific Ocean and the Coral Sea. We had the chance to visit 8 of its 65 inhabited islands, all distinctive, all interesting and all welcoming. It was odd at first to be the only white people in an all black world.
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Today marks the anniversary of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD. The Roman poet, Pliny the Younger wrote letters providing a good first hand account of the devastation and deaths caused when the mountain blew its top. I remember flying over Mount St Helens in Oregon in October 1986 as many small eruptions were occurring. From that safe distance miles high in the sky, it was interesting to view, but I never got any closer.
Then we started sailing and began getting first hand looks at volcanoes. A good many of the Caribbean islands are volcanic, part a mountain chain that extends along the sea floor. Approaching the island of Saba which juts suddenly out of the water, its peak surrounded in a mist of clouds, left no doubt as to its origin. When we visited St. Eustatius (Statia), we hiked to the bottom of The Quill, a huge volcanic crater. Arriving at Montserrat was totally different. Soufriere Hills Volcano was actively smoldering. We couldn't go ashore and had to make sure we anchored outside the designated exclusion zone. This was getting a bit closer to reality.
Martinique offered an excellent, up close view of the historical eruption of Mt. Pelee which totally destroyed St. Pierre, “the Paris of the West Indies” in 1902, killing most of its inhabitants and leveling the town. We wandered through the ruins which are marked with placards, many showing old photos of the “before” which we compared in amazement to the “after”we were seeing a hundred years later.
As we traveled in South America, volcanoes were quite common. In Ecuador, we took a bus through the Valley of the Volcanoes, south of Quito and viewed majestic Cotapaxi.
The alluring Galapagos Islands off Ecuador's coast are volcanic in origin and one of the most volcanically active places on Earth. We rode horseback on the Isla Isabela, trekked over stony rough aa lava beds for a view of calderas and fumeroles at Sierra Negra and explored lava tubes, sometimes on hands and knees.
Probably the closest and most dramatic encounter with a volcano, however, occurred fairly recently when we visited Vanuatu. One of the must-sees when visiting this South Pacific island nation is a stop at the island of Tanna to stand on the rim of Mount Yasur, the most accessible active volcano in the world.
A 4-wheel drive half-ton community-owned truck was our transportation from the local village to the volcano. The dirt track was rutted and almost non-existent in parts, but the driver knew his way and after about 20 minutes of jostling and bouncing, we arrived at the entrance to the park. As entry fees were paid and receipts written, we stretched our legs, took photos and heard the first roars of the volcano still many miles away.
Up, up, up the truck maneuvered along a track reminiscent of a Colorado 4-wheel drive back-country mountain pass. The truck labored as it negotiated deep ruts and steep inclines and finally deposited us about 150m from the rim of the volcano. Mount Yasur at 361m, is touted to be the world's most accessible active volcano with a crater some 300m across. At some point in time, the path up to the rim had a wooden railing, but it was rickety and in pieces now, more of a hindrance than a help. We clambered up the ash and cinder slope and there we were...looking down into the smoke and sulphurous vapors of Mount Yasur's 100 meter deep crater. We were the only ones up there and we tenuously chose our steps along the rim to the best vantage point.
There are few rules associated with the visit. No one tells you not to stand too close to the edge. There are no guard rails or worries about lawsuits here. You're pretty much on your own.
As if to announce its mighty presence, the volcanic rumbling escalated to a sustained, earsplitting roar that startled us all and had us jumping back and ducking for cover. Huge molten rocks and glowing cinders spewed up into the air far over our heads as we watched the show. The roaring barely subsided when another blast began. We could actually see the shock waves before we heard the thunderous explosions. Blue roiling vapors escaped and mixed with white steam and thick brown smoke. Once the sun set, the spectacle was even more dramatic. For nearly three hours, we watched and heard a continuous, deafening display of fireworks that far exceeded any man-made pyrotechnic display we've ever seen.
Sometimes the smoke and sulphur fumes were so thick, they nearly choked us and we had to walk away to catch our breaths and wipe our eyes until the wind shifted. All around us huge volcanic boulders that had been spit out in the past lay about haphazardly. We remembered the words of our guide, Stanley, who had instructed us that if we saw a molten boulder heading our way, we should stand still, watch its trajectory and try to dodge it. Hmm! Everyone knows this volcano is bound to blow one day. What are the odds it would be tonight? Is this an experience that would even be allowed in most parts of the world? We could see the headlines now..."Idiot tourists flattened by giant volcanic rock while standing on rim of active volcano".
This rates right up there with one of the most memorable experiences of our travels. Happy Vesuvius Day!
Sir Winston Churchill
Pigs, hogs, porkers, swine … whatever you call them, they're curious creatures. I've read that they're pretty intelligent, but I can't vouch for that since I've never been friendly enough with a pig for verification purposes. There are some pig characters I really enjoy …. the inimitable Muppets' Miss Piggy and Pigs in Space, the crafty Three Little Pigs (at least the brick house pig). I'm not a pork eater, although we did try the obligatory cuy (roast guinea pig), in Peru. First we saw them running around the yard and the next thing you knew they were on our plate served with rice and veggies.
There are truffle-finding pigs in France and Angry Bird pigs. Human eating pigs in Hannibal were not the benign “piggy, piggy, piggy” type that I've seen around . Remember Dorothy falling into the pig sty in Wizard of Oz? It wasn't pretty. Folks now keep pot-bellied pigs as pets (not on a boat though). There are piggy banks, of course, and pigs in a blanket. In the ancient Norse culture, the pig (wild boar) was revered. We anchored in the Pigsties anchorage in southeast Tasmania once … no pigs though.
In the South Pacific, pigs are omnipresent and a long-standing, important part of their culture. You can determine a man's worth by the number of pigs he has and is willing to sacrifice for a celebration. The pigs run free and happy like dogs or chickens, until it's feast time. Celebrations, mind you, might be for a birth, wedding, funeral, circumcision, school graduation or a ritual hair-cutting somewhere in the village. Captain Cook let pigs loose on several of the South Pacific islands with the thought that they'd multiply and provide food for marooned sailors. To this day, wild pigs on many of the islands are still referred to as Captain Cookers.
With all the pigs and piglets running around, I asked my Tongan friend, Fa'aki, just how she knew which pigs were hers and how she rounded them up. “Oh, I just whistle”, she said and she did and sure enough all her pigs came immediately to her. No “suey, suey” required. Every pig knew his owner's particular whistle, or call, or bell ring and came a'running for meal time when they heard it. Unfortunately, sometime they were “meal time”.
In Vanuatu, the slaughtering and preparation of a pig for a ritual feast was not a pleasant experience for us or the pigs. We could hear the pigs squealing from our anchored boat. The words inhumane and barbaric come to mind, but as guests we can choose to either participate or not in traditional feasts, but we don't comment on others customs or cultural traditions. Certainly, in first world countries, we tend to forget the slaughter of the animals that provide our meat. Seeing a thick pork chop all neatly packaged in the Meat Department cooler is a far cry from seeing a pig on the hoof being slaughtered.
There are some pig phrases that come to mind like a “pig in lipstick”, a term used particularly when referring to political “spin”. Then there's "You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear" which seems to have been in use by the middle of the 16th century or even earlier. My favorite though is “when pigs fly” which is an idiom apparently derived from an old Scottish proverb, but more recently used by Lewis Carroll in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
"Thinking again?" the Duchess asked, with another dig of her sharp little chin.
"I've a right to think," said Alice sharply, for she was beginning to feel a little worried.
"Just about as much right," said the Duchess, "as pigs have to fly...."
Some piggy trivia:
Pigs are called using the word “Suey”. When I checked out why, the best answer was ”that's the noise they make”. Hmmm....doesn't sound like that to me. I'm thinking it's because they're part of the suidae family, and that sounds like suey. Anyhow, give a listen to some pig calls.
Pigs are good swimmers.
Pigs are intelligent … #4 on the animal intelligence list just below chimps, dolphins and elephants. They learn tricks faster than dogs!
Okay … so why the pig post? We drove by Carl's Oxford Diner Pig bus the other day and well, one thought just lead to another.
And as Porky Pig would say:
Hi there and welcome to Just A Little Further!
We are David and Marcie Lynn and we've lived aboard our Liberty 458 cutter-rigged sailboat since 2000.
What began as an urge to travel slowly and economically at our own pace ended up an adventure of a lifetime.
Well, here we are ... nearly 90,000 miles under the keel, 5 continents, 5 Great Southern Capes, 36 countries and almost two decades later, still taking one passage at a time and going just a little further.
