Now in Vila- leaving in the morning
We had an excellent time in Erromango. We got to meet and spend a fair bit of time with a number of the local people. Discovered quite a few inaccuracies in the Lonely Planet. We are compiling a list which we will send upon our return.
David and Rhonda prepared us a kastom ("Custom") meal which we ate with them one night, by the dim light of the kerosene lantern. What a great experience. David has developed a nursery for his Sandalwood trees. When they are about 600mm high, he transplants them to his land. He has been planting for about 20 years and now has 2,073 trees. His brother, Joseph, has 3,000 trees. Joseph showed us how they harvest the trees. No wonder he has a bad back. he cuts the wood into 40Kg chunks and then carries them the 9Km back from the plantation to home!
He kindly gave Will some sandalwood as a souvenir.
There is a pod of very playful dolphins in the Bay. One day, we took the rubber ducky to a beach (described in a cruising guide as "sandy white beach an easy dinghy ride away"). We have plenty of dolphins visit the yacht, but this time we had a couple of dozen converge on the rubber ducky. They were literally centimeters from us. Wow!
The beach was actually a coral beach and there was several hundred metres of fringing reef out from it. We arefully navigated in and had a pleasant swim/snorkel. We doubt the people who wrote that cruising guide had ever actually visited that beach because it LOOKED as they had described but was not like that at all.
Paul caught a good trevally on the first day. Surprising as the bottom has no weed or reef- just some monstrous Beche de Mere (Sea slugs). They are very valuable and harvested in the Solomons and Louisiades, but apparently not here.
We also acquired a couple of large sucker fish along the way. Without our book, we are not sure of their name but could be something like "Remora". At first they looked like sharks & darted out as if to attack when we put a hand in the water. They also chased Paul's trevally. Of course, Paul managed to catch both Remora on the rod so we were able to examine them more closely before gently letting them go. Both seem unharmed by the experience and continued to keep the hull cleaned of organisms.
Cheers,
Pastime crew
