Vanuatu Land of Smiling Faces no matter whether the sun shines or not....

As you might have gathered from previous posts, the tropics  have been very kind to us so far.

Fiji Island bliss...skipper at play on our new paddle board. 

For the last 8 months  we have generally  been blessed  with sweltering hot days and warm, balmy nights while we are in port.  We have become accustomed to gentle breezes punctuated only by the odd rain squall.

Blue skies, turquoise water...thought the hat looked better than it actually did!

Of course while we are at sea its often a different story and huge, washing machine seas and not so gentle breezes have often  been par for the course.

The constant rocking and rolling while we bash across oceans is a little annoying but hanging on for dear life 24 hours a day for days at a time uses up a lot of energy. This of course gives  me calorie credits to use when we get back to the warm, balmy, gin soaked evenings on shore!

Gin soaks on board fellow Oyster, Chinook.

However, Vanuatu, previously know as New Hebrides and our next port of call after Fiji, seemed to take perverse pleasure in putting an end to the sunshine and gentle breezes.

Gathering rainclouds 

Black clouds and rain and wind rolled in as we bulleted across from Fiji for 3 days in high winds and rough seas.

We were a little disconcerted by the weather to say the least. Mainly because we were due to be joined on board by our friends Tony and Nicky and their 2 children, Kate and Alex. The four of them  had signed up for a tropical island vacation on Legend IV and we were under pressure to make sure that the sun shone and that they had an idyllic sojourn.

Enormous waves threatening to ruin Nicky's island holiday...and her hair...

Tony and Nicky are old friends from Cape Town who now live in Brisbane. We sailed across the Atlantic with them in 1987. They were on board their Sadler 32 Flambouyant  and we  shared some lovely cruising in the Caribbean before they moved north and East to the UK and we moved south and west to Panama and beyond.

Tony and Nicky and Jean ... young beer soaked  yachties on the beach in the  Caribbean 1987.

Tony and Nicky...on the beach in Vanuatu 2013..older and wiser but still enjoying the sundowners.

The sun reneged on us for virtually 2 weeks and we were forced to rely on cheerful optimism, the island scenery and the people and culture of Vanuatu to add flavour to their trip rather than the diving and swimming and snorkeling that they were hoping for.

Nicole with Kate and Alex..preparing to zip line Vanuatu while waiting for snorkelling and swimming weather.

We ended up having a great trip. The remote islands of Vanuatu were amazing.

Friendly locals bringing gifts of fruit and  showing how it should be done..simply and with a smile!

In fact, in a recent World Happiness survey, Vanuatu scored the highest in the World on an index of  perceived happiness. Not bad for people with very little in the way of material goods and virtually no  access to electricity or  running water.  No doubt its  the lack of material goods that makes them happy!

Al, Nicole and  Kate sharing worldly goods with Vanuatu locals.

Making friends...being surrounded by 2 lovely blondes is sure to push up your happiness quotient!

The islands were colonised by both the British and the French until 1980 and the locals  speak good English or French but communicate with each other using a form of Pidgin English called Bislama.

Ladies who laugh...she thought I was very funny...maybe it was the hat ...need to rethink my head gear!

We found Bislama to be most entertaining...it takes a bit of getting used to but is basically simple, phonetic English. "Tank you too mus" is the islanders version of "Thank you very much"

Happy old guy...

and happy young guy...

There are no words in Bislama for some objects which are probably not commonly encountered in their cultures...

A piano for example is "wun  big fella blak bokis hemi gat waet tut mo hemi got blak tut, sipos yu kilim smol, hemi singaot gud. "

This literally translates to, " One big fellow, like a black box, he's got white teeth but he's also got black teeth and if you kill/ hit him gently (kilim smol) then he will sing out good!"

On the history side of things...  over half a million US soldiers were based on the islands of Vanuatu during the Second World War and evidence of their occupation still literally litters the islands.

Abandoned wrecks!

The biggest tourist attraction in the region is "Million Dollar Point." This is no luxurious string of hotels and homes on the coast as it would be else where in the world...rather it is an underwater  dump off the coast of Espirito Santo where the US soldiers disposed of millions of dollars of equipment at the end of WW 2.

The troops literally drove hundreds of  trucks, jeeps, tractors and tanks loaded with unopened cartons of food and clothing off the jetty into the water.

Talk about materialism gone mad and the futility of war..no wonder the people of Vanuatu prefer to stay out of the rat race after witnessing such a horrendous waste of goods that could have been put to good use in their world...

The futility of war...Nothings changed after all ..Legend IV at anchor  in Portobello, Panama  in the shadow of cannons abandoned by the Spanish  the 17th Century.