FACTFILE
GETTING THERE 8 Brandi flew AirAsia from
Bali to Singapore, then Fiji Airways to Nadi and
Port Vila and Air Vanuatu to Luganville (Santo).
From the UK it’s easiest to fly to Brisbane; Air
Vanuatu has a direct flight to Santo once a week.
DIVING & ACCOMMODATION 8 Coral Quays Fish &
Dive Resort, coralquays.com
WHEN TO GO 8 Year round. April-October is driest
and coolest with water temperatures of 24-26°C,
November-March is the rainy season with water
temperatures of 26-29°C.
MONEY 8 Vanuatu vatu.
HEALTH 8 Anti-malarial medication may be
suggested and it’s important to prevent mosquito
bites as viruses such as dengue have occurred.
Vaccinations including typhoid are recommended.
Port Vila has a recompression chamber.
PRICES 8 A five-night, eight-dive package at Coral
Quays starts at £566 (two sharing).
VISITOR INFORMATION 8 vanuatu.travel23 divErcreated a surplus of low-price machinery,
and it was more important to grow the
economy by selling people new products.
Still, it did seem a waste to throw it all
into the ocean instead of helping a poor
country in which life was transformed
during a war it didn’t ask for (and, of
course, today we know how detrimental
to the marine environment such dumping
can be).
Coral Quay’s pick-up drove me to a
lovely beach, with food and drinks for
sale, numerous sunbathers and kids
playing in the white sand.
Setting up our gear on a picnic-table,
we walked into the small waves, past local
children who paused to stare at us in our
strange dive-kit.
The shadow of machinery was hard to
miss. Swimming closer there was a large
ship (that might have sunk trying to
salvage the equipment), bulldozers,
cranes, fork-lifts, small boats, trucks and
more. I felt terrible that this garbage
dump existed. Shouldn’t we take
responsibility and clean it up today?
Seventy-five years on the garbage is still
there, in the same condition, and will be
for generations. I noticed rubber tyres
that appeared ready to drive their ancient
machinery away.
Coolidge & kava
My last day of diving was on the Coolidge.
We visited the medical supply area. Stone
discussed that malaria was the biggest
killer of soldiers in New Hebrides. Four in
10 became infected, and for every gunshot
wound there were eight cases of malaria.
All quinine in the area was ordered to
be sent to Santo, and the Coolidgewas
carrying more than 250kg of this
important medication, much of what was
left in the South Pacific at the time.
A doctor on Santo, watching the ship
sink, asked that divers do everything they
could to recover the medication from
inside the ship, but none was.
It’s still there today. Swimming through
a corridor, to one side of which were what
looked almost like shelves, I saw bottle
after bottle of different colours, many
with powders still sealed in them.
Above, clockwise from
top: Medicine bottles on the
Coolidge; seafans growing
on the ship; a typewriter.Below left: Kava, aka
dirtwater – what could
possibly go wrong?Below: Brandi enters the
water at Million Dollar Point.Back on land, dive-gear drying in the
sun, I enjoyed lunch and coffee by the
pool while reading more of Peter Stone’s
book, and I was even invited to do some
“cultural research” at a kavabar later that
evening.
I had tasted the dirt-water made from
the Piper methysticumplant, known as
kava, on Fiji and other Pacific Islands, but
I had heard that Vanuatu has the best, so
of course I was going to join them.
Luckily for me, women are allowed to
partake now, though I was still the only
female among a mixture of expats and
local males.
As advertised, my mouth got a little
numb and I felt very relaxed. After thesecond shell I did feel a little tipsy, but it
wore off quickly... so I had another.
My flight departed just after dawn the
next morning, and I managed to find
myself back at the tiny airport, with a
touch of a headache caused by residual
kavaand rum.
I’m pretty sure that this unique group
of islands will be in my future again
someday – there is so much more to see,
and many other islands to explore.VANUATU DIVER
divErNEt.com