Saturday 23 October 2010

Luganville, Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu; Saturday 23 October 2010 בס"ד

Woke up, dropped off laundry with the hotel service, and went with Brad to breakfast. We then went to the local store to see what wares we might find, but instead we found Tiina there who said she was about to meet up with Clark, Lorainne, and Lauren and go on a WWII history tour. Brad and I asked if we could join, and we could, so we went with her to the meeting place. We also found Dapper and Georgie, and they joined us too. We all piled into a big tour van that took us around to:

• the old French Headquarters

• a US B-17 airstrip

• a PT boat base

• a seaplane base

• Million Dollar Point, where the US military dumped all their war material into the sea after they offered it to the French and British for $1million and were refused.

• the old US hospital in the jungle, which had a lot of WWII relics, including rifles, grenades, ammo, and Coke bottles.

• A somewhat recently discovered B-17 crash site in the jungle

Then the van took us to one of the freshwater blue holes where we went for a refreshing swim. Nadja was already there. The blue hole was really awesome, and crystal clear pure water just kind of went down forever. There was a sweet rope swing set up on a massive banyan tree that grew on the edge, and a few of us went out and climbed up the tree and swung out into the hole. I didn't though, because I didn't want to climb the tree without my glasses, and I obviously can't swing into a blue hole with my glasses on. But a funny thing happened when after another bus with Bracken, Ollie, Rebecca, Ali, Shawn, and Dave arrived (can't go anywhere without running into somebody you know) and Bracken went off the rope swing and swung so high he ended up catching a branch way far out over the water and dangling for a bit, which was unexpectedly funny. I got a good video of it too. After the blue hole, our van returned us to town. Then a few of us went to dinner at a local French restaurant. Our watiress, Tiffany, was very excited about the ship and very badly wanted to visit for a tour, which I told her we'd be more than happy to give. Went back to the hotel and drank wine with friends while lounging and shooting the shit, then went to bed.