September 2008: South Pacific
Luganville, Espirito Santo, Vanuatu pt 8 (S 15.30.905 E 167.11.027)
Aore Island, Vanuatu (S 15.32.252 E167.10.810)
Let’s face it we all love our cell phones. Cell phones are so successful they are even here on a tiny island. Look above at the marketing. Previously I stated it was Pig-Latin but now know it is a variation of Pidgin English. We have been in remote areas and in the crowd of the villagers there is usually someone with a cell phone stuck to his head. You can find the local Digicell outlet by the red & white circular sign on the building. You buy the phone and then buy cards with minutes very similar to the land line phones. We have had many conversations about cell phones here in the So Pac mainly because we see the towers and the lifestyle of the people. We are wondering how they afford them and if they have a negative impact on them. Meaning, we know what we pay for food and fuel here and there is not a lot of prosperity due to the lack of exports, etc. Food for thought.
We took a land tour today in a 4-door truck. We wanted to at least get a feel for the interior of the island. There is not a lot of pavement here and most of the stuff off the waterfront is leftover from the war. The military made roads thru the hills and clear cut areas to make way for tent cities to house the 50,000 soldiers at any one time. Throughout the war it is estimated that over 500,000 passed thru this island. I include pictures in these pages and encourage that you enlarge them or zoom in. For example, the pictures above have writing on the signs.
Our driver was 23 and spoke French and very little English. Luckily, Bob was our translator. This is a Quonset and told to us was an American home during the war. We did not enter this one as we felt we were kind of imposing. As you can see the jungle has taken over and reclaimed the area. All over this island it is very dense jungle. Even the vast clear-cut flat areas that housed soldiers have been re-planted with coconut for commercial use.
The Quonset hut above was located in an area that was used for anti-aircraft guns to protect the airfield. It looks like they backfilled the dirt on the sides to blend it in. We saw a cow standing on top of one of them.
The trek out of town was quick and then we were immediately in the rural to jungle area. Alongside some of the roads are fences made of tree limbs with barbed wire spanning them. Most of the fence posts were alive and flourishing. That just goes to show if you stick it in the dirt in the tropics it just might grow. We took the half-day tour and were pretty good with that. Some of the roads are dirt and some are destroyed pavement. The potholes are just too big to ignore.
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