Monday 27th March

Tis I, as my father would say.  Back for another instalment of holiday diaries.  Today was a travel day – our flight boarded at 11:30am, so we only needed to leave the house around 8:30am.  Dad kindly drove us to the airport, however won’t be available for the return trip, so I am slightly nervous about what we’ll do on the other side…

Airport activities were fairly standard; when we finally got to the gate Phoenix had had enough of being held and just wanted to crawl around, so others at the gate were treated to a regular **slap slap slap** of him pacing forward and back, and sometimes just forward.  The plane was about 30 mins late, and once we got on we had to hang around for another 30-40 min as the captain waited on a new flight schedule – apparently the initial one he was given took us through an area where some armies were conducting war games… not something we really want to fly through. 

The flight was good – Rory and Elle sat together after take-off, I had Phoenix on me and knew he was ready for a sleep after he did a blink that lasted about 5 seconds.  He slept very well (compared to my memories of Rory trying to sleep on me on the Bali flight), and I even managed to doze for a bit.  I think he got almost 2 hours all up! 

On arrival we noticed lots of large upturned trees – the cyclones that hit really messed up this country.  Customs was pretty easy – they fast tracked us because of the babies so we didn’t have to queue in the heat.  We did have to wait for quite a while for our bags to come through, and the first (and so far last) taste of aircon was in the car that picked us up.  The car trip to our… resort (? Not sure what to call this place… farm stay?  I dunno.  Property) was torturous though, once we left the tarred road it was all really damaged dirt roads, probably averaging about 20km/h due to the huge potholes we had to either avoid, or just drive slowly through.  There was still a lot of water around too, we had to drive blindly through many deep puddles and hope for the best.  I held Phoenix for this part too, and ended up having to just hug his head to my chest to stop it from swinging wildly around. 

We did arrive eventually though, the time was maybe 630pm or 7pm.  Romina, the main lady greeted us and showed us around.  We had a couple of rounds of pina coladas (which were so creamy and delicious), and dinner for the kids and us came out too. 

Bed time was soon after, Lizl and I finished the night off with a swim in the pool.

Points of note:

• Bunch of Ni-Vanuatu (natives from Vanuatu) on the plane coming home I suppose – they were all dressed head to toe in winter gear, most had beanies and winter parkers on.  We couldn’t believe it – in Sydney it was easily warm enough for shorts and t-shirts, and within 10 minutes of arriving in Vanuatu we were sweating.  What were these guys doing?
• Finn loves greeting everyone – “AYO!”
• Romina is Maltese
• Internet was only restored the day before we arrived, they have an undersea cable providing it, but because of this the government wants to ensure that everyone pays them for internet, so they have made star link (Elon Musk’s satellite internet) illegal.  The internet here is provided by a sim card, and comes and goes sporadically.  It makes the locals angry – when the second cyclone that came through, they weren’t given any warning because the internet was down and they’re not allowed to use anything else
• They have animals - 3 dogs, 2 cats, and 2 kittens that we have seen so far.  The dogs are huge, but all friendly.