After all our struggles with delays and cancellations, I genuinely didn’t believe I would get to Vanuatu until our plane had left the ground out of Brisbane. But it did, two full days later than it was supposed to, and we landed in an absolutely gorgeous country!
Our travel delays did mean that we missed out on Tanna. It was pretty disappointing to miss, because Tanna was the part I was by far the most excited for since it’s the world’s most accessible active volcano and you can basically go to the rim of the volcano and stare into the lava. But I still had a great time in Vanuatu, and I am so grateful for the friends I made through our entire POM VI experience – it turns out nothing brings people together more than spending a thousand hours in an airport!
We landed in the morning and then had a full day in Port Vila before we were supposed to meet up with the three people who were not personally victimized by the flight delays of Air Niugini. And what a nice day it was! We got massages, drank beers by the pool, and celebrated that we had finally made it to our next destination.
The next morning, we headed back to the airport in Port Vila so we could meet the rest of the group and fly out to Espiritu Santo (often just called Santo). Going on a domestic flight in Vanuatu was strange. You read about how tiny the airports in the South Pacific are, but it’s another thing to wait at one. At one point, we thought we should go wait closer to the gate, and we stood up with all our bags, only to find that we were… already at the gate. We arrived in Luganville, which is Vanuatu’s second largest city (although city is perhaps a strong word). We stayed there for our first night and had a fun dinner of bonding with the three new people who had joined us on the tour!
The next day, it was time to head north! We started with one of the famous blue holes in Santo, which are freshwater swimming spots with stunning clear and blue water. It was beautiful and a really fun visit. I don’t know if we were in the off season, or what, but it felt like there was no one else at most of the “touristy” things we did, which was definitely not a bad thing – we were the only ones at our particular blue hole for almost the entire time we were there, which was pretty cool.
From there, we toweled off and headed up to our accommodation on the north side of Santo! We were staying in bungalows on Lonnoc Beach. Just as with the blue hole we went to, we were pretty much the only people here. It was absolutely incredible to be able to just swim and walk along the beach by ourselves. It really felt like a small slice of paradise.
More pictures of our beach time! It did rain for a good chunk of our second day, but it didn’t stop us from going out on the beach and standing in the water under the rain. It was such an amazing experience.
After our second night at Lennoc Beach, it was time to head back to Efate, the island where Port Vila is. We flew back in the morning and headed to one of the most well known tourist attractions in Vanuatu – the underwater post office! It’s one of the most unique post offices in the world. I didn’t actually send a letter there, but several of the people in the group mailed postcards and we all went snorkeling together so we could see it.
We had a little more time to wander around Port Vila! Mostly, there were a lot of markets to explore and souvenirs to shop for. Some of us had also been talking about getting a matching tattoo, so we checked our our options, but the tattoo parlor was closed after we got dinner so we figured it wasn’t meant to be. Except….. I was supposed to be flying out SO early to Sydney, and when I woke up to catch my shuttle, I had an email saying that my flight was indefinitely delayed. Which, let’s be real, means cancelled. Because I had other plans and didn’t want to stay in Vanuatu by myself, I didn’t hesitate and booked the flight that I knew most of the others were on, which was an afternoon flight to Brisbane. Once I was back in Australia, I figured it would be a lot easier to sort things out. And when I showed up to breakfast, we decided that this was the universe telling us we should go get our tattoo.
This is my first tattoo! It’s one of those things I’ve always wanted to do, but never had anything specific that I wanted to get. So this was honestly a great way to do it. It was fun, it was spontaneous, and after I got it done I couldn’t stop looking at my forearm. Plus, it’s definitely an interesting souvenir from Vanuatu!
Obviously, I hadn’t been planning on landing in Brisbane, so I had to do some adjusting for my trip. Initially, I was meant to land in Sydney, have a couple hours layover, fly to Wellington, spend the night there, and then meet up with Alvaro and Eric in Wellington for a flight out to Christchurch the next day. Luckily for me, Lucy, pictured above with the matching tattoo, lives close to Byron Bay, so she offered to take me to her house, let me crash with her for a night, and then I could take a short flight down to Sydney. If I could get Air New Zealand to just move me to the exact same flight 24 hours later, it would be a pretty easy fix. We landed in Brisbane and I stopped by the desk as soon as I cleared immigration. The woman was so confused by my ask and why I was in Brisbane and not Sydney, but she was able to help me! The only thing I had to do was book my flight down to Sydney the next day and all was not lost. I had a second unintended stopover starting at the Brisbane airport, and I managed to see a little more of Australia before Lucy dropped me off at the airport again.
The final cherry on top of the flight struggles is that I got to Ballina the next day and boarded my flight…. only to have them come on the announcements and tell us all to get back off the plane. The vehicle that was carrying the luggage literally hit the plane (???!!!??? it’s a plane? it’s not moving and it’s by far the biggest thing in your field of vision?) and damaged it, so they needed to get a flight engineer from Gold Coast to make sure that we were still good to fly. Honestly, it was super stressful in the moment, but looking back it’s also pretty hilarious to see just how many weird flight situations we got into over the course of this trip. Thankfully, after this one, it was pretty smooth flying! At the end of the day, we were able to re-board, I made it to Sydney, and I also successfully made my flight to Wellington to start the next adventure.