Vanuatu Day 2: On the Way to the Cemetery

I’m not a clean freak or a hotel snob, but the one thing I can not handle is bugs in my bed. When I woke up, the dead cockroach on the floor didn’t bother me at all. Such things are to be expected in tropical climates. But the ants or whatever bugs in my bed were not tolerable. Especially for $40/night.

So, first project of the day: find new place to sleep. It was during this quest that I started to tune into the situation in Vanuatu. Essentially, the foreigners had come in, invested and wiped out the “middle class.” The locals had caught on to the fact that they could charge tourists lots of money and so in some places, they emulated the prices of foreigners. But, the ni-Vanuautu needed to live too. So prices of some things were still low. My strategy was just to pretend I was a local and do what they did.

First step was to get a ‘bus’ to the other side of town. The ‘buses’ are 100 vatu (about $1) for wherever you need to go. They’re unregulated mini vans with no pre-determined route that you direct by telling them where you’re going and reminding them by yelling ‘stop here please.’ I had experienced this same thing in St. Maarten and found it to be great. If the bus is semi-full when you get on, you get a free tour of some outlying villages or parts of the island you wouldn’t have ordinarily seen.

After a discouraging hour or so of looking for accommodations (1 place had changed names and was no longer budget, 1 place was full, 1 place I wasn’t sure what was going on, but I understood ‘no’ and ‘2 years’) I was headed back to town. Some guy on a scooter stopped and asked me if I knew where the cemetery was. I was a little tired of carrying my pack around, it was getting pretty warm, and I was sweaty. I shook my head just as the guy realized that I was even more lost than he was.

The guy ( I will call him P) turned out to be a really nice and helpful individual. He interrupted his quest to photograph the largest cemetery on the island to help me find a place to stay. He had rented a scooter and it must have quite a sight to see the two of us plus my (slightly large) pack on the scooter.
I ended up finding a little place about 5 minutes out of town. It was locally owned which made me feel a ton better about the $20/night. The ‘bungalows’ were actually pretty neat. There were 4 or 5 scattered up the side of hill amidst lush vegetation.

After my task of the day was complete, I headed to the market for lunch. Just like in latin America, the fresh fruit/ vegetable market had locals cooking up meals in the back. I found a table, sat down and asked what was for lunch. The lady said chicken or fish so I had a huge plate of fish with rice and vegetables. All for 350 vatu (roughly $3.50US) while my tourist Aussie friends were enjoying their $15+ meals at the restaurants down the street.

One of the most endearing qualities about Vanuatu is that the people (the ni-vanuatu) are so friendly and happy. While some are dirt poor, there are not children running after you begging for money, there aren’t shady scams ripping off the tourist. As a female traveler, I have to pay more attention to my surroundings and positions I put myself in. In Vanuatu, I never felt uncomfortable or that I was a walking target. I find that there are a lot of situations in life where acting like you know exactly what you are doing is key. I acted like it was completely natural for me to be the only white girl eating lunch with a bunch of ni-vanuatu.

I wasn’t able to completely avoid the touristy traps though… P and I took the scooter up to the Mele Cascades where we paid an exorbitant 1500 vatu ($15) to walk up to the falls. The swimming holes and size of the falls in general definitely made it worth it.