Feb 2nd, 2020 – Luganville

Today started off very well indeed with a mighty fine coffee from one of the nearby resorts.

And shortly afterwards, Trevor came to pick me up in the VSA truck. I still love this truck, and so while Trevor was taking some cash out of an ATM, I snapped a photo:

The plan was to pick up Michelle, Wendy, and Wendy’s daughter and proceed for a drive across the island to Port-Olry, 60km away, where apparently a postcard-perfect tropical beach awaits visitors.

The drive was very pretty indeed, passing through jungle, coconut plantations, noni plantations and grassland pastures with grazing cattle. I tired taking some photos from the moving car, but with the occasional rain shower the windows were streaky and none of my photos looked very good. Towards the end of the journey, the Blue Beast’s air-con conked out, but as we were nearly at our destination, we didn’t worry about it too much.

On arrival into Port-Olry, we drove past the lunch spot so as to get to the end of the village and see the coast. Port-Olry is a french catholic settlement, and right at the end of the village is a peninsula with a school on it with an incredible playground giving right onto the beach. Cattle were grazing in the playground, keeping the grass down ahead of the new term which begins next week (I’m not sure whether they leave the cows there when term starts).

And then, disaster struck. We all piled back in to the Blue Beast, Trevor turned the ignition and… nothing. Not even the beginnings of an engine turning over. It just wasn’t starting at all.

After some hum-ing and ho-ing, we walked to a nearby house to ask if they had any jump leads. They didn’t, but they had a truck with a pretty thin rope, and offered to tow us back to the place we had earmarked for lunch, where they thought the owner might have some jump leads.

Trevor, with his background in mountaineering, volunteered to tie the knots, and the rest of us looked on with suitable concern.

Given the thickness of the rope, we figured we may as well walk to the lunch place along the beach rather than weigh the soon-to-be-towed truck down. Turns out that wasn’t a bad decision, as one strand of the rope snapped during the tow. It took us exactly the same amount of time to walk as it took them to tow the truck, and we saw that as Trevor arrived into the restaurant car park, he got a bit of momentum on a small ridge, turned the key and hey presto the Blue Beast started! Trevor parked it at the top of a small hill, and with some trepidation turned off the ignition so that we could have lunch.

The lunch place was idyllic. Turquoise blue waters contrasted with fine white sand, with a backdrop of green jungle rising from islands all about. The lunch was served in palm shacks a few metres from the water’s edge. After drinking from a fresh coconut, the top chopped off and a straw inserted, I put on my bathers and jumped in. The water temperature was bath-like. School in NZ and Australia went back last week, so although typically quite touristed, we were pretty much the only people there today.

After lunch, we were all excited to see whether the Blue Beast would start again. Trevor tried rolling her down the small hill he pad parked on, and starting her then. She burst into life, and after some celebrations all round, we gathered our belongings and started loading her up. As we were doing so, however, she coughed, spluttered, and died. We then found someone who did indeed have jump leads. No joy. We had gathered a crowd of locals all willing to help by this point, so we asked them to help us push her this way and that, to the top of the hill and down again, but nothing worked. At this point, we gave up and decided to call our emergency support back in Luganville, a.k.a. Brigitte. Brigitte was unfazed, and said she would find someone with a truck to come and give us a tow. It meant we had a couple more hours to wait, but I’ve known worse places to be stranded.

When Brigitte arrived with her friend and her friend’s truck (and Max, a very cute puppy), it was decided that to tow us all the way back to Luganville would be a massive hassle, and instead we should all hop into the friend’s truck, leaving the car at the restaurant to be serviced at some point this week by a mechanic. This was a great plan, as it meant a couple of us had to ride in the back of the truck, which in this heat is infinitely preferable to sitting in the cabin even if it is frowned upon by the VSA safety policy. It had the added bonus of getting to ride with Max at our feet.

I start my Bislama lessons tomorrow, but at least I now know the Bislama word for breakdown: “Bugarup”!