Wayfinding in Vanuatu: Road Tripping in Efate
VANUATU
I love driving. With a gentle tap of the foot (and sometimes with some gear shifting), the door to possibilities opens wider. Efate’s one and only main road traces the island’s perimeter and hugs the coastline. I tried to offroad where something looked interesting and made pit stops at the attractions of interest. For instance, under the first indigenous archeologist, the local village of Pang Pang marked an important site “as one of the first human settlements of the Pacific, dated around 3,000 years before present (BP)”. Rarura and Mele cascades, Eton beach, Entrap, Eden on the river, the UNESCO site of Chief Roi Mata's Domain and Port Havannah too had their own personality.
It amused me then, when my host asked, “if one sees the biggest/tallest/bestest, what’s left for the little leagues to offer?” Now at 131 countries, her point wasn’t completely moot.
I want to be as active and curious, as open to what each space and place offers me in this moment, traveling or not. Indeed, like anything revisited – work, relationships, surrender – I wondered how to keep freshness and fire as key and dynamic elements on the journey.
The detours along the way were filled with more potholes then pretty scenes, partly due to the intermittent rains. Without the sun’s rays, the turquoise and cerulean hues I was hungry for were harder to have. Although much less developed, like the outer islands, the top half of Efate had more sections of these crystal-clear waters, usually crashing against coral beaches.
Next trip, I’d head instead for one of the top 50 beaches world wide, Champagne beach on Espiritu Santo, so named because of the volcanic activity underwater which bubbles to the surface through the shoreline sand.
For now, mimicking the locals, I veered and steered around patches of tarmac that seemed smoother; yet in most attempts, the hopes to avoid the pitfalls of potholes reminded me that like life, the ride inherently poses ups and downs. Avoiding this gouged out section traded in for that ditch, this smoother edge forced a slow down with that speed bump. So, at the end of the day, what was I hoping to control?
Equally, I see that my internal dialogues drive the flavour of the experience – how does it sound and feel to jiggle along pock marked roads all day? Sometimes it’s fascinatingly fun, perhaps at another point, it’s time to book a massage!
I shared the road. The cows demanded I weave through them, the dogs bolted in attack mode, the chickens dashed like now was the exact moment they had to cross, the sheep super slowly made way and the little humans seemed to think the tarmac was their playground.
During the day, it was easy to spot the trots of these lot, but at night in the rain with no lamp posts in sight, I was squinting, saying a prayer and solemnly asking myself who else would be out “doing this”… but then again, like Michelle Obama suggests “comfortable fear” is something that perhaps we could embrace more willingly and skillfully, after all (like it or not and whether we see it or not), it molds many moments in our lives.
A glimmer of sun graced my time at The Havannah Harbour, an upscale stop with Nature’s wallpaper of kayaks, a catamaran and a secluded table on a pier overlooking the island we were on and the ones that were a stone throw away.
I chose the company of a flimsy fiction with an all-loose-strings-tied-up stereotypical nonsurprise-surprise ending (ugh!), wishing instead that I had just sat. This ‘slowing it down’ process can be tricky on implementation. Sometimes, it’s a priceless gift. At other moments, it can be boring, drabby, nebulous, pointy and seemingly pointless.
Perhaps time with the ‘little leagues’ affords us opportunity to re-understand the basics, to not be focused behind the screen catching the insta scene, but rather, using the backdrop outside as a catalyst to explore the act that’s going on inside.
Like the plentiful roundabouts I perused in Port Vila, I spent a few days circling not only the island and its sites, but also, on seeing the sign posts within me too.
May we wayfind with ease and Grace, regardless of the attractions and distractions - and on this journey, may we find loads of Love and Light,