On a lighter note...I went to a small island called Ambrym last month. Ambrym is hat-shaped and is infamous for its black magic. I went with a friend of mine named Steve. His parents were peace corps volunteers before and lived on Ambrym. A high chief on Ambrym died and we planned to go pay our respects and possibly see one of the island's two volcanoes.
Steve caught the ship at Lolowai, on north Ambae. They rushed him and told him the ship was waiting for him, but then broke down and he ended up waiting a few hours before they headed out. Typical Vanuatu...hurry up and wait.
My host mama banged on my door at midnight. We walked down the road to the ocean and waited a few hours for the ship to come. There's no actual wharf so the ship has to send out a motorboat to drop off and pick up cargo and passengers. Because it was raining they let me go on the first trip. Steve came out on the motorboat and met me. We had to stand on top of kava on the bumpy, rainy, dark ride back to the ship. The smell of the kava was setting off my gag reflex.
I somehow got onto the ship and waded my way through sleeping Ni-Vans to my seat. Tried to sleep for a few hours. I woke up a few hours later and realized that we had only moved about six miles down the coast. Apparently one of the engines was dead again. The plan was to bypass any other stop and go straight to Vila on just the one engine. They were gonna send me and Steve out on the small boat to get to Ambrym. Our day on the ship was very interesting. Steve stayed strong but I was pretty nauseous. Going out on the deck wasn't much help as all you could smell was diesel from the engines. The ship was out of water so the bathroom was a precarious place. I'm talking can't keep your eyes open cause the ammonia smell was so strong kinda thing. A mystery liquid had collected about an inch deep on the floor but I think it was mostly seawater. It was disturbing to see a footprint in the brown ooze. Needless to say, I "held it" for the rest of the trip and drank as little water as possible.
After a few hours of spinning we learned that the engine was working again. We moved on to Pentecost and on the way saw dozens of dolphins (how's that for alliteration mwahaha) Later that evening we reached Ambrym. We were asked over and over again where we were getting off and told repeatedly that ours was the next stop. We went out on deck to wait and fell asleep shivering on top of a crate. Around 11 pm we arrived to Ranon, our stop, and were taken to shore in the motorboat. Crowds of people met us on shore, waiting for the ship themselves. We eventually found the owner of the guesthouse and stumbled off to go sleep...
TO BE CONTINUED AHAHAHAHAHA
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