Part 2 of the Vanuatu Adventure

Greg dropped us off at Santos Hardware where the “ferry” would pick us up and take across to Aore Island. As he drove off, we both breathed a sigh of relief and were happy to be headed into the more normal part of our trip. I am not a resort kind of person, but I will admit I was looking forward to a bit more … sanity.

As we waited, there was a flurry of activity at the dock as various banana boats were being loaded with supplies, tourists, and expats. It is clear that the island has quite a concentration of expats, predominantly from Australia.

The boat showed up and we loaded our luggage and ourselves onto the boat. The Tradies were still howling so it was pretty bumpy going across the channel and a number of people, including Susanne, got pretty wet.

Greg had told us that the resort was owned by the Chinese and that everyone on Santos hated them and they were awful. I know this will be a surprise, but it isn’t owned by the Chinese. It was built by an Aussie and sold to another Aussie. I am just shocked that Greg was misinformed. Sheesh, next thing you’re going to tell me is that the world is not flat.

We had some lunch and settled in. It was a low key place and didn’t feel pretentious. The food was pretty good and the restaurant location was lovely with a nice view out over the water.

I went out for a snorkel to check out what was right by the hotel. It was a bit disappointing after Satoshi Island. There just wasn’t much coral. Tons of fish, but not much good coral. I talked to the manager a bit later and he told me that Aore Island had been hit by a category 5 typhoon a couple of years ago and it just completely tore up the coral, but that it was bouncing back. The pics looked terrifying.

The resort had all sorts of activities that they would help you organize, but we decided we just wanted to hang out there.

After a snorkeling a few more times, I started to appreciate that the area was pretty good. Despite the beat up coral, the fish life as just amazing. Some huge ones too! Occasionally you would see a school of tuna hanging out near the edge of the channel.

There was a lovely dock area that had a pagoda and some chairs that you could sit in over the water. We quickly realized this was the best place in the whole resort. It got a nice breeze that kept the bugs away, was a bit cooler, had a nice view and best of all you could stare at all the fish under the dock. There was a huge school of anchovies that hung out there all the time. Every now and then, some predator fish would come dashing in and a great kerfuffle would ensue with anchovies desperately trying to not become lunch. In the mayhem, a bunch of the fish would end up jumping out onto the beach. When the staff heard this, they would run down and start gathering up the stranded fish. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

They had some fat bikes, so one morning we decided to go for a bit of a ride around the island to check it out. The bikes were complete POSs that were rusting away in the sea air. Sigh. We rode for a little while and Susanne pulled the plug on it. I decided to continue on and check out more of the island. It fun to ride around, but it wasn’t all that great as there were no real views of the ocean. I did see where all the expats live and some of the nice Airbnbs were located.

Like Satoshi, the highlights of the day were (a) snorkeling, (b) reading, (c) napping and (d) repeating. Nothing wrong with that in my book.

The other cool things to see in the water around the resort were the starfish, sea slugs, crinoids, brain coral, and giant clams.

All in all it was a very relaxing 3 days at the resort. It didn’t feel very resorty, which was good. I would definitely go back there. It was a great 10 days of warm weather and amazing snorkeling.

On the way back we had to spend the night in Auckland due to the flight schedule. It was pretty bouncy coming into the airport and the weather report for the next day did not look good.

In the morning it was howling and raining pretty hard. At the hotel we chatted with a guy who had tried to fly to Nelson the night before, got with in about 100 meters off the ground and they aborted and flew all the way back to Auckland. That is a bummer, man. Our flight got delayed by about 3 hours, but we finally made it in, though the flight down was very bumpy the whole way. You know when the crew remains seated for almost the whole flight that it’s bumpy. Our friend Bev, who was picking us up at the airport, texted and said all the roads were closed and the flooding was really bad. He said he would try but might not be able to make it the airport. Bummer.

The views of the flooding when were coming in to land were crazy. The whole area was put under a State of Emergency declaration. Luckily we showed up during a break in the storm and Bev was able to make it to the airport.

We were glad to get home and hunker down. It was a great trip and I definitely want to go back to that part of the world. Next time I’ll do some scuba diving and maybe explore the Solomon Islands.