An eruption of Yasur volcano on Christmas Eve
Originally uploaded by Heather and Rob.
Rob and I spent our Christmas holidays on the islands of Vanuatu. For those of you who haven't heard of Vanuatu, it used to be called the New Hebrides islands. Prior to independence in 1980, the New Hebrides used to be ruled jointly by the French and English. Under joint rule a confusing situation was produced whereby Englishmen and women had to obey English law, but Frenchmen and women obeyed French law. Separate schools were built and local villagers (Ni-Vanuatu) learned either French or English, in addition to both their local language and Bislama, the pidgin English spoken across Vanuatu. So the population of Vanuatu is quite a mixture of local, very multilingual Ni-Vanuatu, and ex-patriots from English speaking and French speaking countries across the world.
Celebrating a belated honeymoon, Rob and I flew out of Melbourne on the 23rd of December, headed for the island of Tanna in southern Vanuatu.
We flew through Port Vila, on the island of Efate on our way to Tanna. We knew the adventure had truly begun when we transferred planes in Vila. As opposed to a line, people generally milled about near the check-in counter in Vila, surrounded by boxes and woven grass bags and wrapped Christmas presents that formed their check-in baggage (In Vanuatu you can even rent a scooter and check it as baggage to the outer islands for no extra fee). With no worries on our minds, we shuffled about to get our boarding passes and watched our bags get wheeled off on the nearest wooden cart to a small plane outside. We soon boarded the plane, but were quickly asked to disembark again (along with all other passengers). It seemed that more people had boarded the plane than they had seats for. AND, they couldn't figure out who wasn't supposed to be on the plane. Granted, it was a difficult problem, given that so many families stuck a child or two on the lap of a mom or a dad or older brother or sister. So every row was teeming with people. So, everyone jumped off, lined back up, showed their boarding passes again, and a young girl was found to be lacking a ticket. Poor thing, I thought... what's she going to do? But it wasn't a problem; her mom bought her a ticket, one more lap was sat on, and soon she had a seat.
Off and away to Tanna island. The small plane that took us from Efate to Tanna island contained very few tourists... we figured out who weren't local folks quite quickly and tried to dissociate ourselves quite quickly from them, especially the pushy, cutting in line-type folks. But no sooner did we land and collect our luggage than we found out that all of the other tourists were headed to the same hotel that we were headed to. Ooopss.. :) better make friends fast guys! We jumped on the back of atruck and took a short trip to the resort - the White Grass Ocean Resort. We were delighted to be greeted with a welcome drink and announcement of the night volcano tour. Jumping at the opportunity to see a live volcano, we signed up to depart at 2:30pm for Mt. Yasur. On the drive (along a bumpy unpaved road) to the volcano, we stopped to see why so many people were sitting along the roadside. They were having the Christmas Eve horse races. We'd missed the first race and were too early for the second, but were happily greeted and waved to by almost every single person we drove past - and what an amazing smile the Ni-Vanuatu have. But we continued on to the volcano in pursuit of a real live close-up eruption. Some call Mt. Yasur the world's most accessible active volcano. At just over 360 meters height, it is quite easy to reach the summit crater, a 400 meter wide circular depression. The volcano has been erupting with brilliant Strombolian and Vulcanian eruptions for quite some time. Incandescence in the crater first attracted Captain Cook in 1774 to the island of Tanna. However, some think that eruptions may have begun over 800 years ago. We were fortunate to arrive during a period of what they call 'level 3 activity'. This meant that eruptions were quite vigorous, but not vigorous enough to eject material out of the summit crater. We drove up to a few tens of meters below the caldera rim and hiked the final distance to the top. We were warned to watch for falling hot ejecta after each eruption. And what a Christmas Eve fireworks display the eruptions were! Spaced about 8-12 minutes apart, eruptions continued from 3 separate vents at the top of the volcano. The blast produced by each eruption was forceful enough to produce a shock wave - a visible shock wave that preceded ejection of material. We could see the shock wave radiate out from the vent and then feel the shock wave hit us when it reached the crater rim. Wow... what a feeling. We stayed up at the crater rim until after dark - eruptions are more spectacular at night when you can see the red color of the incandescent blocks as they rise and fall in front of you. What a great start to our trip.
