Thursday 8 September Mount Yasur

Now we'd observed our surroundings from the deck it was time to go ashore and explore, visit the Port Resolution yacht club and investigate the village.
The yacht club is a low key affair run by the villagers for visiting yachts. There's a nice club house open on three sides with sofas, chairs, a book swap and a very friendly ginger tom cat. Esther looks after you and finds a cold Tusker beer as requested. I traded a t-shirt for tomatoes and beans from fresh her garden. The view over the bay is beautiful and from up on the cliffs you see the reef and shallows much more clearly.
A quarter of a mile back down the track and inland we came to the village – a different layout to the neat rows of houses we saw on Anatom. Here there is a central village green, large enough for a football pitch and there were goal posts set up, surrounded by 6 distinct family groups. Each family area has it's own identity. The first we visited seemed more traditional. Grouped around a giant banyan tree complete with tree house which David (55) and Bear (9) climbed up to. There was a heart stopping moment when two legs appeared through the floor as the rotten wood gave way. Under the tree some of the ladies were preparing a feast for a church house fund raiser. Across the other side of 'the Square' other ladies were weaving palm frond shingles to roof a new house. The house was built on a platform of tree stumps for ventilation and the walls made from wild bamboo with corrugated cardboard between the double walls to stop wind and rain reaching the sleeping platform inside. I hope they use the shingle I wove on a lower placing because I'm not sure it was a tightly woven as the ladies.
This morning their was a vegetable market in the community village hall. Run by the ladies with profits going back to the village. Annie from Oso and I bought a full bag each of fresh stuff and it cost less than a £1.
We continued our walk through the village and came out on a beautiful white sand beach with crystal clear water. We all paddled except David and Bear who had to go in swimming. Kids eh!
This may seem enough activities for one day but the main highlight was still to come; a visit to the volcano best seen at dusk and dark.

Eric, Bear, Jo, David at entrance

twin calderas

Eruption

nightime firework display

Stanley in the village organises a local taxi (a 4WD Toyota truck) to take tourists the 40 minutes rough ride up to Mt Yasur. We climbed in, some inside and some in the open flat bed. The best way to describe the road is to think of a dry river bed with gullies, steep climbs, steep drops on the side, trees over hanging, areas that would be tricky if it were wet and you'd understand when I say it was rough. Our driver used the 4WD to get us through. At the gates to the park (the volcano is in a area belonging to the local village) we had to pay our dues to the money men. They have 20 or 30 visitors each day in groups and every time and e it takes them at least 10 minutes to calculate how much to collect using their calculators and to count the money. Why hurry? We're on island time.
Through the park gates and on up to the volcano; the most accessible live volcano in the South Pacific, or possibly larger area. The taxi dropped us on the moonscape plateau beneath the caldera. We could hear the explosions at the volcano vented and smell sulphur in the air. A climb up the dusty slope brought us to the rim of the caldera looking north. I don't know what I'd expected but this was amazing; a massive crater approximately half a mile long by a quarter of a mile wide and in the bottom two vents spewing gas and molten rock in regular bursts covering us with dust and fine shards of newly made rock. Afterwards David said we should have taken dust masks and I'd have appreciated goggles as dust finds it way into your eyes. But who cares this was spectacular. The best place to stand was on the eastern edge which gave a direct view down into the smaller of the two vents. You could see the molten lava in the bottom and when it went quiet you stood in rapt attention because everyone knows about the storm that follows the calm. There was silence and then boom! A shock wave of exploding gas, the earth, or volcanic debris underfoot, shook and an explosion of molten lava thrown high into the air. The dull thump of rocks hitting soft dust followed a fraction of a second later. All it would need would be an explosion coming in our direction and we'd be ducking those hot bombs.
As the sun set and night came on the spectacular show continued. For anyone who litters their speech with the word awesome this was the real definition of awesome. To put one in awe of the power of nature.
Back to our waiting truck and a bumpy ride back down the dry river bed to the village and our trusty dinghy waiting on the shore. We were so covered in dust and ash we left our clothes in the cockpit and shock them out over the side before having a much needed shower to get the grit out. We'd wash the boat tomorrow morning.
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