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I was staying at my friend Shelly’s place for a couple of weeks in Fremantle, Western Australia, and she had suggested we take some day trips around the region to see some interesting places. In the event, although we visited all these places, we made a couple of long routings out of them, but they are all accessible on day trips from Perth.

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AFL -> Australian Rules Football. It’s not a sport I know a great deal about, other than its existence, and it being traditionally popular more in and around the state of Victoria - Eastern Australia tends to prefer Rugby League which is a sport I’m far more familiar with, having grown up on the edge of the M62 Corridor in northern England and ( Read more... )

Vanuatu is not a country noted for its beer. It has Tusker, a generic lager, which also comes in lemon flavour and is surprisingly perky and easier to drink than its blander brother. Instead, Vanuatu has a drink known as ‘kava’ (not in any way related to the French sparkling wine of the same pronunciation), a drink performing the same task as beer ( Read more... )

Ah, Ambrym. The reason why I went to Vanuatu in the first place. Because while there are more accessible and spectacular volcanoes even in Vanuatu (Mt Yasur on Tanna Island springs to mind), I wanted a more spectacular hike, plus the thought of being able to camp overnight in the volcanic hinterland definitely appealed.


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My itinerary had me spending just under 4 weeks in Vanuatu, so obviously this meant I had time to look around at other interesting islands other than Malekula and Ambrym. One that caught my eye was an island in the north, called Gaua. There wasn’t much written about it in the guidebooks, other than it was small and relaxing, but had a waterfall, a ( Read more... )

My trip to Vanuatu accidentally coincided with Independence Day; this was unplanned (indeed, I didn’t even know when Vanuatu’s Independence Day was until I got there!) and, I have to say, had the potential to be slightly awkward. As already noted, Vanuatu has a habit of ‘closing’ at the weekends, and Independence Day itself fell this year on a ( Read more... )

“At top of hill now. You want stop for rest?” asked Jojo, our guide (*).
We were about 15 minutes in to what would turn out to be a 5 hour trek through the jungle of north-western Malekula Island, and the trek seemed to start with a hill. A bloody great big one. And not even the sort of hill you could stop every so often and admire the view from, ( Read more... )

Malekula, the second largest island in Vanuatu, is noted in culture for two things, and they’re kind of related, though not in a way you might find on Fetlife or RedTube. When I say penis sheaths and eating people, I’m meaning things literally, not figuratively.

There are 30 languages spoken on Malekula, an island the size of West Yorkshire (at ( Read more... )