Trip Report: Vanuatu
Visited in December 2022
After almost three years, I was back in the South Pacific in late 2022. Since I was traveling through Australia during that time and didn’t want to go all the way to Down Under without visiting at least another country in Oceania, I added Vanuatu to that trip. Vanuatu, which means “Our Land Forever” in most Melanesian languages, is a small state consisting of 83 islands. 67 of them are inhabited. The population of the country is about 300,000.
There were actually two main reasons why my choice fell on Vanuatu. First, at the time of booking, Vanuatu was the only country in the South Pacific that I had not yet been to that did not require a Covid test for entry. Respectively, at the time of booking, several other countries in that region had not even reopened their borders yet. Second, airfares from Australia to Vanuatu were significantly cheaper than to other countries in Oceania.
I must admit that Vanuatu was a country I was looking forward to. This on the one hand because of one tourist attraction, which I will talk about later, and on the other hand because this country has a very good reputation among travelers who have already seen quite a bit in Oceania. Recently, I posted on Instagram my top five remaining countries that I’m most looking forward to visiting. Vanuatu was one of those top 5. My expectations were so high that I was convinced that Vanuatu would be my new favorite Pacific country after this trip.
Air Vanuatu, the country’s national carrier, took us from Sydney to the capital Port Vila. It was already after midnight when we landed and about an hour later we arrived at our hotel, the Grand Hotel and Casino. It was actually one of the few nice hotels on Booking.com. Good location, right in the center of Port Vila, reasonable price (116 USD per night), four stars and a rating of 8.0, which is why I was a bit irritated at check-in. I noticed the smell of cigarettes spreading throughout the lobby. This came from the casino, whose entrance was right next to the reception. The hotel seemed to be a cheap place
Never mind. The main thing is that we arrived safely. For me, Vanuatu was the seventh country out of fourteen in Oceania. Thus, from this point on, I have visited at least half of the countries on each continent. For my girlfriend Kati, Vanuatu was also the seventh country in Oceania. Funnily enough, it is the first continent for her to hit the 50% mark. 43 countries in total and 7 of them in Oceania, this statistic will be quite unique, at least among Europeans.
Driving around Efate
Another interesting fact is that I met fellow globetrotter Randy Williams for the second time by coincidence. I used Randy’s blog when I prepared myself for my first West Africa trip and since then we have been sending messages to each other occasionally. The first time we met by chance was at Atatürk Airport in Istanbul, when we were both waiting at the gate for our flight to Georgia. This time we were in the same hotel in Vanuatu and we just found out about it the night we arrived. Small world.
For our first day in Efate, the main island of Vanuatu, I hired a driver from Williams Tours and Transfers (not related to Randy, just in case you were wondering) to show us the highlights of the island. The price for two people was 15,000 Vatu, which is about 125 USD. So actually not very expensive for a private island tour.
I left the route up to them, so we focused mainly on the east and south coast of the country. Our driver was a nice and sociable guy who helped us to buy a SIM card before the tour started. After driving for half an hour, our first stop was Eton Beach, supposedly the most beautiful beach on the island. It was indeed very pretty, and even one of the most beautiful I’ve seen so far in the Pacific.
Eton Beach turned out to be the highlight of the day, because afterwards things got… special. Our next stop was the Blue Lagoon, just a few minutes from Eton Beach. In Vanuatu most of the land is privately owned, just like in Samoa by the way. This means that the owners can charge a price if, for example, there is a waterfall on their land and people want to visit it.
Unfortunately, this leads to two bad things. First, landowners from Vanuatu have already sold their land to China. That means that China now owns certain beaches in Vanuatu. And second, it gets quite expensive if you want to visit 3-4 natural sights on the island as a tourist. In Samoa it was the same. You also have to pay an “entrance fee” there for the natural sights. However, I had maybe 3-4 dollars per sight in mind. In Vanuatu, we paid 6,000 Vatus per person for entrance tickets on this island tour, so over 50 dollars.
The Blue Lagoon was then a place we left after two minutes. It’s fascinating that all blue lagoons in this world are actually pretty much the same. They’re completely crowded with cruise ship passengers swinging half-drunk on a liana into the water. It was the same in Vanuatu, and it felt like Jamaica’s blue lagoon, which we had visited six months earlier and also rated as a terrible place.
By the way, it was really true that a cruise ship docked in Port Vila that day. Vanuatu is one of the Pacific countries closer to Australia, so cruises to this region are possible, making stops in Vanuatu and its nearest neighbor, New Caledonia. To my amazement, I thus found that Vanuatu was nowhere near as off the beaten track as other islands in the South Pacific. On that day, it actually felt quite touristy.
Our third stop was then the absolute low point of the day. It was the Turtle Sanctuary at Naiwe Beach. The entrance fee (2,000 VUV) was as outrageous as the price for lunch (1,500 VUV). But since we had our lunch break there, we had no choice but to pay it. The unfriendly employees were not very pleasant either.
But what was by far the worst was that in this place turtles, crabs, sharks and other animals are kept captive in filthy pools. The name sanctuary is more than misleading for this place. Moreover, the tourists who visit this place behave in a very bad way. Some of them pull the giant tortoises out of the water to pose next to them on photos. A pretty depressing place and unbelievable that there were so many laughing and happy faces among the visitors.
A waterfall was our last stop, then we drove back to Port Vila. By the way, it was not the famous Mele waterfall. I wanted to save that for another day. In general, Efate is an island with a lot of waterfalls, one more beautiful than the other. The waterfall we visited was…. quite okay.
All in all, we found this island tour average. Eton Beach was amazing but all the other stops were either so-so or crappy. Besides, paying an entrance fee at every stop gets annoying after a while. Nevertheless, we also realized that Efate is a stunning island. So, all in all, we still had a good day.
We spent some time in Port Vila in the late afternoon, which actually turned out to be quite a nice sleepy, little village. Of course, there is not much to do in terms of sightseeing, but it had its own charm and the people in Vanuatu were more than friendly.
Mount Yasur
The next day we took a domestic flight to Tanna Island, one of the southernmost islands of Vanuatu. Generally, I appreciate island countries where I don’t have to fly. For this reason, Samoa was probably my favorite destination among the countries I visited on my first South Pacific trip. In Vanuatu, however, you cannot avoid flying because the country’s best attraction is not on the main island Efate.
The Air Vanuatu flight was operated by a propeller plane and lasted 45 minutes. By the way, there is also the Air Taxi Vanuatu, with which you can take a scenic flight over Tanna Island and return to Port Vila the same day. The only catch is that the whole thing is quite expensive. On the other hand, we paid about 150 USD for the Air Vanuatu flights, which is not cheap either but also not crazy expensive.
Vanuatu’s biggest attraction, and there should be no two opinions about it, is Mount Yasur. It is an active volcano and one of very few volcanoes in the world with a lava lake. For me, volcanoes are among the most fascinating natural spectacles, so Mount Yasur has been high on my bucket list for years.
There are two options for accommodation on Tanna Island. Either you book a resort on the west coast near the airport or the more adventurous opt for a bungalow or tree house near the volcano. We did the latter. By the way, if you choose to stay near the airport you should also keep in mind that the car ride from the airport to the volcano (and vice versa) takes about 90 minutes.
When you visit Mount Yasur, you still need a bit of luck. Because whether and how much you see is strongly dependent on the weather. I have already read about some people who could not see anything of the volcano because it was raining. And it was also rainy season now. When we landed in Tanna, the sky was cloudy and gray. It didn’t look good. Only when we had about an hour of driving behind us did we realize that the gray cloud was an ash cloud coming out of the volcano.
Our accommodation was a tree house for 5,000 VUV at Yasur View Lodge, right next to the entrance of the volcano. The tree house was pretty basic, but totally okay for one night. The tour started at about 5pm and cost 8,000 VUV, so almost 70 USD. It’s a quite expensive sight but totally worth it…
In addition, you have to pay for transportation, which costs 2,000 (per car). However, it is not that all tourists go into one bus or so. Instead, there were about 10 cars with 1-2 tourists each going up the volcano. In some situations, including this one, we had the feeling that Vanuatu rips off its visitors quite a bit. Just as ridiculous, by the way, was the announcement that they actually charge you 10,000 VUV to fly your drone, but they reduced the price to 5,000 VUV due to the “difficult situation” in the world. That’s still almost 45 USD.
The last ten minutes you walk up to the crater. In contrast to other comparable volcanoes, for example Nyiragongo in DR Congo or Erta Ale in Ethiopia, Mount Yasur is quite easy to access and does not require a long hike. However, you will be accompanied by tour guides and a security guard, who will show you where to go at the top of the crater. This is dependent on the direction in which the smoke and steam is blowing.
Mount Yasur was then incredible. Admittedly, if you arrive at the top before sunset, the lava lake several hundred meters away looks interesting but not very spectacular. It looks much more like a small, red-glowing dot in the far distance.
Only when darkness falls and the lava glows bright red, you can’t get out of your amazement. It looks stunning. In addition, about every two minutes a thundering sound comes out of the crater. Sometimes there are even only a few seconds in between. Pretty exciting and scary at the same time.
How safe is Mount Yasur? Good question. Well, there is no barrier at the top of the crater. Only the security guard occasionally tells you to take a step back. Apart from that, it’s a volcano and they erupt sometimes. Like in this Netflix documentary about the Whakaari volcano on New Zealand’s White Island. Mount Yasur erupts even several times an hour and that for hundreds of years. It remains only to hope that it does not come to a heavy eruption when just someone stands at the crater.
Shortly after dark and when everyone has taken their photos, you go back down to the place where the cars are waiting. I recommend you to take a sweater, because it gets quite cold up there after sunset. By the way, there are two more tours every day. One at sunrise for 4,000 VUV, half the price of the sunset tour. There is also one at noon for only 2,000 VUV. However, whether it is worth it to see the volcano only during daylight is another question. I think not.
Mount Yasur was certainly a highlight of this trip. Since we only had one night in Tanna, we were also very lucky that we could see the volcano right at the first attempt. In the worst case we would have had another try at sunrise. Nevertheless, it is certainly not a bad idea to plan more time than we did. Just in case it rains for two days or so.
There is also a small anecdote from our night in the tree house. In fact, some animal must have gave us a visit in our little hut. The animal had bitten its way through a package of cookies and ate some of them. We still wonder today what kind of animal it was. We first thought of some kind of beetle. But is the jaw of a beetle strong enough to bite through such a plastic layer?
Another possibility would be a rat. But here, too, the question arises as to whether a rat would go in search of cookies twenty meters above the ground. We will probably never find out.
The next morning, the owner of the accommodation drove us back to the airport. As with the first transfer, it cost 5,000 VUV for Kati and me together. He chose the time and picked up other tourists on the way, from whom he also collected 5,000 VUV. As I said, in certain situations we had the feeling that the employees in the tourism industry of Vanuatu ripped us off a little bit…
Grounded again in the South Pacific
The flights between Port Vila and Tanna were actually quite reliable. One flight was on time, the other had a delay of about an hour. When we checked back into the Grand Hotel & Casino, we enjoyed a few more hours in the pool. The next day we should have a few hours to take something before flying back to Australia. I was thinking of the Mele Cascades or Iririki Island.
That same evening, however, I was in touch with another traveler whose flight should have left for Sydney two days ago. His flight was already canceled twice and postponed to the next day. I didn’t know the reasons for this, but I bookmarked the airport’s website and regularly checked to see if our flight to Brisbane was shown as scheduled or canceled.
“It’s canceled!” were my first words the next morning after checking my mobile phone. While I hadn’t received an email from Air Vanuatu yet, that was the status on the airport website. Actually, we could have taken it easy that day, but Kati and I immediately packed our things and went to the airport. There we received the confirmation: all international flights are not happening that day.
The reason for this was that Air Vanuatu has been in financial difficulties for several months and as a result only possesses one large aircraft for its long-haul flights. That aircraft had a defect and needed a spare part, which had to be ordered from abroad. Before they did not repair the aircraft, there were no more flights to Australia or New Zealand.
There was chaos at the airport. The check-in for the flight to Sydney should have started now. Instead, all the passengers learned that they would not fly today. They told us to ask at the service desk of Air Vanuatu about the further procedure. There were then about fifty people in a queue and the service desk worked extremely slowly. So it took easily five to ten minutes per person or a group. The mood at the airport was getting worse and worse.
In the meantime, we considered leaving the country via another route. There was still the possibility to fly to New Caledonia or Fiji and from there to Australia. In both cases we would have had to pay several hundred dollars per person on the one hand and on the other hand we would have lost two more days with the new routes. At the airport they told us that we could “probably” fly tomorrow or rather the day after tomorrow. Therefore, we thought that several hundred dollars for a new flight ticket was not worth it, since we would be in Australia maybe one day earlier at the most.
After spending at least two, probably more like three hours at the airport, we learned that we would be staying at the Holiday Inn Resort until departure. There we checked in for two days for the time being and the costs for the room and the meals were covered by Air Vanuatu. However, the front desk manager told us that she could imagine that the spare part would arrive today, but that the backlog of stranded passengers would probably be too big to fly tomorrow.
The Holiday Inn Resort was not too bad to be honest. It was maybe a five or ten minute drive away from Port Vila’s city center but felt much nicer than the Grand Hotel & Casino. Somehow this place felt like…. vacation.
On the same day we were informed that our new departure time would be in 2.5 days. With two and a half extra days, we could have actually done a few more things on Efate. However, in such situations I am not the type who can just switch off and dedicate myself to other things. After all, the new flight time for me was also always the best case or the earliest time we will leave Vanuatu.
Our flight time was then also postponed twice, so that we could leave Vanuatu in the end with a three-day delay. For me, this was the second trip to the South Pacific and for the second time the trip was unintentionally extended by three days. In 2020, I was already stuck in Tuvalu for three extra days due to a cyclone. Needless to say, I’m not particularly excited about the seven other countries in this region…
My thoughts on Vanuatu as a travel destination
In the assessment of Vanuatu, I will refer only to the first days before the canceled flight.
I had pretty high expectations for Vanuatu and they were met to some extent. Mount Yasur was awesome, while Efate was okay on the whole. Efate is certainly a beautiful island, there is no question about that. However, the entrance fee at every sight were as annoying as the super-crowded sights. But that’s just the way it is when a cruise ship is off the coast.
The beautiful nature is the main reason to visit Vanuatu, but not the only one. On a positive note, the people are friendly. Even if I complain that I sometimes had the feeling of being ripped off, the Ni-Vanuatu, the inhabitants of Vanuatu, were extremely warm and sweet. Besides, the islands of Vanuatu are also quite diverse, so you can experience relatively much in this country.
Vanuatu, just like the other destinations in Oceania, is not exactly cheap. However, there are definitely budget accommodations, both on Efate and on Tanna. What is expensive is the transportation, the already mentioned entrance fees and also the food. Speaking of food, just like all the other countries I had visited in the South Pacific so far, I had trouble finding really good restaurants in Vanuatu.
How many days do you need for Vanuatu? It depends on how many islands you want to see. If you only want to see Efate, two days are enough. If you want to see Tanna, I would add two more days. With seven days you would basically have enough time for Efate, Tanna and Espiritu Santo.
My final conclusion about Vanuatu is that it is certainly a good adventure destination. However, Vanuatu did not become my favorite country in the South Pacific as expected. That is and remains Samoa. Nevertheless, I would recommend Vanuatu to anyone who would like to experience a special destination in the South Pacific.
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Fantastic report and so great to see you again my friend – especially cool because it was such a coincidence. I would’ve been sad if I only found out later we were staying at the same place, the same night!
Hope to see you again, amigo!