2005 – YJ0
If you were lucky
enough to hear a YL voice/keyer calling CQ from
Our trip started
from Vila – Elizabeth flew in from Vancouver and I flew in from
Melbourne, luckily arriving on the same day. For the next week we stayed with
friends, Captain Bob Wyllie of Air Vanuatu and his XYL, Cornelia, who own and
run
Rainbow
Gardens, Vanuatu’s
largest nursery and market garden.
Here we met up with the other members of the Vanuatu Amateur Radio Club
and all had a good chinwag over a sumptuous afternoon tea.
One evening a
group of us went out for dinner by ferry to a lovely spot, Hideaway Island,
noted for its Resort chef and the fact it is the only place in the world that
has an underwater post office – you buy a postcard and use a special pen
for writing, then someone kindly swims out into the bay, dives down at the
correct spot and posts your letter for you. This is then brought to the surface in
the evening and sent on its normal way.
Different.
Cornelia took us
to the Saturday morning market and left us to our own devices to wander round
the many souvenir, vegetable and flower stalls. We saw bundles of firewood for sale
– lots of the local houses do not have electricity – and it is
amazing what can be done with half a coconut and some shells (see photo).
Our next stop was
the luxurious Resort on Aore Island, in the northern part of Vanuatu, a short
ferry ride away from Luganville on the island of Espiritu Santo. Santo played an important role during
WWII when it accommodated close on 50,000 Allies. Today it is practically a ghost town
with the interior covered in the creeper Morning Glory which, during the war, was planted as
camouflage. Some of the old
American Quonset huts can still be seen but the main reason people come to
Luganville is to dive on the wreck of the S.S. President Coolidge, sunk
in 1942. However, our aim was to
play radio, so the gardeners at the Aore Resort climbed trees for
putting up our dipoles and YJ0YL got on air again. We had to knock off at mealtimes though
‘cos the food was too good to miss!
Bungalow No. 16 can be recommended for using for radio – large
trees close by!
One morning we
left our radios to go on a ½
day excursion into the interior of Santo and visit one of the native villages
at Fanafo. It was very interesting
seeing and learning about the village way of life but the roads getting there
were very rough – we expected our 4-wheel drive vehicle at any moment to
disappear down one of the many deep potholes! Incidentally, during our stay on
Santo we experienced 5 (repeat 5) earthquakes – mild ones but
……………
Still the locals said it was better than having 1 big one – hi!
After 10 days of
being spoilt, we flew back to Vila then on to Auckland for an overnight stay
before flying off to Tonga. Biny/ZL2AWY
and OM Merv/ZL2AVY drove up from Hamilton and stayed the night with us
while Aola/ZL1ALE and Dave/ZL1AMN, plus Celia/ZL1ALK spent
the afternoon with us. Auckland was
so very cold after Vanuatu – hi!
Click
here to see the photos of our trip to the Republic of Vanuatu.
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