Tanna, Vanuatu. South Pacific.

Damn.

I'm sitting here wondering how to put this down. I knew I wanted to come here. Really wanted to come here. Al said when I stepped on board back in St Georges "if there's any where you want to go just say and it goes on the itinnerary" I replied "Tanna, in Vanuatu" Which for me is exeptionaly terse. Most of the amazing things you see on BBC2 with Attenburrra or whatever never quite match up to reality or you never get to see anything that special. I saw Tanna on BBC2, and its better than you can possibly imagine.

Its, like the other Pacific Islands, volcanic. The major difference is the volcano is acitive here. It has 25 languages on the 1 island and nearly all the buildings are banboo screens on wooden frames for walls with woven palms for a roofing. If you've ever read "Swalows and Amazons" as a child. This is where the kids in the book imagined they were. The sea is blue the jungle is green, huts and dugout outrigger canoes, fishspears and a machette for every toddler (litteraly). The heath and saftey policy of the island is:

1: Always look at the Vocano.
2: Watch the lumps of lava, if a lump comes your way simply step aside.

You think I'm kidding? I'm not. The guide said "don't stand to near the edge, when the ground shakes" which is every minute or so "sometimes the edge colapses".

Enough words, your thinking bit of steam bit of smoke, smell of rotten eggs. No, this is a real volcano. Big red stuff thrown over your head, ground shakes whole area covered in ash, roar like a thunderstorm in a war zone.

Long exposure photo of the volcano at night. From the rim, bloody close.

Click to download Low Quality High Quality

Now if your reading this in RSS, stop and go to the web site, you need to see the photo above.

The volcano is awesome. Your right there, with lava in your hair. Jackie took only flip flops off, but wandered around barefoot cos its quite nippy up a volcano at night. Said her feet were loverly and warm.

See the video to the right, might take a bit to load, but its worth waiting for.

This post will probably continue elsewhere later, but right now the autopilot has died again (story of my life) so I'm off to stear by hand for a while.

For "a while" read all bloody night.....