Tuesday, June 7, 2016

PAD Part 32

Look! I’m a captain! I was lucky enough to get a tour of the Pacific Hope, a medical ship that will be coming to Ambae at the end of this month, and of course, had to ham it up in the control room. (I’m sure I’ll write more about the ship, it’s mission, and it’s visit after it passes through)

Day 1 of diving, my dad was stopping for his decompression stop, so I dove down and took a picture

Andy and his dive instructor Thomas after completing his PADI Open Water Dive Certification

Kava! One of my friends was nice enough to organize gwasis, or stone ground kava, for my family for their first night on Ambae. I wanted their first experience to kava to be with the good stuff! My mom and brother got pretty drunk, but handled it well. It hit my dad too hard though, and he had a difficult time walking back to the guest house…whoops! I tried to tell the guys making it not to make it so strong, but after only one shell, the effects still hit us pretty hard. Ah, the problems of stone ground kava...
If you're interested in learning more about kava, check out the wikipedia page, or my blog post about it from last year.

Andy in front of a banyan (or nabanga) tree. These things are everywhere, and get to be huge! Our second day on Ambae I took my family on a bush walk to see some of the sights.

Me and my two mom’s all dressed up in our island dresses, ready to go to a wedding!

Scratching coconuts to milk and put on the laplap we made. Andy was the undisputed champion at this. I took my family up to North Ambae (AKA the bush) for a few days so they could see more of what traditional living in Vanuatu is like.

Bush walk 2: we started at my Vanuatu dad’s house, walked through Kathleen’s village and ended here, at the nice view in Avery’s village. Wasn’t the same without the two of them there, but it was still a great day!

Some of my friends took us spear fishing for our last day on Ambae. Here's a picture of the first kill. The boys caught...12 fish? We caught...0. To be fair, they had spear two spear guns and we had a single hand rubber, but still.

Me and my two sets of parents, just before we hopped on the truck to head to the airport. I was really glad they had the chance to meet each other! Now when I talk to one about the other, there’ll be some context there!

Millenium Cave! As cool as promised.

Riri blue hole, about to jump off the rope to swing into the water

The lodge we stayed out. I got some kind of weird stomach bug and stayed in for much of the week…disappointing, but whatcha gonna do?

The front to our room. Isn’t this photo a day project fun when I’m sick and don’t go anywhere?

…so fun…

Yay, better! Dad on the rope swing at Matevulu Blue Hole.

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