At the airport - if you can call it that, it is just a grass strip and a sorry looking building that's only purpose is to keep you dry. The weather is perfect (why diddn't we have this on the volcano!). We got there at 9am for the 2pm flight, so there was a lot of time to kill. Some French people were on the flight out and probally after a brief stay got the best weather in the last four weeks for seeing the lava lake. My bad luck with the weather combined with ...

Ambrym has been lacking in creature comforts but we have become attached to the people. Liz has become very attached to the girl in the picture (the owners daughter). She is a bit scared of me so I have to grin inanly when I am near her. Today is goat day, basically a land dispute meeting between the neighbouring village. For a change lots of serious looking villagers sat in the road at the end of the garden hammering it out. Tomorrow (touch wood) we fly to Por...

Mt Marum - the volcano hike finally came. There has been many set backs getting to this point. We originally planned to go to a volcano on Tanna but it had turned nasty and people were being evacuated. Two plane cancellations meant that we had to do the hike straight away - of course the electrical storm and flooding b*****ed that up. After the usual communication issues trying to change flights - we had good weather but no guide and then bad weather and a guide....

Heinrich is leaving tomorrow so the village are having a party to say goodbye. The picture is of the villagers cooking the local dish of lap lap over an open fire. We watched them grate some taro and yam yams using some tied together storks as rough as very course sandpaper. The goo was then layed onto some banana leaves and parts of a pig chucked in (trotters and all). The banana leaves were folded over, tied and layed on the open fire (blog picture). Some ...

Food we need food! It has been only three days but we are already sick of taro, sweet potatoes, rice and bananas. The promise of eggs turned out to be a single hard boiled egg each. However we are impressed that we have this, the road side honesty boxes where the locals sell surplus vegetables are all bare. One meal we had was just a boiled sweet potatoe and rice, so they must be trying to find other vegetables - bless them. When you are in a dessert all you ca...