What an amazing day we had yesterday! After a leisurely bacon and eggs breakfast we were greeted by our first visitor of the day, a turtle surfaced near the boat and popped his head up a few times to gulp some air and say hello before diving down again to graze. Soon after a dug out canoe came by with a young couple, Isabel and John. We asked if they had a garden and promptly gave them some seeds as well as some fishing hooks. They were very grateful and told us they were paddling their way to the other side of the channel to go prawn fishing. They invited us to join them and we were delighted! We followed in our dinghy, around the reefs and into a small passage between some mangroves. They helped us clamber up the bank and Isabel explained that this land belongs to Johns Grandfather. Isabel was raised and educated in Efate and her English was excellent, along with a little French and German, and of course the national language of Bislama. John was from Maskelyne Island and speaks hi s native local language as well as Bislama, so they speak Bislama together and Isabel became our guide in English. John went ahead, thwacking his way through the long grass and the bush growing over the track with his 18 inch long bush knife. Isabel pointed things out to us along the way. She showed us where they grow Taro and Manioc (Cassava), plus Island Cabbage and Banana. As we walked through the jungle we saw bright yellow and bright orange pods hanging in some trees, they were about the size of Avocados, but more oval in shape. Isabel explained that these are the seed pods of the Cacao tree. John cut a couple down for us and sliced them in half. This was the first time we had seen the fruit that gives us chocolate! It was nothing like we expected, white inside, with a sweet sticky marshmallow like substance covering the purplish seeds. Sucking the white sticky substance off the seeds was sweet and fruity, like lollies! The seed itself was just like a tasteless wax, we have no idea how anyone decided it could be fermented and made into chocolate. We enjoyed sucking on several of these fruit lollies during the day. When we reached the stream, John began foraging with his bare hands in the rock pools and soon came up with fresh water prawns! After handing a few to us it was clear that we needed something to put them in. No problem, John cut a piece of think bamboo above two segment seams and handed us the hollow tube to pop the prawns into. John went back to hand catching more prawns and Isabel found a few leaves that she folded into a stopper to plug the top of the tube so the prawns could not jump out! Very simple and very clever. We climbed up through the jungle and visited more rock pools, filling our tube as we went. John made it look easy, but you need to be very fast with bare hands to catch these slippery fast movers in the water! On the way back down stream Isabel asked if we had ever eaten Navara. Seeing our blank looks, she explained that when a coconut lying on the ground first starts to spout a leaf, but before it puts down roots, it is called Navara. John split one open and instead of having juice inside, the whole cavity was filled with a white spongy substance. We ate some - yum! It was like coconut sponge cake! Encouraged by our thrill of new experiences, John decided to get us a young coconut to drink. Within a few seconds he had scaled a very tall coconut tree. No ropes, no tools, just bare hands and bare feet and he walked right up to the top! Balancing his feet on the trunk at the top and with one hand holding on to a branch and one hand on a coconut, he turned several coconuts until they dropped. Once back on the ground he sliced the top off a couple of coconuts with his large bush knife, so we could drink the sweet juice. Next he cut open the shell so we could scoop out the soft white flesh with the spoon he had created from a special slice of the outside of the young husk. By the time we had enjoyed our cacao pods, navara, coconut juice and flesh, we were replete - what a way to have lunch! John took 4 of the other young coconuts he had dropped from the tree and took most of the husk off from around the sides, leaving a small peak on the top of each one. Then, stripping a vine from another tree to make a thin strip of string with a hard stick on the end, he then poked the strip through the tops of each coconut, pulled it through and tied the string together so that all four coconuts were tied together and easy to carry by the string. Amazing use of local materials and great to see the skills involved in living in the bush. We can see now why the local people all walk around with their bush knives - they do everything with this one tool! John then cut one of the bunches of vines that were hanging down from the trees and water came out like turning on a slow tap. Isabel plucked a leaf from the vine and in one hand folded it over with a twist and it instantly formed a little cup to be used to collect the water from the vine and drink it. She explained that this was how they quenched their thirst when working in the bush to make their gardens.
Back at the garden patch, Isabel picked some Island Cabbage for us, which is nothing like our cabbage but grows with several leaves from each stalk on a taller plant. To hold the little bunches of leaves together, John cut a banana leaf from a tree and then split the stalk of the large leaf to make a long string. The bunch of leaves were laid into the leaf, folded and tied with the stalk string into a neat packet. So simple.
These generous young people tried to give us more things and wanted to feed us fish for dinner, but we said they had already been very kind and we did not want to take more! So we said our fond farewells, thanked them in English and Bislama and left them to get on with the rest of their day. What a treat we had that day! As we zoomed back to the boat on our dinghy we caught a glimpse of a dugong surfacing, we were very lucky! Back at the boat that afternoon, it was time to go diving. The crystal clear water gave us plenty of light, even at 30m of depth. We found some pretty fan corals, so delicate and lacy in various shades of green and yellow, along with some soft corals in vibrant black, green, white and red. We were astonished to see a very large Lined Butterfly fish. These yellow white and black reef fish are common, but usually we see small ones, about 5 - 10cm. This one was huge! Somewhere between 25-30cm across it was a giant! There were plenty of colourful fish to be seen - mixtures of purple, yellow, blue, white, black, green, some with stripes, some with spots - just beautiful! We also saw a large Spotted Eagle Ray swimming by - a magnificent creature! It was one of those days filled with awe and wonder. New experiences, amazing local people, and yummy treats. We enjoyed our fresh water prawns as an entree and the cabbage became part of our main meal. What lucky people we are! Today we chewed up a few more miles heading north, with the wind building up again as the day went on. Some dolphins popped up beside us for a short visit on the way. Tomorrow we will head off early to make Santo before the winds gather strength in the afternoon.