Last night we celebrated Karl's birthday, only 10 days late, but here in Port Vila is the first real restaurant we have found. Heather treated Karl to dinner at the French restauarant "Cafe du Village". A wonderful cocktail called a Toblerone started the meal, followed by eye fillet steak cooked to perfection (tender and juicy) and hazelnut meringue with fruit and cream for dessert. Heavenly! It was a balmy evening and we enjoyed sitting on the terrace with our fine food and wine, overlooking the harbour with Aradonna in view. Karl exclaimed "Life couldn't be much better than this!" Today we explored the large supermarket, called Bon Marche. There is a definite French influence in the goods stocked here and everything you can imagine is on the shelves. A world away from the poor villages in the outer islands. We learned today that this supermarket chain is owned by Chinese investors, who also own large amounts of real estate here and are currently building a huge convention centre in Vila. Many shops have chinese writing on the front as well as English and French. We found some other items we needed for the boat by visiting a local hardware store, computer store and the auto parts store. It seems most things are available if you know who to ask! An interesting observation we have made is that many people in Vanuatu have no idea when their birthday is. It is common for births not to be registered and often parents are a bit hazy about their children's ages. Many adults are not really sure how old they are. Several times when we have been speaking with locals, especially in the outer islands but also in Vila, a local will tell us "I am about, 39, maybe 40 or something like that." When we ask how old their children are, we get answers like "My daughter is maybe 7 or maybe 9 I think". Once we asked a man how many children he had and he said, maybe 3 or maybe 4! For the locals that get a job in Vila, if they want their wages to be put into a bank account, they have to have a birth certificate. Only then do they try to find out a date they were born and get a birth certificate. People that do not work, or get paid in cash, may never get a birth certificate. It must be a nightmare for officials to know how many people there are in this country - it would be a wild guess!! Tonight we are meeting up with some fellow yachties at the Waterfront Bar for happy hour, there are several yachts moored in Vila right now.
Tomorrow morning we will set sail for islands in the north, hopping our way up to Pentecost to see some land diving (weather permitting).