Sleep in to 0650 today !! And look at the weather!! Raini, rain, rain and wind. Perfect for muddy adventures ;) We are going on the off road adventures tour at 0800 so a quick breakfast and wait for the driver to pick us up. Me being the impatient person that i am, was having a heart attack at 0815 because the driver had not picked us up yet. I spoke to Freida(resort tour co-ordinator). She told me to relax, they will come. She was right. The bus driver came five minutes later and we were off. There was already 2 other couples on the bus, we were the last to be picked up so only 6 doing the buggy's today. Happy with that cos i hate people.
We were taken to the depot of the off road adventrures tour and greeted by the owner (eddie ). I later found out that Eddie came to Vanuatu on a hoilday and did this tour and he liked it so much he bought the business. We were given a quick briefing of the do's and dont's and packed up our belongings in the back of the buggy to begin the ride. Jono was driving so i was going to take photo's. They drive on the right side of the road in Vanuatu and the steering is on the left. We had 2 giudes with us, one at the front, and one at the back, in case anything happens.
We set off on the road, our guide "giuding " us out onto the road. We headed to the back streets of town which the roads were mainly all dirt- perfect! It took us about an hour to get to our destination, the turtle bay crystal blue tour. Along the way we saw many fruit stands, workers working in the farm paddocks and i even saw a lady having a bath on her vernadah, she was happy enough to give a wave and a smile too! The Children would ran out to the side of the road to wave to us. Here i could see why they are such happy people.
Once we entered the turtle resort, our guide gave us a stamp on the arm for our Turtle tour. Here he left us and told us he would meet us after for brunch in the resturant.
Our turtle guide was a lady, i wish i could tell you her name but i dont know what she said :( We started at the baby turtle's. They were so tiny but we were not allowed to touch them. The had different size turtles from the age of new borns to 11 months. So bloody cute!
The next part of the tour was to look at the cocunut grabs!! SSoooooooooo ugly! I thought i was looking at a creature from a horror movie. They had massive claws. The funny thing is they actually live in the forrest, not the beach and of course, just like there names says. They eat Coconuts.
We were also shown a cage of fruit bats, which they breed to eat. YUCK!! But apparently they taste like chicken lol . Ill take there word for it!. We checked out the pigs sty as well. Yep it was gross, smelt like s*** and the pigs were happy sitting in the muddy water and all i could think about it is how many tape worms they must have growing inside them to give to someone ( im paranoid about tapeworms but thats another story).
The cute thing i saw was a young boy, possible 2 or 3 years old doing the washing of clothes. He froze in place while we were taking photos of him and the look on his face was like ' what the f%^K is your problem?". The comments from some of the other tour people were like " makes you appricate what you have at home doesnt it?". Ummmmm no! I dont have a toddler washing my bloody clothes, and where can i get one from??? JK people! I know someoen will get upset i said that!
Oh i failed to mention that we were joined by another family who had stopped over on the P&O cruise. I think there was 4 sooky annoying children and 4 adults and one was on crutches! I bet his hoilday is amazing!So we had arrived to the adult turtle area near the beach, it was an enclosed area that had reef sharks and 2 massive turtles! I think one of them was roughly 80 years old. They both had different colours as well, the light one means it doesnt go out to deep sea were as the dark coloured one does. The tour lady cut up a local fruit into pieces for us to hand feed them. Of course the annoying children and the mothers had to go first, they took there sweet arse time getting down the stairs and taking happy snaps while one of the boys refused to go down there, so jono and i pushed our way down there and feed the turtles.
Afterwards we headed to the resturant for brunch which was a steak cooked on the BBQ by one of our off road tour giudes and salad. The steak was delishes. We chatted to the other guys on the tour with us and listen to different stories, then it was time to head back. Our guide wanted us to find the mud this time. Well there wasnt much mud but a s***load of water lol Lucky the water was warmish cos we would have been freezing. On th eway back, more kids waved to us and even some gave high fives as we drove past. Just always seems alot of people walking on these roads.
We drove back to the depot and handed in our helmets, said goodbye to the guides and drove back to the resort in the van that picked us up in thne morning.Had a shower and freshly changed. We were still a bit peckish so ordered brushetta for lunch. This was pretty much our day as the weather was so s***. So we had a nap, watched a movie and waited for din dins. They had a local tribe entertain us for dinner tonight and we got to experience the local drink "KAVA". To me it tasted llike muddy water and i dont think i'll have it again but ive tried it now lol . The tribal men sang, played on bamboo pipes and tapped empty glass bottles and made wonderful music. Was a great experience to witness.