Mystery Island - 5th January 2011 Today we arrived, albeit in unfavourable weather conditions, at Mystery Island. Mystery Island is a tiny, uninhabited island with simple facilities built for the regular cruise passengers and an airstrip in the middle of the jungle - a remnant of World War II. Locals from a nearby island come across for the day to welcome visitors and sell their various wares, but nobody actually lives here, because the locals believe tha...

Port Vila - 4th January 2011 We arrived today in the capital of Vanuatu - Vila. It's an island with a population of 35,000 people and a whole lot of duty free shopping. We had a tour booked for this island, so after we disembarked the ship we got in a tour bus and headed to the Mele` Cascade Waterfalls. Mele` is a village in Vila where all of the occupants are family - cousins, aunties, uncles etc, and they essentially own the waterfalls. We drove about ...

Wala - 3rd January 2011 We arrived this morning at a little island called Wala. We were greeted with the sounds of small children singing songs in their local language. Their eyes light up when they see the visitors to the island and they say "Hello" to every body that walks past. There were little ones handing us flowers or posing for photos, and we even saw a couple of little kids with the family animals - roosters and a small pig. We took a ...