Vanuatu means 'Land Eternal' or 'Our Land'. Discovered by the Portuguese in 1606, Captain Cook visited in 1774, claimed it for England and called it the 'New Hebrides'. The French moved in as well. It finally gained Independence in 1980 but is still part of the British Commonwealth.

It is an Y-shaped series of 83 islands extending 900 km north to south between the Equator and Tropic of Capricorn, about 1900km NE of Brisbane, Australia. Lying on the Pacific 'Ring of Fire', the islands are summits of volcanic mountain ranges rising from the deep ocean floor. There are still 9 active volcanoes, two of which are underwater. It has a wet tropical/sub tropical climate and around the time of our visit (Feb/Mar), the temps were 27-35'C with thick 83% humidity that left us feeling drenched and drained all the time.

80% of the economy is agricultural - subsistence farming of copra, taro, yams, coconuts and pepper takes place on the fertile volcanic soils. 45% of the 175,000 population is under 15 years old. 90% of the people are Christian. Because of the isolated islands, over 100 languages developed. To communicate, the British and locals developed a 'Pidgin English' (Bislama) of 2500 words which is still used today and very comical to translate. Here are some examples:

Hello - Alo, Excuse me - skiusmi, Bra - basket blong titi, I like a lot - mi likim tomas, Earthquake - graon i sek (ground it shakes), Dysentry cure - meresin blong runibele (medicine belong runny belly). There are also some words with no direct translation so they describe them like this: a piano: "black fala box we i gat black teeth, hemi gat white teeth yu faetum hard i singout", a saw: "pulem i kam, pushem i go, wood i fall down", a Violin: "wan smol bokix (box) blong white man, ali scratchem beli i singout gudfela" .

Port Vila, on the island of Efete, is the 50,000 strong capital. It is located around a picturesque horseshoe bay with the surrounding hillsides. It is neither scruffy nor attractive, just a quiet place where all business takes place. The traffic is minimal. A few private cars, taxis, and tourbuses, but mostly battered minibuses which will take you wherever you want around the area for 50p. There were few bicycles or motorbikes.

Vanuatu, unlike other Pacific Islands and Australia, has right hand driving. Why? The French and English used to argue which side of the road to drive on. Finally in 1919, they agreed that whatever type of horse buggy arrived on the island next would determine which side of the road to be driven. A carriage ordered by a French Jesuit priest turned up so they took to driving on the right like the French.

The small covered central market had limited local fruit and veg (mangoes, bananas, paw-paws, avocados, and limes) brought into the town and the usual souvenirs. The vendors sat on the ground and passed the day chatting. People were laid back, noone hassled you and many said hello as you passed them. But nearly everything is imported and consequently quite expensive. Even the 'Duty Free' alcohol was the same price as in England. Ouch. The currency is called the 'Vatu'. It was, nevertheless, great to get away from the hustle and bustle of self important Sydney.

Our resort at the 'Blue Water Lagoon' lay about 16km east of Port Vila, down a sandy track, in a beautiful secluded lagoon by the coast. It was the cheapest resort on the island, but we had a nice spacious bungalow with hot showers, a good fan, fridge and kettle. This meant that we could fill the fridge with foodstuffs and live on baguette sandwiches all week. The large friendly cleaning ladies cleaned it spotlessly every day. The resort was almost empty in the offseason, but any tour group on a 'round the island' day trip passed through to have a look since it obviously had one of the best locations. Warm, light aqua-blue water in a shallow lagoon surrounded by palm trees. We could still hear the waves crashing against the rocky shoreline a kilometre away. It was a loud sea.

The resort had no swimming pool (who needed one when the lagoon was tranquil and only 4ft deep), but did have two large pools. One contained about thirty brown reef sharks and the other had a few turtles and shoals of large fish swimming about. One afternoon, I climbed into the pool to swim with the sharks, but they all headed for a corner. Pathetic Sharks or what? Just behind our bungalow was an aviary full of screeching furry fruit bats hanging upside down. They looked like cats with wings and did they make a noise. They are a local delicacy on the island. I nearly ate one just to shut it up.

Vanuatu is very prone to cyclones and 'Cyclone Paula', had hit Port Vila two days before our arrival. It was only a small one. A couple of boats lay submerged in the bay and countless trees had their branches broken off at strange angles. The male and female gardeners at our resort took a week just to clean the mess up. The staff all lived in the local village next door by the lagoon in concrete shacks with straw roofs. Carved black fern tree statues of Pacific gods stood outside the houses. It was nice to be able to stroll around and get a smile or just chat to them as they sat outside under the trees.

Our days became very routine. After our continental breakfast, we would catch the free hotel bus into Port Vila past the lush and dense green vegetation of rubber, palm, melek and Banyan trees and tree ferns. Bright yellow and pink flowers broke up the greenery - hibiscus, bougainvillaea, frangipani, and flame trees. There was also pastureland with grazing Carolais cattle. It was lovely scenery, but not outstanding. Other tourists who did the 'round the island' tour, told us it was 10 hours of unsurfaced road with the same scenery all the way around, punctuated by the occasional hamlet and a few sandy bays.

In Port Vila, we would buy food, explore the overpriced shops, walk around the streets or visit one of the nearby islands. There were few sights. Around midday, in the sweltering heat, we would catch the bus back to the resort and spend the afternoon swimming, reading, napping, and drinking the excellent local Tusker beer on our veranda. I had a few feeble attempts to start jogging but after 30 minutes in horrendous heat, I was worn out. Barely had enough energy to open a beer!

To do anything on Vanuatu, you have to join a tour group or excursion. It is all very low key and actually affordable, but we preferred to do our own thing. Outside the capital the roads are unsealed. There is no public transport so only the tour buses do the trips. Any of the 'traditional' customs like dancing, singing, drinking, visiting a village etc was only done for the tourists. We preferred to just see what turned up.

March 5th was "Chief Customs Day"- a public holiday to celebrate the various 'Chiefs' that rule the larger islands. Anticipating some type of celebration, we turned up at the Efete chief's Nakanal (a traditional meeting house) around midday and hung around for a couple of hours. It was across the road from the modern red-roofed Parliament Building built by the Chinese in 1992. Gradually, the place filled up with locals. Men and women from the island of Tanner started to get dressed up. The women wore multicoloured grass skirts and glitter on their faces, and the men dressed as warriors, were draped in saris, with wawoa leaves (from holy vine trees) wrapped around their heads and chests. Noone wore shoes.

We stood in a circle around the flagpole and the portly Prime Minister, Barak Sope, turned up with the half dozen chiefs to make a speech (in Bislama) about the further unification of Vanuatu's islands, praising the chiefs and raised the flag etc. Someone would prompt applause after every paragraph and the occasional hip-hip hooray. When the local vicar said a prayer, even he got a round of applause afterwards. The chiefs all wore trendy tan or navy blue khaki suits with a curled white boar's tusk around their neck (the sign of power that says "I have considerably more pigs than you do").

We had visited the (closed) PM's office that morning which was just a prefabricated building - the kind of place you'd stay in at a British holiday camp. I was tempted to go and ask him about his dodgy investments as Finance Minister back in 1996, but judging by the size of your average man here, thought better of it. The women in Vanuatu are, as Benny Hill used to hiss through his teeth, "Biiiigg". They wear billowing, flowery frilly smocks called "Mother Hubbard" dresses. 'Weightwatchers' obviously didn't get a look in here. The men wear flowery colourful shirts - like Hawaii shirts made out of curtains, and bad fitting shorts.

After the speech, the hundred dancing warriors filed in and walked around in a circle gradually becoming half a dozen coils of men. The colourful grass skirted women stood on the outside of the ring. The chanting started and the bare-footed feet stomping on the grass echoed around the grounds. It sounded very impressive. They raised their hands, jumped around, jogged around in circles, did the hokey kokey, sang, chanted, and laughed their way through half a dozen numbers. It was great to watch, something they were doing for themselves and not for us or the 4 other tourists who'd turned up with a guide. After the dance, the PM and Chiefs lined up and shook the hand of every dancer and woman as they filed into the meetinghouse for refreshments. A lovely occasion.

One evening at the resort, we attended a 'Melanesian Night', a cultural do laid on for the punters. We had to wear silly bamboo coolie hats and began by trying the traditional drink of 'kava', made from a root plant. It may look and taste like muddy puddle water, but with an astringent taste, and lightly morphine based, it is a narcotic. It leaves your mouth numb after a couple of coconuts worth. I had tried this before in Fiji. Rather than getting you drunk, it just mellows you out. The staff then dressed as 'warriors' to do some dancing and chanting. A ‘string band’ of 6 guys provided entertainment. 4 played tatty acoustic guitars, one had a tea-chest bass and another banged a tambourine. All the songs sound the same. Because they only play one tune. Just the lyrics change. It was like listening to George Fornby's family in saris doing "She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain" and "My Only Sunshine".

There was also an excellent all-you-can-eat buffet of 'traditional' food. This was a superb spread of fish salad (raw fish marinated in lime juice and coconut, mixed with veg), 'lap lap' - the National dish (mashed banana mixed with coconut milk, cooked in an underground oven of hot stones and wrapped in banana leaves ), 'Bunia' (mixed root vegetables cooked underground), Chickenfish (a huge fish that tastes like guess what - cooked underground) and also pork, roast beef, salad and fruit. Despite the huge intake, we managed to dance to the String Band afterwards looking like that embarrassing relative you see at every wedding. A nice informal affair which everyone (all 20 of us) enjoyed. On our last day at the resort, a couple of Christian missionaries arrived as tourists. In 1839, the first missionaries from England were clubbed to death and eaten so I didn't fancy their chances on 'Melanesian Night'.

There are three offshore islands at Port Vila with free 24-hour ferries to them where you can escape the capital. The furthest away, a few kilometres west of town, Hideaway Island (or Mele Island) gets a lot of publicity, but was a scruffy affair, with virtually no beach. Even the scuba diving outfit looked scruffy. Tourists stay here for a night or two to see what 'roughing it' is like.

The mound of Irikaki Island, a few minutes ride from the central market, dominates the bay. It is now a plush upmarket resort with a nice swimming pool, a decent beach, lots of water activities in with the price, and well out of our price range. But Jo sneaked in to use the pool anyway while I swam off the beach. I'd stay here if I had the money.

Erakor Island, off the eastern side of the bay's peninsula was a lovely tiny sand island with a small resort. It took about 10 minutes to walk around but had a great beach and was a nice place to spend a day in quiet seclusion. When we wanted the ferry to come and pick us up again, there was a gong hanging off a tree and a sign which said 'supos yu wantem ferry com back, plis yu hittem bongo'.

The Mele Cascades just outside the capital are the most popular tourist attraction, but they are small and cost £5 to visit. Hell, even Niagara Falls is free. So, instead, we sweated up a nearby steep hill in blazing heat, for a view across the island and bathed in the clear waters of the cascades in a river away from the ticket office. Cheapskates!

During our visits to Port Vila, we had checked out available accommodation for our extra 5 nights. There were some grubby looking hostels for the locals (all tourists stay in the resorts), but we discovered the 'Whispering Coral' Guesthouse, run by a friendly Korean couple - Sam and Anne. It was only a year old and not in any guidebook. It was a lovely spacious family home by the bay. We got a clean upstairs room with a veranda and ate huge breakfasts every morning. Every Friday night, they cooked a "Korean Food" dinner for ex-pats, tourists etc. We were served an array of delicious home cooked Korean dishes - seaweed soup, fish in ginger, sweet and sour pork/beef, and chocolate cake. Across the road from the Guest House was the 'Dinh-g-Shipping Company' and the local sewerage company was called 'Master Shit'. Other comical signs were 'Captain Blight' Street (should have been Bligh named after the 'Mutiny on the Bounty' character who turned up here) and 'Private Propriety - Dangerous Dog - U No Cam Here'.

On a Sunday morning, on either side of the Guesthouse, we heard two loud church services going in village huts. One was like a community meeting, where groups went up to the front and strummed guitars and sang religious songs or just sang unaccompanied. Everyone clapped after every song. I didn't hear any preaching going on there, unlike the other place where someone boomed out stuff like "Lord Help Me Now!", in-between the angel-like singing. As in Fiji, they love singing in Vanuatu. There was no dressing up in Sunday Best. They attended in their everyday clothes.

There are other islands to visit in Vanuatu but the airfares are exorbitant for the small distances. So we passed on visiting Espirtu Santos to scuba dive the famous SS President Coolidge wreck (supposedly the largest wreck dive in the world). We also missed visiting the erupting volcano on Tanna, where red lava glows at night in the crater. On the island of Pentecost, the original bungee jumpers leap off towers with vine leaves attached to their legs, but we were too early for their Easter celebrations. I found the snorkelling pretty poor unless you hired a boat to go offshore. So instead, I decided to do some scuba diving off Port Vila.

Nautilus Scuba Dive School was a very professional affair and I booked 4 dives. They were all within 20 minutes boat ride of the bay. The first one was a wreck dive of the 'Konanda' which sits on the sandy bottom of the bay at 26m. She was an island trader, 45m in length, damaged by the vicious cyclone of 1987 and deliberately sunk for scuba dives. Her derricks and rigging reach up to within 10m of the surface. We descended off the back of the boat down a mooring line and swam inside the holds and cabins. Ships look so different underwater - vast constructions of steel but just frameworks left. Because of the depth, the dive was only 25 mins long.

In the afternoon, I dove off the 'Twin Bombies' reef set on the edge of a long drop off into the ocean. There were tons of tropical fish and an vast array of coral types - acropora, staghorn fire, mushroom, elkhorn fire, honeycomb, vast extensions of branch coral and huge mounds of brain coral. I saw clams, sweet lips (fish coloured like leopards with black/yellow spots) and picked giant sea cucumbers/slugs off the floor with their soft fleshy spikes. The 48 minute dive wasn't long enough to take it all in. The best coral I could ever remember seeing.

The following morning, I did the 'Star of Russia' wreck dive. It is one of the most famous wrecks in Vanuatu. Built by Harlan and Wolff of Belfast (who also built the 'Titanic'), this fast sailing ship was involved in a race in the early 1900s against a new all-the-rage steamship. Both crafts left Liverpool together, the steamship setting off direct for Australia, while the 'Star of Russia' headed south to catch the wind. Imagine the reaction when the steamship puffed into Sydney harbour to find the 'Star' had arrived 3 days earlier. This would be my deepest dive to date. We descended a moored line down to 33m to find the 80m long, 13m wide wreck sitting on the seabed. Built of bolted iron plates, the hull was intact with a shapely bow. We dove into the wreck down to 37m swimming around the holds, in and out of cabins and around the hull and stern. The water was cold, but the visibility was superb - the best in weeks I was told later. It was so quiet down there but the pressure on the body much heavier. Because of the depth, we only had a bottom time of 18 minutes and two safety stops coming up. Another memorable dive for me.

My final and 25th dive to date was around the Fila Island Reef - a shallow dive between 6m and 18m where we had nearly an hour to explore the coral reefs at leisure. Because the water was very warm, I did this dive without a wetsuit and found that my buoyancy and mobility was much better. I could glide around the reefs and manoeuvre through tight passages much easier. I saw a huge cuttlefish squatting above some coral. It’s big eyes peering out. They can get aggressive if you encroach, but this one hovered there like a large blob, allowing me to take in its detail. Large pacific sailfish passed by and I spotted a 'nudibranch' - a strange colourful orange/black/blue specimen that clung to a rock. I really enjoyed the diving in Vanuatu and recommend it. There is always something new to see underwater. It is just a different world down there.

In summary, Vanuatu is a perfect place for a relaxing holiday. There isn't much to do but it is hot, sunny and peaceful. Like the Maldives, it is more a lying around getting a suntan kind of place. Price wise, it is affordable for an average western tourist, but not a backpacker. There is no bargaining. You pay what you can afford. You can still enjoy the place without taking one excursion but most culture is only presented for the tour groups. Scenery wise it is well above average. The friendly, laid back attitude of the people, makes it a nice place to stay. It afforded us some breathing space after a long haul around Australia's Outback. We were forced to take it easy. But after 12 days, we were champing at the bit to get back on the road.

The airport is only 4km from the centre of Port Vila and a short minibus ride away. Bauerfield Airport was a small casual affair. One final Pidgin English gem. What time does the plane land? 'Wan plen i fall down finis?'

Sadly there was only 1 road kill - a plump rat!