Vanuatu

Port Vila — Vanuatu’s small capital on Efaté island, with a French-influenced waterfront, the Mama’s Market (fresh produce, woven pandanus mats, island vegetables and the kava bars where men drink from coconut shells in the dark) and Hideaway Island (a short kayak from the beach, with a coral reef and an underwater post office where visitors can buy a waterproof postcard).

💡 Kava (Piper methysticum — the root of the kava plant, ground and mixed with water, drunk from a coconut shell in a nakamal (kava bar)) is the social and spiritual drink of Vanuatu and Melanesia. It produces a mild sedative, anaesthetic and euphoric effect without alcohol. Drinking kava begins at dusk; the nakamal is the centre of Melanesian social life.

1h flight from Port Vila to Luganville. Espiritu Santo (the largest island in Vanuatu) was the largest US military base in the Pacific in WWII — 100,000 American soldiers were stationed here. The SS President Coolidge (a 22,000-ton US Army transport ship, sunk in 1942 after striking its own mines — now the largest accessible shipwreck dive in the world).

💡 The SS President Coolidge was a luxury liner converted to a troopship, carrying 5,340 soldiers when it hit two US-laid mines on 26 October 1942 in the Segond Channel and sank in 60m of water. Only 2 of the 5,340 aboard died. The wreck lies on its side 40–60m deep and contains intact rooms, vehicles, guns, crockery and a famous ceramic statue called “The Lady.”

The Blue Holes of Espiritu Santo — Matevulu Blue Hole (a 20m-deep freshwater spring pool of electric turquoise, surrounded by jungle, connected to the sea by an underground river), Riri Blue Hole (swimmable inland lake, bright blue from the freshwater-saltwater mixing), and Nanda Blue Hole (the most remote and pristine, reachable by a 30-min 4WD track).

💡 The blue colour of the Santo Blue Holes comes from the refraction of sunlight through very pure fresh water with specific mineral content — the same physics that makes glacier lakes turquoise. The holes are springs connected to an underground freshwater aquifer that meets the ocean here; the mixing creates water of exceptional clarity.

The Champagne Beach (northeast Espiritu Santo) — a 1km arc of the whitest sand in the Pacific, palm-fringed, with a fringing reef visible from the beach and no development beyond a small village kiosk. It has been called the finest beach in the Pacific by multiple travel rankings.

💡 Champagne Beach was named not for its colour (though the sand is extraordinarily white) but for the small bubbles rising from a gas seep in the sand at one end of the beach — an underwater thermal vent that releases CO₂ from below, producing what looks like a fizzing section of the bay. The bubbles are visible from above the water when conditions are calm.

1h30 flight from Luganville to Tanna. Mount Yasur (Tanna Island) — one of the world’s most accessible active volcanoes (you can stand on the rim at 360m altitude and watch the eruptions from 60m above the active crater), erupting every 10–30 minutes with volleys of incandescent lava bombs visible after dark. Tanna is the John Frum cargo cult headquarters.

💡 The John Frum cargo cult (Tanna Island, active since the 1930s) worships an American GI named John Frum who promised to return with cargo (material goods) for the Tannese people. Followers march with bamboo rifles and red crosses on 15 February (John Frum Day), raising the US flag and awaiting his return. The cult has survived 90 years of contact with the outside world.

A Kastom village visit (traditional ni-Vanuatu village maintaining pre-contact dress, dance and belief systems — the men wear nambas (penis sheaths), the women grass skirts, and the village chief maintains customary law) and a night return to Mount Yasur — the volcano at night, with lava bombs arcing against a black sky, is one of the most extraordinary natural spectacles on earth.

💡 The ni-Vanuatu Kastom tradition preserves pre-contact practices in approximately 30% of the country’s population, particularly in the outer islands. In the Kastom villages of Tanna, the use of cotton clothing, money and foreign material goods is forbidden within the village boundary. The contrast with a WiFi-enabled Port Vila 2h away is one of the most extreme in the Pacific.

The Sulfur Bay hot springs (thermal pools heated by Yasur’s volcanic heat, naturally formed, at the base of the volcano) and the black sand beaches of Sulfur Bay, where Yasur’s ash falls in a fine grey layer. Fly from Tanna (TAH) to Port Vila, then international connections.

💡 Tanna’s black sand beaches are the direct product of Mount Yasur’s volcanic activity — the ash and lava fragments that reach the shore are ground by wave action into a dark grey-black sand. The beach at Sulfur Bay at dawn, with the volcano smoking behind it, is one of the most unusual coastal scenes in the Pacific.