Vanuatu | Magda Biskup Photography

If I was to name just one thing that I love about Vanuatu I would have to say it is the people. Vanuatu is a beautiful country with great beaches, amazing jungle, colourful reef and exciting volcanos, but it is the people that make this place what it is. I wanted my trip to Vanuatu to be mostly about people, so I decided to follow friend’s recommendation and visited the village of Port Orly on Espiritu Santo.

Port Orly is located on the east coast of Espiritu Santo, about 60km from Luganville. It is the biggest village on the island and with its stunning location in a small bay, it is hard to understand why so few tourists visit it.

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October 18, 2011 by Magda

A place where the time has stopped

August 2011. Yakel, Vanuatu

Yakel is a small village on the Tanna Island, which I visited during my recent trip to Vanuatu. The unique thing about Yakel is that people live there the same way their parents and grand parents used to live. The place looks like the time stopped there a very long time ago. People walk around half naked, women wearing skirts made of coconut fibre and men dressed only in namba, traditional penis sheath. There is no electricity in the village and they have to fetch water from the nearby river. Everything they eat is produced by them. They own next to nothing. They can’t read or write. Their houses are small and very simple. Children don’t have fancy toys. Their lives are extremely simple.

Yet, they seem very happy.

;

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September 22, 2011 by Magda

Photo that almost didn’t happen

July 2011. Port Orly, Vanuatu.

I didn’t seem that the sunset was going to be interesting that night. But I set up my tripod anyway. I carefully attached my camera to the head of the tripod. Then I realised that I left my release cable at the bungalow. It was just 50 meters away, but it was enough to almost miss a great photo opportunity. As I left the bungalow with the release cable in my hand I noticed a few young boys. One of them was pushing a small canoe and the other boys walking next to him along the beach. They were moving very fast. I reached my camera at a very last moment. I didn’t have any time to adjust the settings, so I just focused and pressed the shutter button. I think it worked out quite ok :)

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September 19, 2011 by Magda

On the top of the active volcano

August 2011. Tanna Island, Vanuatu.

When I first saw Yasur – considered to be world’s most accessible active volcano – I was a bit disappointed. I guess I was expecting something bigger. Rising only 361m above the sea level, as first it didn’t seem to be very powerful. But I quickly changed my mind when I got closer to Yasur. It surely is a small volcano, but it can be very scary. Every few minutes the sky was being thorn apart by a strong explosion, and it never stopped, not even at night. Despite being so active, Yasur is accessible to tourists. It’s possible to get as close to the crater as 150m. I guess you could get even closer, but nobody attempts it. It’s because it is simply too scary. The ground shakes with each explosion, the burning rocks fly high into the sky and the ash cloud makes it difficult to breath. It’s a kind of place that doesn’t fail to impress.

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September 15, 2011 by Magda

Small gift

July 2011. Port Orly, Vanuatu.

Port Orly is a small village in the northern part of Espiritu Santo, one of Vanuatu’s islands. We went there to observe the local people and learn something about the local way of life. Of course children were the first to make friends with us. Port Orly doesn’t see many overseas visitors, so the children were clearly excited by our presence, especially by the presence of my camera. They had so much fun playing in front of the camera, posing and making faces. We gave them some postcards from Sydney as a souvenir, and they absolutely loved it.

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September 4, 2011 by Magda

Paradise found

Vanuatu, July/August 2011

Beaches and blue sea were not the reasons I wanted to go to Vanuatu. I was much more interested in the culture and the nature. But even though I am not a beach person it was very difficult to ignore those splendid places I got to see. The best thing about all of them was that more often than not we were the only people there and got the place to ourselves. One would wonder how come those paradise-like spots could be so empty. But then I guess it’s what is so great about Vanuatu – the vast majority of tourists stick to the same places (most of them being on Efate, the main island) leaving the rest of this beautiful country to those who are bother to make a little bit of effort and go somewhere else.