We landed in Espiritu Santo in the morning after an early flight out of Port Vila. Taking a bus to Luganville was easy, finding a free hotel room for us was not! Due to some agriculture festival, everything was fully booked. Luckily, a friendly guesthouse owner let us keep our bags at her place and also booked us on a bus going to Lonnoc Beach for the afternoon. Instead of just waiting around though, we took a minibus to Million Dollar Point for some snorkelling. Million Dollar Point is a spot where the US military dumped a whole shipload of war material after Vanuatu couldn’t afford to buy it from them at the end of World War 2. I didn’t expect much, but it was actually really really cool!! There were ship wrecks, tanks, cars and more. It was lots of fun to snorkel around and dive down in between! One of the wrecks was busy with groups of fish, some of them very big. A very enjoyable snorkel site!!
Later on, we went to Lonnoc Beach by minibus, where we set up our tent for the first time! Yayy! It was a beautiful spot for our first camping experience – right next to the beach. Next day, we walked to Champagne Beach which we had all to ourselves in the morning. It’s truly one of the most beautifully white beaches I’ve ever seen!!
When it got more crowded around noon, we left and walked to Hog’s Harbour – a little village with not much going on. Unfortunately there was no restaurant and only a little shop, so we were once more forced to eat at the expensive restaurant of our accommodation. It’s easy to save money in Vanuatu by camping, but unfortunately the places hardly ever have a shared kitchen, so you end up having to eat out, which was often double of what we paid for camping! A bit odd, a bit annoying.
After Lonnoc, we hitched a ride to Port Olry where we camped once again right next to the beach. Awesome! Weather was a bit cloudy that day, but the beach was still really beautiful! Yeps, Santo definitely has some great beaches to offer.
We had a busy program on Santo – so next day morning we woke up early to take a minibus back to Luganville where we went for a dive on the famous wreck of the SS Coolidge. Unfortunately our dive center ended up being really bad, so instead of the originally planned 2 dives, we only went for 1 dive. Even with shitty equipment and a careless divemaster, it was still good to see though and an impressive wreck to dive! The water wasn’t very clear on that day, so I can imagine with better visibility and a better dive shop, this would be a really awesome experience.
The rest of the day we just relaxed, set up our tent in the back of Asia Motel’s garden and went for a walk to the local market. South Pacific markets are beginning to get a bit repetitive at this stage, but it was still nice to see this part of Luganville! We generally quite liked Luganville, only in the evenings it was hard to find any restaurant. Luckily the Asia Motel DID have a shared kitchen!
On our last day in Santo, we wanted to visit some blue holes. Hitching a ride up to near Matevulu Blue Hole was not easy, but in the end a friendly guy dropped us off at a kayak rental place – the best way to reach this blue hole is to paddle there along a pretty river! It was further than expected and against the current, but after about 40min we arrived. Wow! We were suddenly surrounded by very blue water and there were some cool swings to jump in and have some fun. Which is exactly what we did! Very much recommended!
Next, we paddled back and hitched a ride further to Nanda Blue Hole. Here the water was of an even deeper blue and super clear! With our mask we were able to see all the way to the bottom. Really cool!! Both blue holes were pretty in their own way, so I’m glad we went to both of them!
Hitching a ride back into Luganville was harder than expected, but in the end a sweet lady took us, showed us her cava bar and didn’t even want to take any money for the ride! Unfortunately, a little wound Mathijs had gotten after diving with Uepi in Marovo Lagoon, and which we had not paid much attention to until then, suddenly got badly infected and his whole ankle got really swollen! Shit. We were due to fly to Ambrym next day for some volcano trekking…
Just Booked A Trip 