Vanuatu: active volcanoes and kastom culture

descriptionDescription

This itinerary covers Vanuatu in ten days — the South Pacific's least touristic and most authentic country, with 83 volcanic islands and 113 indigenous languages, the highest linguistic density on Earth. It starts in Port Vila, the Franco-British colonial capital, with its craft market, the crystal blue holes and the coffee of Tanna. The island of Tanna holds Mount Yasur — the world's most accessible volcano, with strombolian eruptions continuous for 800 years; you can stand on the crater rim at 361 meters while lava explodes a hundred meters high. The kastom village of Yakel, where the ni-Vanuatu live as their ancestors did 1,000 years ago, was immortalised in the 2015 film Tanna. Espiritu Santo — the largest island — offers the SS President Coolidge, the world's largest diveable wreck at 20-70 meters, the Matevulu Blue Pools and the Champagne Beaches of volcanic white sand. Pentecost is famous for land diving (naghol), the original bungee, where men hurl themselves from 30-meter towers with vines tied to their ankles.