louiseinlimbo

The only sensible flights out of Vanuatu for me were those to Australia, so I decided to visit a friend in Sydney who I hadn't seen for quite a few years.  She'd kindly offered to host me for as long as I wanted, and I envisaged a week of sleeping, editing my photos from the Pacific, and catching up with online stuff.  However, I got there to find that (a) she had a full programme of entertainment mapped out, and (b) she has no wifi in her apartment but relies on data on her phone - which I couldn't even hotspot to as she has only limited data.  Not that I'm complaining, it was great to see her, there was a shopping mall with virtually unlimited wifi only a short bus ride away, and I accepted that I would just have to delay the other stuff until I moved on to my next destination. So we went out for a number of lovely walks (Sydney is such a well-located city, with so many beautiful bays around the coastline there and lots of greenery - and birds! - inside the city), and...

I didn't really want to end my posts on the Pacific islands with the last sad one on the small, struggling countries, as some of the larger islands such as Palau, Samoa and the Solomon Islands were very different.  Mostly clean and tidy, for one thing, with beautiful, lush countryside, and a much more upbeat feel.  The above picture, for example, is just a street through a small town / village in Samoa - full of flowers and with no litter! The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (in Samoa) is beautiful, but represents something else I found surprising about these countries - the strong role of the Christian faith.  There are churches everywhere, lots of very well-maintained and decorated tombs and graveyards - and no topless women!  Somehow my image of this part of the world encompassed women in grass skirts, with chains of flowers around the head/neck ... but with nothing on the top half of the body.  But that has been stopped by the Christian religion, espe...

Like Nauru, Kiribati and Tuvalu were quite sad places to visit, both for their history (rusting tanks, gun emplacements, etc) and for the litter, abandoned cars, etc, from their present-day occupants.  But also from the threat of rising sea level resulting from climate change. Tuvalu is taking steps (largely funded by the UNDP's Green Climate Fund) to build up its landmass against the sea, with thousands of sacks of some 'geotextile' mineral - imported from Fiji - providing a barrier, within which they have deposited some 250,000 cubic metres of sand dredged from the sea the other side. now filling an area covering some 7 hectares. The aim is to provide flood-free land to protect against sea level rise and the larger waves which come with cyclones.  I read that on completion in early 2024, this will be the highest land on the island – around 2.4 metres above the highest tide – and should remain flood-free and safe for at least the next 80 years. Of course it is good to se...