I am fairly well settled into my new place here on Ambae. It is the kind of like living in a duplex. The manager of the bank where I work added my two rooms on to his existing house. My combo living room and kitchen is 12’ x 9’ while the bedroom is a full 12’x12’. The whole house is concrete so I do not have to worry too much about the cyclone season, at least while I am in the house. I have a two burner gas stove for cooking. I have already made myself some popcorn and cooked up some bullock meat (cow) with pasta dishes.

I apparently have the town singer living in the house that is behind my bedroom window. My first night here he woke me up with a 2 a.m. recital of xmas music. It only lasted 10-15 minutes. If you tell him to shut up he goes on all night. It is the start of the rainy season already, so it is hot and humid all the time. At night it is like sleeping in a wet steam bath. I fall asleep around 10:30 reading and usually wake up by 2:30 or 3 am. I am getting through a lot of books on my Kindle.

I finally get to say I walk to work uphill both ways. From my place in Saratamata to the bank where I work in Lolowei there is hill that peaks pretty much halfway between them. So I walk uphill and downhill to and from work every day. It is only a 25-30 minute walk depending in whether I am wearing shoes or sandals. The walk will only last until Jan. or Feb. when the bank branch get moved next door to my house. Which is shame I could use the exercise.

Ambae island is gorgeous, at least the few parts I have seen. One of the volunteers is teaching I/T on the grounds of a huge 20 acre school located in a valley that sits by the ocean. The place looks like something from Lost.

We have six volunteers counting me that are all new to the island. Between us we shipped thirty bags of stuff from Port Vila to Ambae. Amazing they all made it here in fairly good condition. All of you would have loved to have a picture of me standing in the baggage line as the bags were tossed off the ship from one person to another as we all stood in the water until the last person in line handed them off to someone on dry ground. Next time the ship comes in I will be far away. Catching cases of beer and 60 lbs. bags of rice is pain.

I am still working out the particulars of the job. The first 3 months are supposed to be my settling into the new village and getting to know everyone. But I have met my counterpart the micro-finance loan officer for the branch and this week we are supposed to go around to all his current customers to see if there is any financial or operational advice I can give them to help them grow.

I did meet a New Zealand volunteer my age; he made dinner for me and one of the other volunteers. I am sure he is going to be a good drinking buddy. To bad he leaves next week for 6 weeks at home while his school is on break.

P.S. I wrote this Sunday morning. Sunday night I had the plesure of my second bout with Giardia, it is even more fun the second time around.

My week of living well in Port Vila is almost over. I head out to Ambae in the morning. I thought you would like to know more about the island. I am on the top right hand tip called Lolowei. It does have good points and some potential fun with volcano times too. I will post more when I get out there and and can see things for myself.

Ambae, the original Bali Hai

Ambae inspired James Michener's mysterious island of Bali Hai in his book Tales of the South Pacific. The island is a large active shield volcano, rising to 1496m above sea level. It's Vanuatu's second highest island with crater lakes on the summit and cloud forests on the upper slopes. East Ambae is wet and the west is a rain-shadow area.

Ambae's west and northeast are densely populated. Elsewhere there are few villages. The centre for PENAMA province is at Saratamata in the northeast. Ambae is famous for its aelan taro and Melo-Melo kava.

Ambae is an excellent place for hiking and walking, good for bird watching and there are secluded beaches in the south. Not many tourists visit Ambae even though it's close to Santo with frequent and inexpensive transport links

Participatory hazard mapping

Ambae Island, Vanuatu

After a team of scientists (Shane J. Cronin, David R. Gaylord, and others) surveyed the residents of 2 large villages on the island, the original volcanic hazard map was revised. Primary changes are as follows:

– All geological mapping details have been removed. – All expected hazard processes (ashfall, gas, surge, and lahar) are contained within three relative hazard zones.

– Three solid colours are used to cover the entire island, whereas the previous map had five, partly overlapping, unfilled ovals or circles for different hazard processes that left parts of the island unzoned.

– A colour system of red (high relative hazard), yellow

(medium), and green (low) was adopted.

– Lahar hazards are highlighted by thick red lines that

follow all major drainage channels from the central

caldera (emulating the village map emphasis).

– The text is in Bislama and is reduced to the important message of relative hazard levels, replacing the lengthy French/English volcanic descriptions.

– The activity of the central crater is the primary

consideration. "The map that resulted is not sufficiently precise for land-use planning or determining hazards on a settlement-by-settlement basis, but it represents both scientific (Monzier and Robin 1995; Garaebiti 2000) and traditional views of the relative levels of hazard on Ambae. The main use of this map is in public education, and as a focal point for encouraging volcanic hazard mitigation and response planning." (Cronin et al)

Shane J. Cronin, David Gaylord, Douglas Charley, Brent V. Alloway,

Sandrine Wallez, Job W. Esau, “Participatory methods of incorporating scientific with traditional knowledge for volcanic hazard management on Ambae Island, Vanuatu,”

If you want to see some pics of life in Vanuatu, I am posting links to 3 online albums,

Also, I have found out there is a good chance I will have internet at work everyday and electricity for a few hours every night. Nothing is for sure until I get out there next week.

http://picasaweb.google.com/101078701794980673424/EkipeVillage1#

http://picasaweb.google.com/101078701794980673424/EkipeKakea1#

http://picasaweb.google.com/101078701794980673424/KarenTrip#

FYI - Kakei means eat and Karen is garden.

Well all, training in our host village has finally been completed. All 40 of us are back in Port Vila for the next week to 10 days. The last few weeks of training have been interesting and sometimes fun. I went to the island of Malekula for a 4 day visit to the site of a current volunteer of who has been in the country for about one year. It was good to see how I could be living once I go to my 2 year permanent site.

I did mange to get Giardia my last week in Ekipe. That is one nasty little sucker, but I took a huge dose of meds and it was gone in 24 hours.

As we left the host village of Ekipe it was very emotional for the trainees and our host families. There were quite a few tears all around and the trainees lightened the mood by dancing to the string band that played at our farewell dinner.

I have found out my 2 year site is the island of Ambea in northern Vanuatu. I will be working with the National Bank of Vanuatu micro finance group. My job will be to help up train the staff and do workshops in the rural communities to encourage banking and lending capabilities. I will be living in the town of Saltamata and working about a 20 minute walk away at the local bank branch on Lolowei.

I will be living in a two room place that is attached to the bank manager’s house. I have a running water toilet and an actual shower; they are both located out back of the house.

The trainee that visited my site told me that the general store across the street has a frigfreezer combo where I can buy cold beer and meat, fish etc. There is also a co-op in Lolowei that is like a giant department store.

I am scheduled to leave the capital (port vila) on November 10th to head out to my two year site. Before then we will all be sworn in on November 4th as official Peace Corps Volunteers (no longer trainees). This week is a few more sessions and shopping in town to buy the items you will need in your new house. Also, figuring out how to ship all your stuff to your island. Once I get my new PO Box I will post it.

Also, if you are trying to send me text messages none of them are getting through. Either you have to have international texting capabilities for Vanuatu or one of the volunteers told me if you send me a text from your Skype account it will get here. I should be able to check mail every couple of days while here in town so feel free to email me.

Well folks it has been almost 3 weeks since my last post. That time has been spent in the Peace Corps version of language training and learning more about your host country. The 41 trainees were sent to 4 different villages. My village of Ekipe with 350 and 73 homes has 11 trainees. Each of is staying with a different host family. Some folks have their own separate huthouse on the family land while others like me share a house with a separate bedroom. If you have a tin roofs like mine vs. a thatched roof you do not spend a lot of time indoors on a sunny day. This is usually fine because we are right next to the ocean anyway.

I have a host Mama and Papa with 3 brothers 5, 10, 13 and 1a 5 year old sister. Mama is 38 and Papa is 42. You will all be happily amused to know that Papa is the local pastor and very strict. No drinking alcohol or Kava and no playing of music. I usually get sent to bed around 8-8:30 pm each night. Which is fine since the roosters, pigs, and assorted birds tend to wake me up around 4 am each morning.

The food is mostly fresh baked bread and jam for breakfast, rice, root crops (think potato) and veggies for lunch and dinner with the occasional fried egg or chicken leg thrown in. All in all I am eating fine. I made a dish of home fries using Kumala (think yam) green peppers, onion and garlic with a big dose of oil to fry it in on the open campfire. It was the hit of the community lunch last week. All the trainees in the village cooked Simbora (mashed manioc rolled in a cabbage leaf and boiled) and we had to kill and clean a couple of roosters. That was interesting. Also I have found that when a family wants meat and they own a pig or cow pen or the cow out of the field kill and clean him in the village. What they do not eat gets sold to the other villagers. We do not have any refrigeration in our village. Most food is fairly plain and usually boiled. Most families do not use any spices when cooking. There are grocery stores in the main town of Port Vila but most locals in the rural area live off what they grow and raise. Though chocolate stuffed cookies are a big hit here. I am going to try and make spaghetti next week if I can find some basil andor oregano in town today.

My Bislama language skills are slowly getting better. I can read ok and understand everyone 60-70% of the time if they speak slowly. My speaking skills are still suspect but it has been only 3-4 weeks. Living with people whose English is minimal encourages you to learn quickly unless you want to get boiled snails for dinner thinking you asked for and were getting lobster. It happened to one of the trainees. Today is a free day to actually leave our village where electricity is solar for those that have it and internet is non-existent. We can shop and eat in town and not worry about lessons for a day.

Starting a week from Friday all 41 of will get an airline ticket to another island where we will visit a current PC volunteer in the village. It gives us a chance to see how we can get about on our own and see what our potential living and working arrangements could be. After I get back from that visit it is a week more of training in the host village and then on Oct 31st we are all back to town to get ready or swearing in as an official Peace Corp volunteer on November 4th. By the time I am able to post again I should know what my 2 year assignment will be and where I will be working in the country.

I will try to upload some pictures but the connection is slow and everyone is also trying at the same time. I think some people have loaded pics to our groups Facebook site.

http://www.facebook.com/dvanderloop?newfriend#!/group.php?gid=129866600363363

Feel free to text me if calling is too expensive, texts are free for me to receive and much cheaper for me to send. The number is 678-569-0397. 678 is the country code.

Well I made it safe and sound. I t was not a bad flight to Auckland or to Vanuatu. I to keep and managed to get some sleep and watch some crappy movies.

We landed and were greeted by a large part of the staff and volunteers on the island. Leis and coconut milk in the shell for all. After a quick tour of the town we headed out to the site for our first week of orientation and training. The site is gorgeous, right next to the beach. It is a campground used during the Easter Holiday normally. Think Boy Scout camp meets Army barracks on the beach.

We did get a chance to buy cell phones for the local telecom. My number is: 678-569-0379. 678 is the Vanuatu country code. It does have voice mail if I have it off to save power. Also we are 15 hours of east coast time.

We are learning the do’s and don’t and all the bad stuff so that we can keep healthy. I have more meds, wraps and lotions than I hope I will ever have to use.

We have an afternoon in town today to practice our language lessons and to buy items we did not bring. Like a machete.

On Friday we go for the first time to our host villages where we will be staying for the next 8 weeks completing our immersion language and customs lessons. There are 41 trainees here 17 men and 24 women. We will be split into 5 groups each in a different village.

We start living there on Sunday, where each of us will be living in out own hutbuilding on the grounds where the family house resides. I will only be able to get into town to post on a very limited if at all basis.

Oh yeah on a nice follow up to this note I type this morning. My wallet disappeared somewhere during my shopping adventures here in town. Good thing I gad all the numbers to cancel the cards.

Traveling to Vanuatu - starts with one day of training on the 10th of September in LA

Radisson Hotel at Los Angeles Airport

INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT ITINERARY:

10 SEP 10 - FRIDAY AIR UNITED AIRLINES FLT:9549

LV LOS ANGELES 930P EQP: BOEING 747 400 DEPART: TERMINAL 2 12HR 55MIN

12 SEP 10 - SUNDAY AR AUCKLAND 525A NON-STOP ARRIVE: INTERNATIONAL TERMINAL AIR

AIR NEW ZEALAND FLT:78 ECONOMY BREAKFAST

LV AUCKLAND 700A EQP: AIRBUS A320

TERMINAL 03HR 25MIN AR PORT VILA 925A NON-STOP

My mailing address for the first few months

Don Krasnosky, PCV

Peace Corps

Private Mail Bag 9097

Port Vila, Vanuatu

Ph.# (678) 26-160

This is from a letter from the Country Director talking about the first few weeks of training.

Peace Corps/Vanuatu

Pre-Service Training (PST) can be difficult and intense. While we are busy providing you many hours of language, cultural, and technical training, you are adjusting mentally, physically, and emotionally to your new surroundings and to a very different culture. We discuss this now, in hopes that you will begin to prepare yourself for the changes you are about to experience and for the rigors of the long hours of training in a hot and humid environment. Expect things to be arduous; anything less is a bonus. Without exception though, Trainees who complete PST and are sworn-in as Peace Corps Volunteers are proud of their accomplishment; confident that they will be able to successfully complete the two-year assignment awarded to them.

You have been selected to serve in a very unique place. You will join a very special group of Volunteers who are committed to contributing to the development of a nation. Peace Corps Vanuatu has a proud reputation for grassroots development and for a unique cultural sensitivity unrivaled by any other development organization.

Congratulations for making it to „Staging‟; just getting through the selection process deserves an award! See you soon...

.

Arrival in Vanuatu

Los Angeles to Port Vila, Vanuatu, via Auckland, New Zealand

You should check your bags from Los Angeles (LAX) all the way through to Port Vila, Vanuatu, through Auckland, New Zealand. For luggage tags, use the same address that you will be using for your mail:

You will arrive at Auckland International Airport from Los Angeles International Airport at approximately 05:25am on September 12 (remember you will gain a day when crossing the international dateline!). Your flight from Auckland to Port Vila aboard Air Vanuatu departs at 07:35am on the same day and takes about three hours, arriving in Vanuatu at 9:25am (local time). The Peace Corps staff at Staging will provide you with more information about your travel to Vanuatu. 2

Prior to landing in Vanuatu, you must complete the arrival card that is provided to you by your flight attendant. Mark the section of the card that asks your status as “new resident”. After you step off the plane, you will go

through Immigration and Customs. There will be two lines at the Immigration counter: one for visitors, and one for citizens and residents. Go to the line for citizens and residents. Even though you will not have a visa stamp in your passport there is no need to worry. Clearly identify yourself to the Immigration Officer as a “new Peace Corps Volunteer” so they will be prompted to check a list that has your name on it. Your passport will be stamped for entry into the country.

Once you have passed through the Immigration station, you will collect your baggage and then stand in line for the Quarantine people. Hopefully, you won‟t have anything to declare, but if you do, declare it. If there are any problems we will be summoned by the Customs people and sort it all out. We suggest that you take one of the free baggage trolleys that are near the baggage carousel (hey we are a small country – there is only one!). Try not to mix up your bags with other trainees in your group, i.e. one trolley per trainee. You will want to make sure that you have all of your bags before we load them on the bus or trucks that will be right outside the exit door from Customs.

You will be met at the airport in Port Vila by Eddie Stice, Country Director (CD), Sara Lightner, Programming and Training Officer (PTO), and a whole host of other staff, Volunteers, and friends of Peace Corps. After we have loaded all your bags, you will be driven to your orientation accommodation approximately one half hour from the airport. We will drive through Port Vila for a short tour and then on to your first home away from home. Once we arrive, there will be a short briefing and lunch will be served. After lunch we will have a short “toktok” and a bit of “walk-around” money will be given. Once you have a bit of money in your pocket a representative of the Digicel Mobile Phone Company will be there to sell you Nokia phones at a special discounted rate. You don‟t have to buy one, but you will have the option. A brief talk on phone usage during PST will be given as well. After the phone talk we will hand out your basic Peace issue gear like mosquito net, foam pad, and bush lighting apparatus. The next morning your first real pre-service training session starts at 8:00 am. Your orientation accommodation is “no frills” and the food will be island style, so keep the expectations in check and be prepared to try some new foods. There will be plenty of local vegetables and tropical fruits available and you can‟t go wrong with that cuisine. You will be sharing a room with another trainee or a same sex dorm.

Suggested Dress upon Arrival

The clothes that you wear upon arrival in Port Vila and throughout your time in Vanuatu are important. The simple standard is to dress neatly and modestly. For women, a skirt and a blouse or nice t-shirt is adequate. The skirt should be long and loose and the blouse/t-shirt should cover the shoulders and midriff. For men, nice slacks with collared shirts will be fine, the shorts can come later.

The First Few Days…

From Sunday afternoon to Friday mid-day you will be staying at the IDS Training Center at Pango, approximately 20 minutes out of Port Vila. You will be flat out with orientation sessions covering health, safety/security, and language and cultural basics. You will come into Port Vila once during this period for self-directed learning activities, medical interviews and Country Director interviews. There may be an opportunity to send a quick email from one of the internet cafes or even the PC Resource Center, but that time is not built into the schedule. Once you board the plane in Los Angeles, we strongly suggest that you begin the process of mentally disengaging from all instant messaging and focus on adjusting to life in Vanuatu. For many of you, this will be difficult, but non-emergency communication at the orientation site and in your training village will not be like it was in the US. There will be no email at the orientation site or in the training village. All snail mail will be delivered to your training site once per week. Any emergency messages from home will come through the Peace Corps Office and you will receive these messages ASAP.

Off to the Village Training Site

On Friday, September 17, you will move to one of five community-based training sites on the north coast of Efate Island. There will be between six and ten trainees at each of the five villages or sub-villages. For you to better experience life in a real village it is important that we spread your class out. You will be introduced to your host families upon arrival and then you will be off to settle-in to your new homes for next six weeks. The idea behind community-based training (CBT) is that you will have the opportunity to learn language and culture by immersion. There will be formal language sessions, but a significant amount of your training will be with your village host family and as you “live” in the village. We will be promoting self-directed learning (SDL) in your PST, confident in you as adults, and given the opportunity, you will figure things out. You will be gathering with your small cluster group for language training each day and on occasion some small group activity work. There will be two training staff living in each of the villages. Again, we believe that the best learning comes from being allowed to figure things out in a safe and supportive environment. After a few weeks in the village, you will have a chance to visit a Volunteer at his or her site. This will give you an opportunity to see how a particular Volunteer has adjusted to life in a rural Vanuatu community.

Your training group is officially known as Group 23. You will be officially referred to as Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs), pending successful completion of your pre-service training. Your official swearing-in ceremony marks the status change from PCT to PCV. When you finish your service here in Vanuatu you will become an RPCV, retaining that title virtually forever.

Pre-Service Training Basics and Expectations

The training program will model an approach to development by providing opportunities that encourage critical thinking, creative problem-solving, information gathering and analysis, flexibility, patience, professionalism, adaptability, and self-sufficiency.

Once you arrive and over the first few weeks we will dazzle you with technical training terms and detailed competencies, but the bottom-line is, we want to prepare you to go to site with confidence, knowing the basics, but also knowing that your support staff will be there to back you up and provide additional assistance should you need it. Here are a few of the basics that you will grasp during the short 8 week pre-service training:

Develop a sufficient command of Bislama to enable you to communicate effectively.

Enhance your interpersonal skills and self-sufficiency to allow you to feel comfortable in the Vanuatu culture and to meet your personal needs and job objectives in a culturally acceptable way.

Develop an understanding of your technical assignment and develop the skills necessary to perform your job.

Understand what is expected of you as Volunteers, enabling you to set personal and professional goals and to measure your progress in achieving these goals.

Clarify your role as a professional in Vanuatu, and build your skills to adapt and work effectively within local systems and to gain the respect and cooperation of colleagues and supervisors.

Develop an understanding of the Peace Corps mission, Post‟s vision, and your role as a professional development worker in Vanuatu.

Understand Peace Corps Vanuatu policies, goals, and support systems.

Develop effective skills for making the transition to a new culture using observation, information gathering, and validation.

Develop skills that enable you to manage loneliness, isolation, and stress effectively, while also understanding basic nutrition, hygiene, and personal health and safety.

Develop an understanding of environmental issues in Vanuatu.

Be exposed to the realities of being a Volunteer and encouraged to examine your motivation and commitment to two years of Volunteer service.

Dear Prospective Volunteer -- Please give this letter to your family and ask them to hold on to it for as long as you are in Vanuatu.

Dear Families,

Greetings from the Pacific Desk in Washington, D.C.! It is with great pleasure that we welcome your family member to the 2010 Vanuatu training program. We receive many questions from Volunteers and family members regarding travel plans, sending money, relaying messages and mail, etc. As we are unable to involve ourselves in the personal arrangements of Volunteers, we would like to offer you advice and assistance in advance by providing specific examples of situations and how we suggest handling them.

1. Written Communication. (Please see #3 for the mailing address to the Peace Corps office in Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu) The mail service in Vanuatu is not as efficient as the U.S. Postal Service; thus, it is important to be patient. It can take 4 to 6 weeks for mail coming from Vanuatu to arrive in the United States via the Vanuatu postal system.

We suggest that in the first few letters sent, the Volunteer family member give an estimate of how long it takes to receive the letters and then try to establish a predictable pattern of how often the volunteer will write. (Keep in mind that written correspondence sometimes wanes as the volunteer’s service progresses.) Also, try numbering your letters so that the Volunteer knows if one has been missed. Postcards should be sent in envelopes--otherwise they may be found on the wall of the local post office!

Volunteers often enjoy telling their “war” stories when they write home. This is one of the exciting and adventurous elements of serving as a Volunteer. Anecdotes in letters might describe recent illnesses, lack of good food, isolation, transportation challenges, etc. While the subject matter is good reading material, it is often misinterpreted or exaggerated on the home front. There are two Peace Corps medical officers at the Peace Corps office in Vanuatu. In the event of a serious illness, the Volunteer is sent to Port Vila and is cared for by our medical staff. If Volunteers require medical care that is not available in Vanuatu, they are medically evacuated to a nearby country (Fiji, Australia) or the United States. Fortunately, these are rare circumstances.

If for some reason your normal communication pattern is broken and you do not hear from your family member for an abnormal amount of time, you may want to contact the Office of Special Services (OSS) at Peace Corps Washington at 1-800-424-8580, extension 1470. Also, in the case of an emergency at home (death in the family, sudden illness, etc.), please do not hesitate to call OSS immediately, so that we can inform the Volunteer. You may call the above number during regular business hours, as well as after hours and weekends. Tell the operator your name, telephone number, and the nature of the emergency and the Duty Officer will return your call.

Dear Prospective Volunteer: Please give this letter to your family and

ask them to hold on to it for as long as you are in Vanuatu.

2. Telephone Calls. The telephone service in Vanuatu can be inconsistent at times, as well as pricey. During training, your family member may have scarce access to email, but some of the host training families may have phones in either their homes or at a nearby location. Your family member will communicate what that phone number may be.

During their service, access to email should be available—albeit not necessarily at all times. They will also be able to inform you of their telephone number once they arrive at their permanent sites in the country.

The Pacific Desk maintains regular contact with the Peace Corps office in Vanuatu through phone calls and email. However, these communications are reserved for business only and cannot be used to relay personal messages. All communication between family members and the Volunteer should be done via international mail, email, or personal phone calls, unless there is an emergency and you cannot reach your family member.

3. Sending packages. Family and friends like to send care packages through the mail. Unfortunately, sending packages can be a frustrating experience for all involved due to the high incidence of theft and heavy customs taxes. You may want to try to send inexpensive items through the mail, but there is no guarantee that these items will arrive. We do not recommend, however, that costly items be sent through the mail. You may use the following address to send letters and/or packages to your family member until he/she has informed of a different address:

[Trainee’s Name]

Peace Corps/Vanuatu

PMB 9097

Port Vila

Republic of Vanuatu

It is recommended that packages be sent in padded envelopes if possible, as boxes tend to be taxed and opened more frequently.

We hope this information is helpful to you during the time your family member is serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Vanuatu. We understand how frustrating it is to communicate with your family member overseas and we appreciate your using this information as a guideline.

Please feel free to contact us at the Pacific Desk in Washington, D.C. if you have any further questions. Our phone numbers are 1-800-424-8580, ext. 2523 or 2522, or locally, 202-692-2523 or 202-692-2522.

Sincerely,

Shelley Swendiman

Pacific Desk

Country Desk Assistant

This is a research note from one of the other volunteers:

According to the folks at my local Post Office, the US has completely discontinued overseas 'surface' mail and packages. So, no more cheap rates and long waits (formerly, 'The Slow Boat to China'). Airmail is the only option.

Here are some of the numbers they gave me:

"Small Packet"-- 4-lb (2-kilo?) rate for $30.35 (1 cu. ft. max)

"Regular International"-- 79" (length + girth) maximum,

(eg., at max size, 10 lbs ~ $70)

Priority Mail 'flat-rate' boxes may be used for international (w/ a 20-lb max):

Small = $13.45, Medium = $43.45, Large = $55.95

Remember that Vanuatu customs officials will try to collect a tax/tarriff on items that arrive and that some packages may just 'disappear' in the mail.

Full Name - Republic of Vanuatu

Capital City - Port Vila (on the island of Efate)

Area - 12, 189 km2 , (4,706 sq miles)

Population - 221,417 (2007, National Statistics)

Time Zone - GMT/UTC +11. There is no daylight saving in summer.

Country Dialing Code +678

Languages - There are over 120 distinct languages and many more dialects in Vanuatu but only 3 official languages: English, French and Bislama

Religion - Christian (84%), Other (16%)

Currency - Vatu (VT). Foreign cash, travellers cheques and credit cards are widely accepted in Port Vila.

The 83 islands of Vanuatu (the name means "Land Eternal") stretch north-south 1,300 km, from the Torres Islands near Santa Cruz in the Solomons to minuscule Matthew and Hunter Islands (also claimed by France) east of New Caledonia. This neat geographical unit is divided into three groups: the Torres and Banks Islands in the north, the Y-shaped central group from Espiritu Santo and Maewo to Efate, and the Tafea islands (Tanna, Aniwa, Futuna, Erromango, and Aneityum) in the south. Together they total 12,189 square km, of which the 12 largest islands account for 93%. Espiritu Santo and Malekula alone comprise nearly half of Vanuatu's land area.

Vanuatu sits on the west edge of the Pacific Plate next to the 8,000-meter-deep New Hebrides Trench. This marks the point where the Indo-Australian Plate slips under the Pacific Plate in a classic demonstration of plate tectonics. Its islands are pushed laterally 10 centimeters a year in a northwest direction, accompanied by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. In the past three million years Vanuatu has also been uplifted 700 meters, or approximately two millimeters a year.

The overwhelming majority of tourists visit only Efate, Espiritu Santo, and Tanna, and indeed these three islands contain Vanuatu's best-known sights, including the country's only towns, Port Vila and Luganville. Tanna is acclaimed for Yasur Volcano and the Jon Frum Cargo Cult, Efate has an interesting road around its coast, and Espiritu Santo boasts one of the South Pacific's finest beaches. Ambrym is less known but outstanding for its active volcanoes. Virtually all of the islands are worth visiting by those willing to slow down and enjoy the unspoiled local environment and friendly people. It's easy to get lost and found in Vanuatu.

This is a map showing some of the islands that make up Vanuatu

Here are some more Vanuatu facts: