Top spots in Efate, Vanuatu

Malowia Guesthouse is a modern, self-contained bungalow with a white sand beach and spectacular views of Nguna and Pele Islands, see https://www.malowiaguesthouse.com/ for full details.

Sunset at Malowia Guesthouse, Paunangisu, North Efate

We’d stayed at the bungalow many times before when visiting Vanuatu. It has an amazing number of comforts including insect screens on windows, lights and working power points and a fully operational kitchen including a gas cooktop and a fridge. There is a bathroom with a flush loo and a shower that not only has running cold water but hot water too!

You don’t usually find these facilities when staying in village accommodation. That’s a bit of an understatement. I was just remembering the time I stayed in Ambrym and slept on a pandanus mat on a concrete floor for a week and ‘showered’ out of a bucket. It was worth it to witness the Magic Festival, two days of kastom ceremonies and performance art passed down through countless generations.

At Malowia Guesthouse, not only can you sleep and bathe in comfort, you experience contemporary village life as locals harvest fruit and nuts from community trees and hunt seafood.

Small boats tootle between islands, bristling with ridiculous numbers of passengers, the gunwales of the vessels almost level with the water. If a wave should slosh over the edge and into the boat, there’s usually a can or something similar lying in the bottom of the boat with which to bail out sea water or rain water if you happen to sail through a downpour.

You can swim and snorkel in crystal clear water, sit in the shade under Casuarina trees, chat with people passing by or just loll in a hammock on the verandah of the bungalow with a good book. You don’t even need to bring a book. There are plenty to choose from in the bungalow.

Janet and Willy Banyan are delightful hosts. Their guesthouse is a haven of first-world dimensions. It is wonderfully clean and stocked with linen, kitchen implements including a coffee plunger, board games and snorkeling gear and many other treasures. Janet can arrange a variety of local tours for you including day trips to Nguna or Pele islands and there are several canoes available for guests so you can paddle around to your heart’s content.

Aisling found a clam shell on Kakula Island just across the water from Malowia Guesthouse

When staying at Malowia , we prefer to cater meals for ourselves. We are out and about in the day so we have cereal, fruit and a plunger of Tanna coffee then we’d eat lunch out or make sandwiches to take with us. You could never be sure what the day would bring and what time we might return to the bungalow although we tried our hardest to get back before sunset. When we mananged to get back in time, we’d have what we called Sunset O’clock, sitting in deck chairs on the beach, drinks in hand, admiring the brilliant colours in the sky and reflected on the water, the offshore islands floating in fiery ripples. The extinct volcanic crater on Nguna appears to erupt as large clouds hover over the peak.

Front row seat for sunset o'clock, Malowia Guesthouse, North Efate

We arrived at Malowia midway through January last year making reservations for ten weeks while our house was being built at Ekipe, about fifteen kilometers down the road. Our only other option would have been to stay in Port Vila but that was half way around the island. I needed to start at Ekipe School in February and Tim wanted to be onsite throughout the house construction. If we’d stayed in Vila, that would have meant a two hour daily commute, probably longer depending on The Rock Factor.

We stayed in an apartment in central Port Vila for two months in 2016. Being December and January, it was hot and humid. Our apartment had an air-conditioner but apart from it being pretty well useless, we were informed that we would be charged a hefty fee if we did use it, in fact the owner took a large cash deposit from us upon check-in on the off-chance that we would use it. She never got around to refunding that money. We only turned the air-con on a couple of times. We wanted to see how we’d cope with the tropical climate of Vanuatu as we weren’t planning to have air-conditioning in the house that we hoped to build in the jungle.

Most nights, just after sunset, a thick pall of smoke from all the cooking fires in all the surrounding suburbs of Vila descended on us, held in place by the warm and heavy layer of air above it. Some nights you could just not bear to breathe it. It wasn’t ‘clean’ smoke from wood and leaves. People burn plastic and other rubbish in their fires, plastic rice bags are effective fire starters. On the very worst nights when we couldn’t see the harbour in front of us, we’d shut the doors and do battle with the air-con for a few hours, waiting for the little breeze that might arrive later in the evening to whisk the smoke away.

This apartment had a panoramic view of the harbour. Cruise ships would float past in the mornings on the way to the docks and in the early evening, they’d glide back the other way heading out to sea, twinkling with lights, flashes from cameras sparkling in an exercise in futility, technicolours radiating from the giant movie screen showing the latest kiddy flick on the top deck.

We could see the top of the white funnels on the cruise ships sneaking along the top of the headland before they entered the harbour. We’d start humming the theme from ‘Jaws’ and then we’d start planning a day that did not involve central Port Vila which would be thronged by ‘boat people’.

It was nice to see the ships close up for a few minutes as they passed by every few days and the sunsets were as colourful as you’d expect given that the apartment faced due west. The drawback of a western aspect was that the sun would blaze through the room’s glass doors from midday until the sun set below the horizon at 6:30 pm. It was a massive problem and you could set your watch by the furnace effect. If we hadn’t left the apartment by midday, we would start to melt. Every day for two months we had to go somewhere else, except when Tim got a fever and needed to stay in bed for two days with the air-conditioner unit blasting away on the verandah in the hottest hours, it was not doing much more than sucking out a bit of humidity from the air.

It was a challenge to find a cool place to spend each afternoon without spending a bucket of money. We were already spending half a bucket of money on a rental car so every day we’d load the car up with bottles of frozen water, food, towels, hats, sunscreen and bug repellant and drive out of Vila. We’d look for a shady spot by the water or we’d find ourselves driving around the island, looking wistfully at Ekipe and wishing we were staying there.

Honeymoon Beach, Pango

On previous trips, we’d found many nice places to spend a few hours beside the water. There were a few developed places such as Honeymoon Beach at Pango that charged an entrance fee and provided shelters made of local materials and basic toilets while keeping the area clean of rubbish and tree litter. We’d visit these places occasionally but we also liked to pull off the side of the road and enjoy places less frequented by tourists, meeting locals as they relaxed or fished. In 2016 we found that things had changed. Many of those little pull-in places now had signs advertising fees; 500 vatu per tourist, 200 vatu for locals or 1000 vatu per busload. Where were those laid back, welcome-to paradise, please-share-my-island vibes? At first I thought it was a bit cheeky but I quickly came to the conclusion that it’s a good thing, especially for ni-Vanuatu. It gives locals the opportunity to make an income which they can earn without leaving home or worse, selling their home. There are now more places for people to visit as they drive around the island so it’s good for tourism. Some locals are doing quite well although some places have come under dispute and are now fenced off with barbed wire which is sad.

We once found a place called Secret Beach just outside Eton; a tiny cove of cobalt blue water bordered by a crescent of pristine white sand. As we bobbed about in the water smiling at each other, we scooped up lumps of pumice bobbing on the surface. I still have some pieces. It was a glorious day and a spectacular location. Unfortunately a dreaded dispute put an end to that little business. On our next trip, the sign was removed and the gate, locked. I still look to see if it has reopened every time we drive past and if it ever does, I’ll buy a season ticket.

You can watch local kids surfing at Pango, on the other side of the Breakas development, where the village starts. Surfing culture is developing in Pango and the ni-Van surfers, both male and female, are becoming so skilled that they enter and sometimes win the international events staged here. This is quite a feat. These kids haven’t had formal tuition and they use whatever bit of board they have or can borrow. I’ve heard stories about tourists donating their surfboards to talented kids that they meet amongst the waves. That would be a significant gift, treasured by the recipients.

Further down the road we found a small beach bordered by shady trees. There was no sign forbidding us to stop or advertising fees so we pulled in and sat under the trees for a while. Soon, some locals wandered by so we asked them if it was okay for us to go for a swim. They said that was fine, we were welcome any time. This little beach became a regular spot for us for a couple of weeks and we got to know some of the locals, communicating in bits of English and Bislama. One day, we’d spread our mat under the trees and sat in the shade eating our lunch of salad rolls. We saw some ladies splashing around at the water’s edge which wasn’t unusual, we assumed that they were probably just washing pots and pans using the sand to scour them clean as we’d seen before. A man wandered past to say hello. After the usual conversation which goes something like this; hello, are you well? What is your name? Where do you live? How many children do you have? What are their names? How old are they? The man continued talking to us in rapid Bislama. At that time, my Bislama was very limited, consisting of simple conversational phrases such as; ‘nem blong mi Jo-Ann’ - my name is Jo-Ann, ‘kaikai i gud tumas’ - this food is good, ‘lukim yu bak agen’ - see you next time. Listening closely to the man as he happily chatted away, I thought I heard him say these words - ‘kilim’, ‘klinim’ and ‘pig’. He said those words again, pointing to the women in the water. Ah. They had slaughtered a pig and were washing its carcass and entrails. Luckily we hadn’t decided on a quick swim before eating. Thanking the man for the heads up and finishing our lunch, we packed up and drove further down the road to pay the 500 vatu entry at Honeymoon Beach.

We’d visited Honeymoon Beach so regularly that they only charged us the local rate after the first few times. It’s a lovely spot with a long, curved white sand beach. Like most beaches around Efate, the best times for swimming are in the hours coming up to and including hide tide. Here, you can swim in bare feet as it is mostly white sand underfoot so you don’t have to worry too much about cutting your foot on coral. It is easy to swim out to a large, sandy bottomed hole, rimmed by a wall of live coral which is great to snorkel. Tim preferred to float on the gently rolling water, hat on head, beer in hand. His favourite local brew is Tusker – Bia Blong Yumi (our beer).

We’d been driving up and down the eastern side of the island regularly during that two month visit. North of Eton, just before the stream at Le Cressonaire, we’d noticed a hand painted sign advertising the ‘Pro-Found Chill Pool’. No, I didn’t make a typo, it was written as ‘Pro-Found’ which piqued my interest and tickled my sense of humour. You see some funny signs around Vanuatu. ‘Lukaot long dog’ –beware of the dog (not necessarily a long one) and ‘jikin rum stik’ – chicken drumsticks (no rum), spring to mind.

Every time we passed the Pro-Found Chill Pool we promised ourselves that we’d go and check it out next time. There was nothing to see from the road. A barbed wire fence surrounded the property and there was a rough gate made of sticks and barbed wire to grapple with before heading down a rough looking track that disappeared into the jungle, towards the coast.

Towards the end of our stay in Vanuatu we did grapple with that gate and set off down that track which wasn’t as rough as we’d thought it would be. Eventually we came to another barbed wire gate with another track branching away, along the fence line. We stopped, unsure of which direction we should take. A man appeared from the jungle and introduced himself as Harry. He was delighted to welcome us to his swimming pool and what a beautiful pool it was; blue and deep, clear and cool. Harry was gently developing this natural paradise. He’d built shelters from local timber, bamboo, and coconut fronds near the shallows of the stream, a perfect place for families with young children and was he was planning to construct shaded benches around the deep pool which was further along, close to the sea. As we left, he loaded us up with huge pawpaws from the trees that grew in profusion.

Lewi leaps into the Pro-Found Chill Pool

We haven’t visited Harry’s Pro-Found Chill Pool for a while though I hope we’ll get back there soon. A new sign has recently appeared. Harry’s phone number is on the sign, it’s 5643406. It’s a good idea to phone before you visit so that he is expecting you and will be on standby to guide you in, off the beaten track but well worth the visit.

Emaal was another delightful place to while away the hours. Just out of Eton, Emaal has a restaurant beside a small white sand beach which is perfect for swimming. Several bungalows stand behind the restaurant, they have been under construction for a long time and I don’t think they are finished yet. The meals at the restaurant used to be really good before Cyclone Pam; fish, chips and salad, steak, chicken and burgers. You could swim and eat and swim again. We were disappointed to find the restaurant closed after Pam. Just this week we have discovered via Facebook that Emaal is open for meals again. We’ll be popping down for a visit soon.

Orovy Beach Restaurant is one of our favourite restaurants. It’s in north Efate at Emua village. Turn off the main road at the sign and drive slowly down the track. There will usually be fresh fish caught by local fishermen if the seas aren’t too rough. I had the best snapper I’ve ever eaten at Orovy. The view across the bay and islands is magnificent, quintessential South Pacific.

Tim sips a Tusker at Orovy Beach Restaurant, North Efate

The Mele area just out of Vila has a black sand beach. You can swim for free near the Hideaway Island jetty and there’s a market selling clothes and souvenirs as well as a restaurant and bar now. When I first came to Vanuatu, there wasn’t a jetty or even a signpost. On your first visit, you had to guess where the boat would land to take you across to the island. Georgia and I stayed at Hideaway for three nights on our first visit to Vanuatu, back in 2006. I remember that we were sitting on the black sand, waiting for the ferry to come when a group of rowdy tourists arrived by bus to catch the boat over. It must have been their first time. They saw the boat leaving the island and raced up to the end of the spit, about a kilometer away, believing that it was the place that the boat would land and determined to be the first on, to beat all the other people, mostly local, sitting on the beach with us, obviously waiting for transport too.

We all sat very quietly and watched them stumble across the dry, hot, black sand, getting further and further away. The first of the group had reached the spit when one of the stragglers noticed that the boat had just about landed, right where we were sitting. By the time they stumbled back, we were pulling away, fully loaded.

Sara Beach, north of Epule is a top spot for a swim, a drink and a meal. Daisy prepares delicious smorgasbord meals for 1000 vatu (AU$12) per person. If we arrive when she has a group booked for a smorgasbord, she’ll happily add us in and add more food to the banquet which includes a variety of tasty salads, fruit and curries. Daisy also has a blackboard menu offering two or more choices such as fresh poulet fish served with yams topped with coconut cream, fried plantain bananas, green pawpaw salad and about five other, different and delightful morsels. I ordered this last time I visited; the plate was full of different colours and shapes, it was a work of art.

The view from Sara Beach is spectacular, looking across sparkling waters to Emau Island. On clear days, you’ll see the Shepherd Islands in the distance. This is another great place to swim or to sit under small shelters beside the sea, sipping a cool drink. Sometimes the local string band will be there to perform. They do a highly entertaining string band version of Waltzing Matilda. When we found out that the men had no idea of the vocabulary or story within the song, we spent some time explaining it; there’s a man who steals some sheep and the police come to take the man but he jumps in the water and drowns rather than go with them. This unofficial Australian national anthem sounds a bit crazy when you try to explain it.

Sara Beach is in the middle of renovations due to damn Pam but they are open for business and will welcome you very warmly. Daisy’s phone number is 5601035 but the restaurant is open every time I drive past so you wouldn’t need to phone unless you want to arrange a meal for a group.

Bethel Garden Restaurant and Bungalows is at Ekipe, half way around the island (about 60 km) from Port Vila. They’ve been getting good feedback on their lobster. Priced at about 3000 vatu (AU$36), this would be one of the cheapest lobster meals available in Efate.

The coastline of north-east Efate on a calm day. Emau Island lies across the water and the Shepherd Islands are just visible on the left. Fishermen seek lobsters out where the waves are breaking.

The lobsters are caught off the coast by local men on nights without a moon. The sea on this side of the island is not still water, the waves are often rough. Although the fishermen choose nights when the sea is supposedly calm, imagine diving in those dark, heaving waters in the dark, dark night, the only light - a single beam from your torch and distant flickers of firelight on the coast to guide you back. I like swimming but the thought of doing that gives me shivers. I much prefer to swim in daylight, in one of the large rock pools hollowed out of the ancient coral outcrops found along this part of the coast. With colourful tropical fish flitting past, starfish, shellfish, sea cucumbers, urchins and sometimes, seahorses, it’s like swimming in a natural aquarium.

One of the glorious swimming spots near Bethel, north-east Efate

Joel and Elizabeth often source fresh fish. Other meals include chicken and steak and they can cater for groups of any size. Phone Joel on 5422437, particularly if you are hankering for a fresh lobster and you want to make sure that there’s one there with your name on it.

I’m hankering for one now.

Sila at Bethel Garden Restaurant and Bungalows with fresh lobsters

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