Dave and Rene descend on Santo

The first visitors from NZ have finally made it! Dave and Rene arrived for 10 days of fun, frivolity and a taste of island life 'volunteer style'. After a relaxing first night, we headed out for a kava bar crawl: three different kava bars in Charpie, with Jack our resident kiwi guide. With mama's selling island kakae at the second kava bar, we had an opportunity to dine on Sambora, laplap, poulet fish and papaya... although the mud crabs may have been a little dodgy.

#tip number 1: avoid the seafood unless you're really sure of cooking methods

#tip number 2: don't kakae anything you can't peel or haven't washed yourself

Dave and Rene explored Luganville, Dave did the Millennium Cave tour, we went horse riding on a farm owned by a kiwi women, interspersed with a number of trips to Aore Island Resort for swimming, snorkling and lunch.

The Aore Swim was also on while they were here. I got he message that it was about to start 20mins beforehand, so raced down, managed to get on a small banana boat, and got to watch the 2.6km race closeup. Andrew was swimming, and came middle of the field, with the winner making it across in 27 minutes.

For the weekend before tufala go back long Neu Sialan (NZ), Rene and I played netball on Saturday afternoon (hot tumas!!!) and then we decided to go for a trip to Loru Protected Area, to sate Dave's bird-watching appetite, and then the classic trip to Champagne Beach and a Blue Hole. Arriving at Loru (only just though, as the wheel of our transport was sounding fairly dodgy), we met Chief Caleb and then headed out to the protected area with his son Calsekap. The walk included a variety of vegetation and apparently we saw a couple of the few endemic bird species of Vanuatu. We also saw a Namalao (megapode or incubator bird) which is a protected species here. Dave and Rene also got the opportunity to taste some classic island kakae when you go bush... including of course coconuts.

Then it was off to Champagne Beach for some swimming, relaxing, clown fish and kakae, then to Matevulou Blue Hole for the standard rinse before heading home for a final kava and kakae at our favourite chinease restaurant: Ocean King (I'll have the lemon chicken, and save room for deep fried ice cream... ummmmm).