Travel to Vanuatu and experience one of the Pacific Islands most colourful holiday destinations. It is a land that combines fantastic scenery which includes some of the worlds most active volcanoes with an island culture that is friendly and inviting. Here you can walk to the crater of an active volcano and watch the molten lave spew upwards or you can relax in a quiet resort on a coral atoll that will take your breath away with its magnificent beauty. The capital of Vanuatu is Port Vila on the island of Efate, which is one of the 83 islands that make up the group. Vanuatu is one of the closest Pacific Island nations to Australia and you can fly there from Brisbane in only two and a half hours. The most common languages are English, French and pidgin English and there are many other native tongues. The currency here is the vatu and you will be able to use credit cards here in most resorts and restaurants.
Resort accommodation is spread across the nation and the islands of Tanna, Espiritu Santo and Efate a each have some memorable resorts to stay at. On Tanna you will find the volcano called Yasur, which is one of the most active and approachable volcanoes in the world. You can approach the fiery crater on foot and watch the primal power of lava erupting before your eyes. Vanuatu has a number of active volcano’s, some of which have had eruptions in the past, that rank with the most violent that the world has ever seen. When Ambrym volcano erupted around a thousand years ago it blew 25 cubic kilometers of rock into the sky. Kuwai volcano erupts approximately every ten thousand years and its past eruptions would have explosions like Krakatoa pale into insignificance.
The islands of Vanuatu have been inhabited since around 2000BC and this is supported by archaeological evidence. Portugese explorer, Perdro Fernandez de Quiros was the first European visitor in 1605 but it wasn’t until the eighteenth century that other European explorers like Capt James Cook visited on his second voyage to the Pacific and later settlers began to arrive. In 1887 a joint British and French naval commission administered the island before they were granted independence in 1980. Today, the islands are divided into six provinces and the traditional culture and tribal ways are still the norm in many of the more northern islands of the group. The main islands are more westernised with a strong tourism industry and commercial development.
As a holiday destination, Vanuatu is everything you would expect of a tropical island destination with beautiful beaches flanked by swaying coconut palms and fringed by magnificent coral reefs. A backdrop of rugged mountains covered by lush rainforests and magnificent waterfalls completes this idyllic image. It is a divers paradise with clear waters and fantastic visibility that you can only find in the Pacific Islands where water pollution is practically non existent. The coral reefs here are as beautiful and diverse as anything you can find elsewhere in the world and there are relics from the war here, like sunken ships that are fantastic dive sites.
Vanuatu is one of those friendly Pacific nations like Fiji to its east, that is as inviting as the images that your imagination has been conjuring up all your life. Now is the time to travel to Vanuatu and enjoy the holiday of your dreams.