Port Vila / Efate / general advice

All,

To assist anyone else possibly planning a trip to Port Vila, here's a brain dump from our recent travels. Hopefully this may provide one or more useful nuggets of information for someone else.

1. If you want to catch a bus around town, you just need to look for any vehicle that looks like a minibus and has a "B" stick preceding the numbers on the vehicle registration plate. You can go most places for 150VT per person per trip and just flag one down wherever you want it (assuming it's safe to do so). A bus to a slightly further place will cost you a bit more. It cost us 300VT to go to Hideaway Island ferry and would have been 400VT to go to Mele Cascades. Negotiate the price before you get into the bus if you're leaving the town - we watched two girls get out of their bus at Mele Cascades and paid the driver 900VT for the two of them but then he demanded that it was the price per person so they paid 1800VT in total - more than four times the price we paid.

2. You can negotiate a taxi arrangement easily enough (they are a variety of vehicles ranging from hatchbacks to sedans to vans but all have a "T" sticker on the vehicle registration plate). We were asking buses for the price to Mele Cascades and a taxi driver offered us the same price as the bus so long as we would agree to meet him at a designated time and go back to town with him. We were happy with that arrangement - we had to get back to town anyway, and he got a guaranteed fare. If you want to go around the island you can also make an arrangement with a taxi driver and have your own vehicle for the day. If you do this, you would need to know where you want to go to - a tour will point out places of interest and probably include your lunch. A taxi is just a means of transport which is fine if you know where you want to go and the tours don't spend enough time there (eg: go to Eton beach and swim for an hour).

3. If you're self-catering and go to a supermarket, local beef is cheap (850-900VT/kg for rump steak) but imported vegies are expensive (795VT/kg for celery). A loaf of bread was 240VT and a large breadstick was 60VT. Butter and jam were 270VT and 420VT, respectively. A litre of juice was 250-300VT. You can buy warm cans of soft drink in stores for 130-170VT if you don't like hotel minibar prices (300VT). Oddly, the cheapest we found was at Chilli's cafe next to the market, behind the supermarket which had cold cans of Coke for 120VT - seemed weird to have it cheaper cold in a cafe than warm in a store. Centrepoint supermarket has prepared baguettes with ham, cheese, tomato and lettuce for 180VT. They're not available until about 9am and are sold out by 12pm so it's best to grab one as you go past and pop it in your backpack rather than waiting for lunchtime.

4. Local vegies and fruit are cheapest at the market (eg: pineapples cost 50VT-500VT, depending on size, about 300VT will get you a good-sized succulent pineapple that is more than enough for two people). Restaurant meal prices included 1650VT (for a curry, plus 300VT for rice), 2200VT for a T-bone steak and vegies, 3000VT for a small lobster and salad. Clearly prices vary between restaurants so these are just indicative prices.

5. Emily's cafe is next to the museum. It's a 24-hour place (must be the only thing in Port Vila that's 24 hours because everyone seems to go to bed early!) that looks like it's just two shipping containers serving taxi driver's food. We ate there a couple of times and found the food to be quite good - it was a bit bland in terms of flavour like all Vanuatu food, but a sprinkle of salt and it was no problem. The food there is about 350-650VT per meal. They also have big cones of soft-serve icecream with chocolate sprinkles for 120VT - yum!

6. If you're flying to another province in Vanuatu (eg: flying from Efate to Tanna) then you need to pay 200VT per person departure tax at the airport. It's not included in your domestic airfare and must be paid at the airport, but it is included in your international airfare so you don't need to keep money aside for when you return home. There's not much to do at the airport whilst you're waiting for your plane, of course. I quite liked that everyone entering the Xray screening area and departure lounge has to walk past an airport display of a twisted WW2 airplane propellor and bomb. After all, if you're worried about flying, when you're about to get on a plane, you want one of your last visuals to be broken plane components and bombs...grin

7. If you pay bills by credit card, expect an additional charge of 3.5% - 5.0% to be added to the bill. Not everywhere charges the additional fee but most places do. It depends on the exchange rate you get as to whether it's worth paying by card or by cash. We worked out that for every AUD $1 we changed to VUV and then back, we lost about 4% so if your hotel charges 3.5% credit card, it's still worth paying the fee. You might not care so much about the fine costs like that - I was just bored one day on the beach and started doing math in my head for self-amusement.

8. A round the island tour costs ~6500VT. There are three or four variants on the itinerary but all seem to go to snorkelling at the beach where they filmed "Survivor" TV series. More accurately, it's the beach on Efate opposite the beach on the other island where the Survivor participants lived. The beach on Efate was the home base for the filming crew and support staff. Other than its role in the TV series, there's not much to note. There's toilets and a few structures but it's basically just a beach you can snorkel at, as one would expect.

9. When a cruise ship comes to town, a lot of the activities can be unavailable due to the pre-bookings by the cruise ship passengers. We only saw one cruise ship during our time there and whilst it was there, the jetboat, parasail, and seaplane which had been unused for days (from what we saw) were running continuously. If you've got a choice then don't get in a queue - just wait until the next day and you'll have your choice of times for the activities because the cruise ships are apparently usually in town for one day only.

10. Most hotels seemed to have a feast/BBQ night on one particular evening each week. The four prices we saw were all about 3000VT-4200VT per person. Ekrasup village has a Friday night feast and show which is still artificial in a sense but it's on-site in the jungle. It was more interesting, in our opinion, to get on a bus and go to a village to get the singing/dancing/feast combo rather than sit in the hotel dining area and have the hotel import a group of locals to sing and dance as you eat. It depends on the weather during rainy season. Ekrasup will accommodate up to 100 people during dry weather but only 45 people if rain is likely because that's all they can fit in the building where the food is located.

11. The ferry to Hideaway island is free but there is an island daytripper fee of 1000VT. The ferry to Iririki island costs 1500VT but you get 1500VT in vouchers to spend on the island. Arguably, the ferry is therefore free, so long as you commit to buying food and drinks on the island.

12. The museum costs 500VT for a self-guided tour and 700VT for a guided tour with a demonstration of sand drawing. The latter is highly recommended - at the end of the tour you still get to walk back to any exhibit of interest but our guide was very enthusiastic and we got much more out of the visit by paying the additional fee.

Any hints on getting from Efate to Santo?
We are thinking of landing at Port Villa for a couple of days and heading up to Santo for about 4 or 5 days to do some diving.
Any hints gratefully accepted.