I had the pleasure of a week in Vanuatu recently and had intended on doing some ‘adventure scootering’ while there as I had heard the roads were all gravel and very badly potholed. It turned out however that Downers have been over in Vanuatu and resurfaced the entire round island road outside of the capital and only town of Port Villa.
There are not many roads that run off the main road around the island and most are a few hundred metres long at best, beyond that there are trails into the forest eveywhere but the land is all owned by the local tribes and local protocal and law dictates that you can’t ride the trails unless you have permission from the local tribe chief.
This put my adventure scootering plan out the window however we did get out for a few other vehicular adventures. A number of companies run off-road buggy tours so we opted to do one of those.
In the buggy
Some of the tracks are fairly overgrown
We got to go along a few beaches
Some people didn’t give it enough gas to get through the soft sand at the edge of the beach.
A few days later we hired a 300cc quad bike to go out to a turtle sanctuary as it was the only place we wanted to go and a quad was much cheaper than a tour that also took in other places we weren’t interested in.
Quads can be road registered in Vanuatu though you don’t often see people riding them unless they are tourists. Ours was a no name Honda ripoff that went quite well considering the roads. Most of the local buses we went in the suspension was absolutely stuffed as the roads in Port Vila are very badly pot holed as they haven’t been resealed in a long time.
The road out to the Turtle Sanctuary is one of the very few dirt roads off the main sealed road outside Port Vila that actually goes somewhere.
It doesn’t look like it but it’s actually very badly potholed
There was a failed property development out along the dirt road to the Turtle sanctuary which at some stage had had nice seperated lane roads with roundabouts every few hundred meters. Nature was well on her way to claiming it all back again.
The quad hire company also had a couple of Royal Enfields on their books
Been there and I’ve done the buggy’s tour lots of fun! A bit expensive but enjoyed the beach and the weather! Its great place to go for holiday.
followed your escapades with interest – I lived in Vanuatu for 8 months in 2004 – on Malekula and Espirto Santo islands
Interested to see from your posts the entrepreneurial things (in terms of adventure tourism) that have occurred on Efate since we were there.
I salute you for the energy you put into this site – Respect 🙂