Ambae Trek & Volcano

So my friend Zack and I decided to have another adventure on Ambae. Some other volunteers were going to East at one girl’s house, Kara, to climb up to the volcano. The day before Zack and I walked from West to East which took most of the day. Afterwards we met up with the other volunteers and stayed at Kara’s for the night. We had previously arranged transport so we could get from Kara’s site to South Ambae because that’s where we were going to climb up the volcano from. It was supposed to come at 5:30AM and we were all up and ready to go but surprise, the truck never came. It was about 7:00 when we decided to just start walking to the village we needed to get to. Finally we get there and then by this time it’s too late to go to the volcano because it takes a while to get up and go down and then we’d have to worry about transport getting back once it was dark. Everyone decided to get the tattoo that day (oh did I mention you get a tattoo when you climb this volcano?) and then climb up the volcano the next day. I know how things work here and I pretty much knew it wasn’t going to happen and I really wanted to go so the guides were going up anyway and I decided to just go with them.

So we went up just me and two Ni-van boys and we were going at a pretty brisk pace. We actually made it up in 4 ½ hours and but the entire place was shrouded in clouds once we were an hour up so it was hard to see a lot but I did get to the see the big lake on top next to the volcano. From what I understand there’s one giant lake (Manarangoro) which is what I saw and then there’s lake Vui which is where the volcano is (underneath the lake). I took some pics (below) and then we went back down really fast, it only took 3 hours. We got back just at 6:00pm which is when the sun goes down so we got back just in time. I knew I wouldn’t be able to find a truck back to Kara’s so I decided to stay with the Ni-vans in the village which was pretty cool. Oh so I got my first tattoo! It’s pretty small and the meaning behind it is everyone used to have it and it means when you die you will eternally be dancing on top of the volcano where as everyone else who doesn’t have it will be swimming in the ocean with the sharks. So yeah it’s pretty cool and I’m pretty excited about it. Anyway the next day was Sunday and I knew I had to get back to school on time to teach class on Monday so I slept in the village and set off early the next day to make it back to West. So I started in South, walked to East, walked to North, got a truck for an hour of the way, eventually made my way back to West, hopped on a boat, and then walked some more and made it back to Londua at about 8:00pm. So I walked for about 10 hours but I pretty much rounded Ambae in one day which was really tiring. After telling Ni-vans what I did they were pretty amazed and said they would never make that walk so now I’m man blong walkabout.  Anyway that was the first time I climbed up Manaro so I’m excited to go back again a bunch of times and if you’re reading this and you also want to climb just contact me and that would be pretty awesome!

Our group going up