Volcano? Nah. Lost? Yea.

So just the next weekend I wanted to go up the volcano again and two British/Australian volunteers near me (Katie + Lucinda) had a friend that was going up and invited them along, who in turn invited me to go up. The plan was that we were going to clear the road as we went up so they took up bush knives some food and a tent. The plan was also to sleep at the top when we got there and just come down the next day. So we left at 2:00AM for some reason – we were under the impression that we would get there early afternoon and be able to just relax and enjoy hanging out by the volcano for the day but boy were we wrong about that.

So we walked and we walked all day and when it was early afternoon I asked if we were close and the response was 3 more hours, so then 5 hours later I asked if we were close again, and then apparently there were 2 more hours left, and then after 4 hours I knew things weren’t going right. We were in the middle of the bush walking since 2:00AM and it was about 4:00PM now and our guide then informed me that we would not be making it to the top tonight and we are going to have to just sleep here in the middle of nowhere. So we set up camp, but there’s something you, the reader, should know and that is where we were on Ambae is the second highest point in Vanuatu and what that means is it’s ridiculously cold up there, especially at night. Most of my friends know I got minor frostbite in Vermont skiing one time so I get super cold, super easy. Basically that night was like torture, it was super cold and the one blanket I brought just didn’t really cut it. Also it was sort of drizzling all night which doesn’t help with being cold either. Anyway me along with the two other white man were pretty miserable and didn’t really enjoy being up there and our guide said that we still have about 5 more hours tomorrow, which could mean it could be 10 hours away. So after trying to sleep all night and being super cold and super tired we decided to turn back the next morning and we let them know and they said OK! We thought it would be easy to follow the road back because we just cut it the day before, we thought.

We walked for about 3 hours and then realize that we weren’t on the same trail we were on yesterday. Uh oh. Tried to back track, tried to follow the path, it ended. So it turns out we got pretty lost and I have no idea how. Luckily we found a creek and I just said lets follow that because they all lead to the ocean and the main road. It was the best idea and the easiest to walk on because some things you should know about the creeks here – they are dry creeks and only have water if it’s raining and they were formed from old run off of the volcano lava. This means that it was much easier to walk on uneven rock than through the deep bush of Ambae so we stuck with it. It turns out that there were numerous large cliffs that were formed which were untraversable. We had to go around which turned out to be extremely difficult and way harder than I could have imagined. We left at 7:00AM and walked and walked all day, lost, and had to eventually stop at 6:00PM because that’s when the sun went down and we couldn’t see anymore. Now during this whole day we ran out of food and water, which was really bad. The dry creek had some stagnant gross pools we found and luckily didn’t get us sick but otherwise we were pretty hungry. Since the sun went down we had nothing to do but to just lay down on the rock, huddle up (it was still cold), and go to sleep.

We woke up the next morning and started walking as soon as the sun gave enough light and then we were back on our way. Luckily the night before I got random sporadic spurts of cell phone reception and was able to text my counterpart and let him know that we were lost, this is serious and we need help! My counterpart is a really great guy and he ran to some villages and started organizing some search parties, they knew we were in a creek and there weren’t TOO many so all along West Ambae there were search parties looking for us which was nice to know. Anyway we walked for half of the day and then finally heard someone far away. We walked towards the sound and eventually found a bush garden and some people saw us and were very confused to see white people wandering around the middle of nowhere. After telling them our story in Bislama (mifala bin lus lo bus!) they were very worried for us and immediately got us some mantioc, capscicum and some coconuts which we drank ravenously.

Afterwards they took us down to the main road because I could get home from there, we got to the next village only to see a large group of people wielding bush knives that came in a truck. This wasn’t just any group of random Ni-vans wielding large machetes, these were my friends! It was a lot of people from my school that just got to that site and we just about to head up into the bush to go look for me! It was crazy, I was super happy, they were super happy, it was pretty emotional because they care so much about this white person who just came from America but now I’m a part of their community and they didn’t want to lose me, which is nice. So that’s my story about getting lost in the bush, it was scary as hell, and certainly one hell of a learning experience. I’m pretty sure I’m never going to walk around without a guide in the bush ever again.