Adventure sports thrive on Vanuatu's active volcano

Vanuatu's active volcano

By Veronika Meduna

LAND-DIVING ceremonies

on Pentecost Island in Vanuatu once provided the first spark of inspiration for New Zealand adventure sports guru A.J. Hackett, who turned the idea into his profitable bungy jumping venture.

Now other New Zealanders are bringing other adventure sports back to Vanuatu and with them a new kind of tourist who is interested in combining active recreation with the thrill of exploration and the com fort of luxurious accommodation.

Mountain biking is one of the activities that has grown from an extreme sport to a recreational outdoor pursuit within just a few years and throughout the world, tourism operators are tapping into the grow ing market for travel packages that use bikes as a means of transport.

Auckland businessman and former com petitive mountain bike racer Dave Stewart chose Tanna Island to introduce guided bike tours to Vanuatu. He says Tanna is a remark able place, combining ancient customs and rituals with spectacular displays of nature’s

raw power and offering a wealth of impres sions and experiences.

It is ideal for guided bike tours because many of the paths crossing the island are single tracks, just wide enough for people on foot, horseback or a bicycle and other wise inaccessible. While the distances would be rather far to walk in a day, the island can be traversed comfortably on a mountain bike, allowing travellers to visit the island’s custom villages as well as exploring some of the remote bush areas and its perhaps best-known attractions, the active volcano Mt Yasur and the wild dugong in Resolution Bay.

A typical journey organised by Dave Stewart’s company Local Knowledge will start with an brief ride along the gravel road between Tanna Beach Resort and Lenakel to give people the opportunity to get used to their bikes. Dave Stewart says he buys a new set of full-suspension mountain bikes each season and will fit each client with the right frame size to guarantee a comfortable ride. Even total novices will soon get used to and enjoy the smooth riding quality of fully suspended mountain bikes which gen tly roll over most obstacles without jarring or jolting. Once everybody has had a test ride, the bikes are tuned and each rider fit

ted out with enough energy food and miner al drink for trips that can vary from a few hours to a full day. Dave Stewart and anoth er experienced guide will take the cyclists through the dense rainforest to Middle Bush and its vast coffee plantations, along the coast to explore blowholes and bat caves, and, on invitation by village chiefs, to iso lated custom villages in the jungle below the groaning Mt. Yasur.

Dave Stewart says the decision to use double-suspension bikes was made during his first trip in 1996, when he rode a rigid mountain bike across the island to pioneer some of the tracks and to make the first con tacts with local people. During this trip he laid the “sort of ground work that is neces sary before you can take anybody to a new place for the first time”.

“We would ride to the villages and just talk to the people. I think if we had just gone riding off without stopping and having that dialogue, it would have been impos sible to take groups of

tourists to the villages.” For the same rea son, Local Knowledge works closely with Tanna Beach Resort, whose staff are all local and help maintain contact with the chiefs and villagers of custom villages such as Yakel. In these communities, custom reigns supreme and the chief will normally not allow any of the children to attend school in an attempt to avoid excessive con tact with western influences.

However, most villages have gradually allowed a certain amount of tourism to filter into their daily routine and some have put aside one of their thatched huts as a guest house. Dave Stewart says the initial contact he made with the village chiefs has been vital for the success of his tourism venture.

His first full season was 1998 and the recep tion and welcome when he and his cycling groups arrived in Yakel has always been enthusiastic and warm.

Particularly for the children, the arrival of the cyclists always means entertainment.

They rush to cheer on the bikers along the way, and often some of them get a ride on the bike themselves. At the village nakamal, the cultural exchange becomes mutual as the villagers perform a dance and one of the Local Knowledge guides performs acrobat ics on the bike. Tanna Beach Resort also offers another sightseeing attraction through its close links to one of Tanna’s export goods. Since June 1998, the resort has been under the management of Australian Monica Reardon, whose partner Terry Adlington manages the coffee plantations.

The plantation’s history reaches back to the first colonial plantings at

the end of the last century. During the last years of the French-British condominium the plants were partly abandoned and neglected. Today, however, Terry Adlington says the plants are back to producing tonnes of coffee beans each harvest. Productivity rose by 70 per cent from 1997 to 23,000 kilograms. The plantation also brings income to 250 Ni-Vanuatu, who remain smallholders and receive a fee for the use of land and the harvest.

Dave Stewart says his aim is to provide tours that will introduce visitors to as many aspects of Vanuatu as possible as well as the joy and sense of achievement often gained from physical activities such as mountain biking. Although he has given up competi tive mountain bike races, cycling remains a passion for him. “I decided I wasn’t going to be able to race professionally, but I want ed to make mountain biking part of my life.

I love riding, I like exploring places, and I really enjoy turning people on to that buzz of cycling. It is a great way to travel because you’re right there in the environment and you are taking it in with all your senses.”

For the next season, which runs from April to October, he plans to extend the con cept to include Efate and possibly islands in Fiji. Local Knowledge will have a base in Port Vila at Le Meridien Resort, from which the mountain bikes will be for hire for anything from a short spin around town to a week- I long adventure on Tanna Island. ■