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Vanuatu is a volcanic island chain in the south west Pacific Ocean, between Fiji and New Caledonia. There are about 80 islands with a total land area of 12,189 square kilometers reaching 900 km in a north-south direction.
The capital of Vanuatu is Port Vila, on the island of Efate. As you can see from the space photograph of Efate, most of the islands are lush green tropical forest. Except for two urban areas, Port Vila and Luganville on Santo, the small population of people lives in rural villages. |
What's special about Vanuatu?
Vanuatu is one of the few places on Earth where you can enter into a very ancient culture and contact your deepest roots and connections with the natural world and feel safe and comfortable at the same time.
Security, peace, a sense of wonder at the scenic splendor of nature, garnished with a culture that goes back thousands of years. These are some of the reasons people come from Europe, Asia, the United States, Australia and New Zealand to visit or live in Vanuatu.
 The people of Vanuatu are Melanesians and have a very strong and enduring attachment to their islands and their environment. In the more remote islands the people still follow their ancestrial traditions and their artwork, dances, music, and dress will transport you to an era before the concept of time began.
Their sense of community and culture give the ni-Vanuatu people a kind of peace and friendliness that extends to visitors and residents from other lands. They are, in a word, nice.
Most of the small and widely distributed population (there are about 170,000 people living in the Republic of Vanuatu) are natives living in villages with their extended families. The expatriate community is only a few thousand individuals, many of whom have been here for generations.
The ni-Vanuatu people are multilingual. Everyone speaks their own village language plus the universal Bislama, an English/French pidgin that you will quickly pick up. Most of the people also speak English and French.
For more information about Vanuatu,
Check out David Stanley's Moon travel handbooks for the South Pacific
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