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Contrasting maelstroms in the South Pacific

Vanuatu: Walking right up to 'the gates of Hell' Meridian Writers' Group TANNA, Vanuatu-"It's like gazing into the gates of Hell," said Kerri Miller. Standing on the rim of Mount Yasur volcano's crater, I had to agree with the Australian tourist.
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Vanuatu: Walking right up to 'the gates of Hell'

 

Meridian Writers' Group

TANNA, Vanuatu-"It's like gazing into the gates of Hell," said Kerri Miller.

Standing on the rim of Mount Yasur volcano's crater, I had to agree with the Australian tourist. We peered into the bowels of the earth, listening to a sea of lava bubbling and shuddering from the backdraft of dozens of little explosions throwing cinders high in the air.

Every so often there came a "belch" and ash was thrown high, to come down on our heads.

Yasur, on the southeastern end of the island of Tanna, in the South Pacific cluster of islands once called the New Hebrides, is one of the world's most accessible volcanoes. You can literally walk to the lip.

In the crater are three huge vents. One rumbles constantly, another throws up billows of sulphur and steam.

But it's the middle vent that's the most awe-inspiring. It glows permanently, like the inferno it is, and every 10 minutes or so it shoots up a shower of red-hot stones.

Usually, the stones plunge right back into the crater. But not always. People on the rim have been hit - I had to use my backpack to protect my head from cinders - and in 1994 two Japanese tourists were killed by falling rocks.

If Yasur were in any Western country, injury liability would keep tourists well away from the rim. But Vanuatu is not a litigious country, so the volcano is there for everyone to marvel at, up close. Really close.

A four-wheel drive vehicle had taken us to within a few hundred metres of the summit. We hiked the rest. As we moved upward we could hear in the distance a deep rumble, followed by a whoosh! , like a jet plane taking off. "The gods in the volcano are active tonight," joked our guide (or perhaps he wasn't joking, for some native tribes believe Yasur is indeed the home of deities).

Suddenly we were in the midst of a thick, sulphurous cloud, then it was clear again and I looked into what my Aussie tourist friend called "the gates of Hell." It's something I'll never forget.

We had arrived at Yasur at the best time of day, about half an hour before darkness fell, so we saw it first in daylight, when you get a good feel for the geography, and then after dark when the whole thing becomes a spectacular natural fireworks show.

Yasur is one of Tanna's prime tourist attractions, but for many islanders it's also a shrine for the gods and especially for Jon Frum, the legendary figure worshipped by the so-called "cargo cults" of the South Pacific. Many believe Jon Frum will come and bring them cargoes of food, pop and medical supplies (hence the term "cargo cult") and "liberate" them from European influence.

In the tribal village of Sulphur Bay, at the foot of the mountain, they believe Jon Frum will come from America and they've built a church for him. Its sacred icons include a tattered U.S. flag and the remnants of a GI's uniform.

 

ACCESS

Vanuatu, an archipelago of about 350 islands and keys, 74 of them inhabited, lies about 1,500 kilometres north of New Zealand.

For information on travel in Vanuatu, visit the Vanuatu Tourism Office website at www.vanuatutourism.com .

 

 

 

 

Micronesia: Peaceful beach hides bloody WWII past

 

Meridian Writers' Group

PELELIU, Micronesia-Cal, a U.S. Marines veteran from Minnesota, stands on the white sand of Orange Beach. "Last time I was here I was crouching and running for cover," he says. "I made it. So many of my buddies didn't. I was 20 years old."

That was in 1944. It was the beginning of the U.S. attack on Peleliu, one of the bloodiest - and least known - battles of the Second World War.

Today on Orange Beach and Amber Beach and White Beach the sands are pure and soft and the palm fronds bend in the gentle trade winds. The only reminders that this was once hell on earth are the rusting hulks of a few U.S. landing craft, half buried in the sand but still visible at low tide.

Inland a little ways the jungle has grown thick and deep again over earth once burned white by phosphorous bombs. Water fills the craters gouged by the shells that pounded the tiny island from a fleet of warships offshore.

I stood with Cal on that once blood-soaked beach and, in my mind, heard the words of a young American corporal in a letter written to his sweetheart. "Say hello to Rev. Peterson," he wrote. "Tell him my faith is reasonably intact... He won't have to preach to me about hell any more. I've just been there."

The hell of 1944 is now a peaceful island of 600 people, mostly fisherfolk. It's also a time capsule of the war in the Pacific, a living history museum. At every turn you find reminders: rusting tanks, crashed fighter planes, grenades, mortars, bazookas, machine guns, bayonets, handguns, water canteens...

Ten thousand soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army held off U.S. Marines and Army here for 10 weeks, starting Sept. 14, 1944, in an action that General William Rupertus had said would take "three days, maybe two."

But the Japanese fought almost literally to the last man. When it was all over the Americans had taken only 18 prisoners. The rest perished, many in the network of caves that the Americans sealed with explosions.

I stood in an unsealed cave, the entrance blackened by flamethrowers, and examined the contents: pill bottles and other medical supplies on a ledge, a few rusting helmets, a skeleton wearing remnants of a uniform, a machine-gun loaded with a belt of ammunition...

The battle cost 1,800 American lives (with a further 6,500 wounded.) And the awful thing is that they, and the Japanese defenders, probably died in vain, for historians say that by late 1944 U.S. bombing had reduced Peleliu to a negligible threat to the planned invasion of the Philippines. Even at the time, Admiral "Bull" Halsey suggested that they simply bypass Peleliu, but Admiral Chester Nimitz ruled that the island must be taken.

Two much more pleasant reasons for visiting Peleliu are its beaches and scuba diving. For scuba enthusiasts Peleliu Wall, off the southwest tip of the island, is one of the world's finest dives, an abrupt 270-metre drop.

 

ACCESS

Peleliu is in the Republic of Palau, part of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) in the western Pacific Ocean, just north of the equator.

For more information go to the FSM Visitors Board website at http://visit-fsm.org/visitors .