I’ve cared for other people's pets — dogs, cats, chickens, and a turtle — in five countries: Canada, the US, Spain, the Dominican Republic, and Vanuatu. I refer to these stints often in life and in my writing because they left deep impressions. Stints ranged from a couple months to many months to, in the case of California, three and a half years spread over a decade.
I lived on Paradise Cove, Vanuatu, from early November, 2019, through March, 2020. Though someone further down the beach offered me another 3 months at the end of this gig, the uncertainty of Covid insisted I return home. While there, Coco the dog was my main charge, though I was also responsible for two unnamed chickens and 23 named humans while managing three beach properties known as Sal's Lakatoro.
The Place
Vanuatu is an archipelago of 83 islands. It’s located between Australia and Fiji in the South Pacific. Getting there from Toronto involved three flights over 28 hours: Toronto > Los Angeles > Fiji > Vanuatu. It was my longest journey since visiting Australia in 1995.
The Locals
The locals, called Ni-Vanuatu or Ni-Vans colloquially, are extremely welcoming. Most are bilingual or trilingual, speaking French, English, or both, along with Bislama, the country’s official tongue, and additionally the language of their tribe.
Here, you can sample a Ni-Van speaking Bislama:
Toukala speaks Bislama.
Amazingly, Vanutu has 137 other indigenous languages, making it the country with the world's highest linguistic density per capita.
Though I first heard of Vanuatu when I was 21 while researching a trip to Fiji that never came to be, I’ve found most North Americans and Europeans have never heard of the country. Those that have only know it because Season 9 of Survivor was filmed there.
Vanuatu is an absolutely dream. The people, the climate, the geography, the marine life… all are fantastic. Living there, it was easy to understand how it continually places at the top of the Happy Planet Index ( as I write this, the USA isn't even in the top 100 and Canada sits at 79).
But for the time I spent in the water, I never left the island of Efate, which, though not the largest of the country’s islands, does have the country’s main port, Port Vila, where cruise ships would arrive every few days with tourists from around the world.
Most of my days and nights were spent on the property I was managing in the village of Pango.
When not socializing with the neighbors, staff (I became fast friends with housekeepers Marie and Rose), or the guests (mostly Kiwis and Aussies, though a few Europeans as well), I explored Efate by bus, foot, and Ute. Thanks to the kindness of vacationing guests and new friends from Pango, I managed to make my way around the island’s perimeter, which, if memory serves, is about 80km.
On the map below, you can pinch to zoom out or repeatedly use the “—” button to zoom out and get perspective on Vanuatu’s place on the planet. I was responsible for the marked strip in green.
The island is full of stray dogs, and I was taken with one ginger bitch in particular. I named her Flaoas (the Bislama word for Flowers) and, along with a friend, set about getting her and her new pups to the island’s only vet to be re-homed.
I often think of Flaoas and regret not finding a way to get her back to Canada. She was a special one, for sure, and we connected instantly, just as I did in 2013 with my current dog, Shakedown.
My stay in Vanuatu was not without peril: on my first night alone there, I went for a night swim, something I've done all over the world. My hand swept something sharp and immediately started to bleed. I managed to make my way back to shore with the help of Jackson, a Ni-Van I'd met the day before. He was camping on a neighbouring property he'd been hired to clear and that night he'd been heading out in his kayak to fish.
Back home, I bandaged the wound. The next day, while treating it, I counted 23 small punctures — as if made by syringe. My hand swole up, palm to fingertips, and over the course of several days, the skin peeled off in layers, the way a child playing with Elmer's wouild peel off a glue-glove. Why didn't I seek medical attention? I knew that Vanuatu has no poisonous critters (hard to believe so close to Australia) and therefore the only thing that could have killed me that close to shore was a stone fish. Since I survived the night, I knew it wasn't that.
Another day, I got carried out to sea while on a Stand-Up Paddleboard. Exhausted at trying to make my way back, I was fished out of the water by a boat of tourists out for a scuba adventure.
Two brushes with death and I still say that if you have the opportunity to visit Vanuatu, you should make the journey. I’d go back in a heartbeat and in a perfect world would be happy to spend the rest of my days there. Here's some photos to give you a taste of the place.
