JULY 2015
Hi Carissa,
We had a brilliant time thanks, bit bizarre to arrive home to tornadoes and torrential rain today! It was a very happy and rich experience for our whole family, 3 generations :) And a very memorable way to spend my 40th birthday celebration!
You did an excellent job for us and we are very grateful for your expertise. I have done a reasonable amount of travel in the past including 6 weeks at Rarotonga Hospital as a medical student, but admit to feeling nervous beforehand as it was the first time overseas with our kids.
Our lasting impression would be the friendliness of the Vanuatu people. They have done incredibly well post-Cyclone and tourism is definitely up and running. But my heart goes out to them as clearly the impact has been huge and still a long recovery economically for their country. An added bonus for me was knowing that our money will go towards helping these beautiful people rebuild as well as a warm sunny family holiday for us. Weather and temperature was just gorgeous. Loved the French food at L'Houstalet restaurant, also very child friendly.
Staff at the Warwick Le Lagon were always eager to help with anything we needed, especially the kids and always had a smile on their face. We had great fun doing water sport activities in a very safe lagoon for the kids, even had our 2 yr old out on a little catamaran. Resort was just beautiful, loved the pools, the view, the entertainment- especially the fire dancing (our kids could not believe their eyes!).
People should hopefully understand and empathise that it will be a while longer before some of Vanuatu's fruit crops will recover, still many rooftops to be rebuilt, some technical issues at the ATM etc etc. Things definitely run on island time which in my mind is a positive. And the locals just go out of their way to put a smile on your face.
Ekasup cultural village was fantastic and gave us a much better understanding of the country as a whole. Air Taxi Vanuatu trip to Epi was great and very professional, we had a bit of bad luck with low cloud over volcanoes but really loved this day trip.
Another highlight was swimming with giant turtles at Turtle Bay, and the endangered baby Hawkesbill turtles they were nurturing were just too cute! We had a lot of fun driving our own vehicle, but the public transport is extremely easy to use.
If we get another opportunity, we would go back to Vanuatu in a heartbeat.
Thanks again
Rankin Family