Another island, another escape. Our so-far-so-unpredictable trip started to take a predictable turn on the Vanuatu island of Tanna. Fortunately, this allows us an early opportunity to practice the format of our “Escape from …” blog posts. As a reminder, these are typically structured as a short skip over some deeply extraordinary and alien experiences, followed by some epic yet mundane battle to escape as soon as any form of real deadline looms. So, here we go:

• Blah blah blah, Mount Yasur – trekking up the world’s most accessible active volcano. Check the volcano activity forecast online (yawn), activity level two out of five (double yawn). Huge ash plain, quadruple caldera, humungous explosions with great gobs of lava being thrown about 100 meters vertically above where we are standing (like, so what?). Guide’s actual advice was to walk away slowly if lava bombs start landing behind us. So far, so normal
• A dull, dull, dull trip to Friday night worship in a Jon Frum Village. You know, Cargo Cults which worship the American Navy as gods are sooo last year. An entire culture being set up to re-enact world war two invaders’ behavior (down to the mock flagpoles, marching in squares and setting up fake air traffic control towers) – seriously, why bother? The fact that their altars include a Red Cross (the god of free medical treatment!) just made it all so much less interesting
• Three days living in a wooden tree house thirty feet up a banyan tree with a view of an active volcano? Having your tree shaken gently but firmly by the occasional eruption? Collecting rainwater to drink when your seventh day Adventist guest house owners go to church all day, locking the kitchen and your only water source? Banal, banal, banal…

So, on to the interesting stuff. What could possibly go wrong with a two hour drive across the island to the airport for our flight out?

• Our guest house owner had a habit of dropping last minute bombs on us. His finest example, I think, was waiting until Friday night to tell us that they were Seventh Day Adventists … and that as a result they couldn’t drive us across the island to the airport on Saturday as planned. It was their Sabbath, you see, and they take it extremely seriously. No problem – we have got wise by this point, and have built a full day’s worth of slack into our (three day) timetable. The race to the airport will be just that – a race – but there is as yet no disaster
• A day sitting in our tree house in the pouring rain later, we have driven about three miles when we stop to pick up Sergi and Miriam (but of course!) who were staying nearby. We should have known at this point – wherever these two go, disaster follows. Needless to say, about fifteen minutes later we were parked by the side of an unfordable flooded river. Our guest house owner (who we strongly suspect didn’t want to get his 4×4 muddy) told us that we would have to wait for the rain to stop and the flood to subside. Again unfazed, we get our shoes and socks off and prepare to wade across to hitchhike from the other side
• Having finally found a car prepared to attempt a river crossing, we make it to the airport in the pouring rain to find the flight has been cancelled. Or perhaps never existed. Or maybe it did. Who knows? We wait drinking beer for Schrodinger’s aeroplane to resolve itself to discover that there were two flights, only one of which has scheduled, perhaps only one of which is running. Who knows? Air Vanuatu book all the white people in the terminal onto the one remaining flight and all the locals get up and leave (WTF? Anyone?)
• It is at this point a deluge worthy of Noah’s Ark. The incoming plane finally touches down, only to discover that it is impossible to refuel from two barrels of avgas in said rain without filling the fuel tanks with water. A nervous hour ensues, before the pilot decides that we don’t actually, really, truly NEED to refuel. A further nervous hour ensues after take off, as we wait in turbulent cloud for the plane to run dry and fall from the sky…

Enough said. In true “Escape From…” style, we made it!