Pentecost

Once we stocked the icebox with mahi, we spent the next few days cruising up the western coast of Pentecost. Pentecost is a finger shaped island, its longest axis running north-south between Maewo and Ambrym. The island was lush, covered in bright jungle greens despite it being the end of the dry season.

The tricky part about Pentecost is that there aren’t many good anchorages. We arrived and spent one rolley night in Home Bay. Home Bay had expansive views, rich foliage along the coast and a cascade of rolling hills in the background. The main attraction in the area is land diving, a prototype of bungee jumping that utilizes only natural materials for the jumping platform and the jumping rope. Most, including ni Van we chatted with elsewhere on the island, consider the practice to be pretty insane, but it promises a good yam harvest and, more recently, a bountiful flow of tourists to southern Pentecost. But land diving only happens in the fall when the vines are most supple (late April through early July), so we decided to make our way north as quickly as we could.

Not wanting to miss the delights of the island entirely, we made a quick afternoon stopover at Waterfall Bay. The area was aptly named as the waterfall, close enough to the village to be seen from the anchorage, was fantastic and had perfect swimming pools formed in the rocks below. We decided to take advantage of the seemingly private surroundings and indulge in a little skinny dipping. We enjoyed an Eden-like existence for about ten minutes before noticing a few peeping Tom’s rustling the branches above us. Then we were joined by five or so dudes checking out the waterfall on their lunch break. Everyone had a good laugh, and we took a turn stumbling upon some nude bathers ourselves as we walked back down to the village.

As we expected, when we got back to the shore Helios was hobby horsing big time in the exposed waters. We upped anchor after a quick lunch and made it to protected and comfortable Loltong Bay before sundown.