Abbie decides to forego the village tour so Trish and I and the two Glens pile into the rubber dingy and head to black volcanic sand beach. The gentle swell breaking on the shore is going to be a challenge for us to land and not end up capsized sideways. Good timing on Captain Glen's part sends us in between waves and everybody climbs safely and gracefully out of the dingy and onto the beach. Ruben and Barry meet us. Barry is going to be our guide for the $850 Vatu per person tour (roughly $8.50 Canadian). He is a professional guide for their village. What a lovely clean and organized village. The houses are mostly made of traditional building materials - pole frames covered with palm leaf thatching on the roof and woven panels for the walls. Barry indicates that the houses are quite durable and very easy to replace if they get cyclone damaged. There are a gaxillion children and I have forgotten to bring my big bag of candies for them. The people of Ambrym are well know as being some of the best wood carvers in the South Pacific, so part of our tour is spent shopping at each "carver's" home. Both Glens are lucky to find the perfect souvenirs for themselves. Before we head back to the boat for lunch, Barry wonders if we would be interested in having a feast on the beach in the evening. Great, this will be a great cultural experience for Glen and Trish - we accept.
Our Rom Dance is scheduled for 3:00 pm. The truck to taxi us up to the village of Fanla to see it is late (no problem, Barry calls this "Black Man's time", in reality, just some repair work needed to be done. Trish gets the cab seat of the little Toyota 4 X 4 truck and Glen, Glen, Abbie, Barry and I get to sit in the box. Just like being back on the farm! It turns out, that the trip in the truck through the rain forest, 4 wheeling through ravines and up a very steep path (can't really call it a road) is a very good part of the outing. If all we had gotten to do was drive through the forest, that would have been fantastic, getting to see Fanla village and the Rom Dance is a bonus. There are two volcanos on Ambrym and it is the center for traditional magic and sorcery, there is a lot of meaning to this dance and it would take pages for me to do a history lesson here. There are only male dancers half of them are completely covered in a cloak of dried banana leaves and have large carved masks with flowing beads and hair attached - they look like scary little huts stomping around - they carry a woven thing that looks like a club, but has rattles on it. The other half of the men are nearly naked - they have a wide belt of bark around their waist, a banana leaf wrapper on their penis and a tail made out of leaves. These are men of rank as they wear curled boar tusk necklaces. They also stomp their feet, but they are the singers. One man beats a rythym on a hand held wooden tube. It was quite different to any of the South Pacific dancing we have seen thus far. I am imagining that google should have some pictures of Rom dancing. I remembered to take a bag of candy and Glen gave sweets to all of the children and smiling older women. He gets the kids to pose for pictures then delights them by showing them the results.
We have time to head back to the boat for "Happy Hour" before our feast on the beach. It is dark now and all 5 of us are in the dingy using a flashlight (that doesn't shine more than 10 feet out) to find our way to Barry on the beach. There are five different versions as to where we should head. Finally a flash light from the beach gives us a point to aim at and we arrive in fine form. Barry and his wife (he calls her his girlfriend) have prepared roast suckling pig, taro with coconut cream drizzle, cooking banana with pumpkin topping and kasava with green cabbage/coconut milk topping. Everything is displayed like a big plate of cakes on several huge banana leaves layered over some packing quilts on the sandy beach. Desert is big wedges of papaya and fat ripe bananas. You don;t need plates and cutlery just pick it up and eat it. I know you won't know what most of this stuff is or have any idea of how it tastes, but let me assure you that it was fabulous. We supplied the beverages. Barry's Uncle brought some kava. We ate and peppered Barry and his family with questions. The conversation was good. The funny thing about being invited for dinner though is that they don't eat until after you have gone, even though we pleaded with them to eat, they waited until we left. Very gracious hosts. We slid seamlessly back to the big boat and re-hashed our very full, very fun day.
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