manaro camping trip

The new Ambae vols were eager to get up to Mt. Manaro and I was excited to go back. Manaro is the island’s volcano— its cone sits in the middle of a toxic lake on top of Ambae. We decided it would be a much more enjoyable hike spread out over two days (last year we hiked it in one and it was hellish) and everyone was down for a mid-May camping trip in the bush. 

On Friday we met in Saratamata for payday ritual: a tub of half-melted ice cream, a cold beer, and grace’s porch. We got supplies, hopped the truck, and headed North. At Vuiveto, Avery and Thomas continued on to Avery’s site and the 3 gals rested before the hike up. At the bottom of the hill is a kava bar, so we indulged in a few shells with Kathleen’s counterpart and some other women. It’s hard to leave any gathering without a fruit or two in your hand, and this time was no different—each of us had a pamplemus and a few green coconuts to carry with us up to Wainasasa from our generous kava drinking friends.

We reached the top after a rainy, dark, and wobbly hike and met the boys at Kathleen’s house. We cooked up some burgers and fell asleep early, ready for the trip. We woke up and enjoyed a slow morning preparing the hobos filled with potatoes, beans, onions, and capsicums. Around 10, the boys showed up with a change of plans (which is more common that not changing plans here) and let us know that the trail we were planning on taking was going to be impossible because of the rains. Not a problem! Avery’s papa offered to hike with us, which made us very lucky to be heading to the top of the mountain with a bigfala chief who knows the land better than most could imagine. A youngfala David and two girls joined us, as well. We packed up the gear and started the preliminary hike to Ambanga, the highest village on Ambae, before following Ambanga’s trail to Manaro. This is the road I took last August, so I knew a hard hike was ahead. Everyone was in great spirits despite the rain clouds (dondo in language) lingering overhead. 

The hike from Wainasasa to Ambanga was hard—uphills and downhills and creek crossings (oh my!) and complete with an intense knife incident. Thomas was in line ahead of me as we climbed up a hill. He lost his footing and threw his bush knife into the ground to try and catch his fall. Bad, bad idea. His hand slid down the machete’s blade and did a number on his digits. He’s lucky the blade wasn’t facing the other way or else his palm would be a mess! The cuts were really deep, but eventually we got the blood flow under control. After the initial shock wore off, he was a brave trooper and agreed to hike to Ambanga before deciding if he should continue on. Once we arrived there for lunch, we cleaned him up and he was ready to face the Ambae wilderness, deep gashes or not. 

"thumbs up!" so clean, so naive

stomping through a bush garden

watcha doin up there?

funky mushroom

avery

the scratch

The hike was grueling. I’ve never had a reason to use that word, but it’s what comes to mind here. Day one was lots of ascending and at a quick speed – papa chief was leading the pack and even though he’s 70, he was waiting on us to catch our breaths over and over again. The trail hadn’t been used for a while, so I’m not sure what we would have done without his invaluable knowledge of the land and impressive knife skills to bushwhack us back on path. I’m usually a steady, but medium-paced hiker, but today I was feeling strong and keeping up with the leader. It felt great! But after 6 hours of going up, I was just as beat as everyone else. It was getting dark and rainy, so we cleared a piece of the trail and laid out our shelters: Papa chief and David sharing a tent, the two girls in another one, Grace and Thomas in their own hammocks, and Kathleen Avery and I 3-manning a 2-person tent. All squished together on a bushy trail. It was an amusing site! Once our bodies cooled down, we realized how cold it was and eventually found warm bliss in our dry things. Dry bags to the rescue! For some reason I brought my heftiest pair of wool socks to a tropical island from home a year and a half ago. I say “for some reason” because that reason didn’t present itself until I was on the side of Mount Manaro and I slipped them over my blistered, sore, freezing (and now very grateful) feet. Irrational packing has its hidden benefits!

Once everyone was situated, we passed around the bottle of wine, feasted on peanut butter, chips, oreos, and crackers, and laughed in exhaustion while our delicious hobos were marinating at the bottom of our backpacks. Nothing even closely resembling dry wood could have been found up there and it’s not like anyone was interested in searching for it anyway.  It was time for sleep, but sleep we did not. The tent ended up being more spacious than I’d originally imagined it, but we were restless and couldn’t quite get into rem. Around 2 am, we asked each other if anyone had fallen asleep yet and the answer was nope. The hammock kids were snoring and there was storian happening in the other two tents. We sang out to them, checking to see if they were alright, and we all just accepted our sleepless fates. The girls played music on their phones and Kathleen, Avery, and I storied about whatever came to mind.  

When she was hiking in Australia, Kathleen screwed up her big toe and now it was hanging on (hovering is a better description) by a thread. Earlier in the hike, Thomas and I had named it Sybil Penbrook, but Kathleen wasn’t as amused as we were. Now in the middle of the night, I tried it out again, and it stuck! Kathleen even started referring to it as Ms. Penbrook! This is a good example of the group vibe. It’s amazing how the group’s energy sets the tone of the trip. Everyone was in a cheerful mood, happy to go with the flow, and down with the idea that this rainy, cold hike was an adventure we wouldn’t forget.

It must have been around 4 or so when we all shut our eyes and drifted off for a couple of hours before the sunrise woke us up. We packed up and began the hike down into the center of the island. This part is a cluster of sliding down mud cliffs and scaling up rock faces (while realizing that we’d have to make the return trip on all of these obstacles, too) We reached the creek and drank from it while we got ready for the last push. By this point we were all pretty exhausted, except for papa chief, surprise surprise. After another hour of sloshing through creeks, climbing, butt-sliding, balancing on logs, stomping through thick vegetation, and falling during all of these steps, we arrived to the eerie top.

ready for day 2

curly ferns

The top of Manaro looks like the elephant graveyard from Lion King. Because the weather was still overcast from the night before, we didn’t have the clear view of the lake that we hoped for. On both of my bad-weather trips, the view at the top was underwhelming, but that didn’t subtract from the hike for me. I’ll make the trek one more time before I leave Ambae, but it’s going to be a cloudless day so I can take in the full thing. Papa chief sang out to the volcano and before too long, some of the clouds separated and we saw the cone. I loved this— less because of the view and more because of the pride in his face when the mountain listened to his request. We snapped a few photos and got ready for the daunting hike back to Ambanga. It was incredibly hard, but we did it. By the time we collapsed in grassy Ambanga village, we had been hiking for 17 hours between the two days… and about 2 ½ more to go before reaching Kathleen’s house. We eventually made it back with dreams of hot tea and our hobos for dinner as our strides’ motivation. After eating, everyone passed out hard at Kathleen’s, not wanting to get up early the next day. But that we did. Grace, Thomas, and I hiked down to Vuivetu to catch a truck back to our sites before 6:30. When I got home, I miraculously threw all my muddy things in a bucket of soapy water and crawled into bed for the rest of the morning. An exhausting last few days, but a wonderful new set of memories on this rugged little jungle of an island.

elephant graveyard

a long way down!

what! a! view!