Vanuatu Holiday, Day 2

If yesterday's ride was in cycling heaven, today's ride was closer to cycling hell.  A constant stream of trucks, vans and cars, rough roads with potholes, and being enveloped in car fumes, smoke from fires and chemical smells from the nearby industrial businesses made riding distinctly unpleasant.

Yes, I rode towards the main town on the island, Port Villa.  I started riding at around 8, just as the children were heading to school, and seem to have encountered rush hour:

It was so unpleasant that I turned off the road to Port Villa and instead explored a side road that eventually turned into a dirt track:

That was interesting, as I saw lots of evidence of the damage Cyclone Pam had done to the island: collapsed houses and other buildings, damaged roofs, houses that had been completely flattened.  Even five months later, the damage is still very obvious:

I only rode for an hour today, just a recovery ride from the big climb the previous day.  Afterwards, I went snorkelling with the children, and we saw the usual panoply of tropical fish and other animals.  The reef around the resort had been quite badly damaged in Cyclone Pam, and we could see the work they had done to try and rebuild it.  I also saw clams, anemones, clownfish, Moorish Idols, zebra fish, a titan triggerfish, lots of barracuda, a weird yellow trumpet fish, and a thing I think was called a bird-nosed parrotfish:

As well as the fish, we got to explore the underwater post office.  The main underwater post office at the resort was damaged in the cyclone and isn't working any more, but they've put up a postbox beside it.  At low tide it's not too hard to swim down to it (I even swam through the old post office building), and you can stand on top of the building if you can keep your balance.  At high tide, it was too deep for Tighe to swim down to:

Unfortunately, one of the bottles of sunblock we had brought with us was defective, and both Ruth and I got quite painfully sunburned.  My back is now a delightful pale scarlet, and the back of Ruth's arms and legs are also badly burned -- you get sunburned in weird places when you're snorkelling.

I also managed to get a bit cooked in the sun today as I was watching Oscar play in the water, so I seem to be suffering from a bit of hyperthermia too.  Maybe that explains why I was so exhausted this afternoon -- we all went to bed around 7:30 pm, except for Ruth who stayed up "late" sorting through the 292 fish photos we had taken today.

I'm planning to get up early in the morning and try riding the whole way around the island.  My lights are all charged up, and I'm hoping to get past Port Villa before dawn to beat the traffic.  It's going to be a long ride, and it could be pretty tough going if the hills I encountered yesterday are any indication -- but I should be back by mid to late morning (all going well) and I won't have that awful road to ride along during the day, so hopefully it'll just be another wonderful ride through this tropical wonderland.