95. My Bucket List

I’ve been anchored next to the island of Stromboli many times. Just north of Sicily in Italy. Every time with the intention of climbing the ‘Lighthouse of the Mediterranean’, the island’s live volcano. But for one reason or another, it never happened. So when I left Italy to cross the Atlantic three years ago I promised myself that I wouldn’t miss out on my next opportunity to see a live volcano from above. I always knew that opportunity would come in Vanuatu. At Mount Yasur on the island of Tanna.

The other day I got to fulfil that promise. I arrived in Port Resolution, a bay in the shadow of Mount Yasur. Together with Samadhi and Celt. The bay is named after the ship that Captain Cook arrived on exactly 250 years ago and it really felt like very little has happened here since then. If islands that I visited in the Tuamotus, Tonga and Fiji felt remote, Tanna is at a different level. We were the attraction here! Wherever we went the locals tapped each other and pointed at us. All smiling, waiving and greeting us. Either from the side of the road as we travelled across the island or from their dugout canoes as they were casting fishing nets in the bay. I realise that they get a few cruisers that turn up every year, primarily to see the volcano, but it truly felt like we were the first since Captain Cook. And when we visited the neighbouring island, one without a world famous volcano, our visit caused even more of a commotion. I doubt that even Captain Cook stopped there.

Tanna was easily one of my most memorable stops on this circumnavigation. And I finally got to climb a volcano that is constantly erupting. And I survived to tell the tale. Not all previous visitors have been that lucky. I got to tick off one of the things on my bucket list. Without kicking the bucket.