Getting Stoned With Savages - J. Maarten Troost [18]
I started the SUV and put it in first gear. The two trucks were nose to nose, about fifteen feet apart, and as I felt the tension in the chain I stepped on the gas. The big truck slowly pulled backward, and I felt the SUV grinding over the berm. The wheels spun freely in the gunk until traction was reclaimed, then suddenly and rather exhilaratingly, the SUV plowed forward, now released from the mud, and sped headlong toward the heavy truck. I slammed on the brakes, and in the long second that followed, it occurred to me that this would be one of the more unfortunate ways to wreck a vehicle, a brief moment of freedom followed by the clash of metal. It was only when the SUV had come to a stop mere inches from the front fender of the truck that I felt relief, knowing that there was still a chance to return the SUV to its owner in one piece.
I thanked the truck driver effusively for his help, noting the amusement of the onlookers, and soon we were on our way, continuing our circumnavigation of the island at a cautious three miles an hour. Sylvia was very pleased. A ten-kilometer hike in search of water and shelter, under an unrelenting swarm of flies and mosquitoes, followed by a debilitating bout of malaria was not how she had envisioned beginning our lives in Vanuatu.
“It’s nice like this,” she said as we rolled along a road that became progressively smoother as we neared Port Vila. The afternoon light had softened, and the colors of the island assumed a depth of intensity not found outside the tropics. We drove parallel with a long white-sand beach. The tide was in over the reef shelf, and in the distance the breakers seemed to stretch like long, unbroken lines of ivory streamers. Soon the dense forest gave way to verdant pastures where clusters of cattle, pure descendents of a French herd prized for their tender meat, milled about in the doleful manner of cows everywhere. There were signs now pointing the way to places of interest for tourists—a beach club, white-water rafting, horseback riding—and we were very happy to find ourselves on a paved road that took us past the gated homes of expatriates and the sprawling Le Meridien resort until we crested a couple of hills and found the turnoff to Elluk, the prosperous neighborhood where Kathy had a house overlooking Erakor Bay and the shimmering Pacific Ocean.
Settling comfortably on Kathy’s verandah with a bottle of Tusker, the national beer, I decided that I liked Efate very much. Kathy was nonplussed by our misadventures with her SUV. “It happens to everyone,” she said, very gracefully I thought. Indeed, she even offered to lend us her vehicle again whenever we might have need of it. She was from Pennsylvania originally, and after twenty years in the South Pacific, she had clearly adopted the tropical temperament: Stuff happens, but tomorrow the sun will rise again. Below us, bathed in the golden hues of sunset, the catamarans that belonged to the Crowne Plaza resort were being towed back to the shore by the hotel staff, who had raced across Erakor Lagoon in open boats with outboard engines. One sensed that this was an evening ritual for them, rescuing tourists from themselves. Elsewhere on the water, the local boys had taken out a few outrigger canoes, which they were gleefully using as diving platforms, and their shrills of laughter suggested an enviable boyhood. A pontoon boat weaved around them as it ferried passengers to the Erakor Island Resort; both the boys and the tourists waved, and one sensed that they were genuinely happy to see each other.
It seemed, for the moment, that Efate was about as agreeable an island as one could find, a perfect blending of worlds, where the comfort of the West mixed easily with the raw beauty of the tropics, and though