Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [31]
Somewhat puzzled, he indicates the van.
“No, no—on the show, how do I get there? You said it's twenty-five kilometers away.”
The logistics are farcical.
But for once Eric and I are on the same page about this. Transport, he tells me, will be provided.
Right on cue, a shiny green Toyota pickup rumbles to the curbside, one of our hotel's porters at the wheel. For a moment I find myself staring vacantly, first at Eric, then at the Toyota, then back at Eric again.
“This is Joe's truck,” he explains. “You'll both be riding in back.”
Ah, okay. “And is it actually Joe's truck?”
I mean, I don't claim to know too much about the guy's circumstances, but I do know he lives miles across the ocean on another island and therefore probably didn't drive here, even if the Toyota turns out to be amphibious, which I doubt. One of its windows is missing.
Wary that an ethical cul-de-sac may be looming, Eric pleads the Fifth. “Dude, look, don't worry, okay? Everything's super cool.” And, with a disinterested flap of the hand, he walks off. “If there's a problem, you can fix it in post.”2
Oh dear. Originally, I had higher hopes than this. I envisaged the series appealing to an older, more discerning crowd. Now, following a rethink, I'm reduced to praying that the bulk of our demographic is made up of idiots.
“Excuse me, is that an erupting volcano over there?”
One thing I didn't know about Vanuatu is that it has the misfortune to be sitting on the Pacific Ring of Fire, arguably the most unstable volcanic region in the world, a region, according to Science, that's been earmarked for cataclysmic destruction in the not-too-distant future. Good job we came here when we did.
As evidence of this, there's some sort of steaming vent a mile away across the valley we're driving through. And not just any old steaming vent either—we're looking at Mount Yasur. I recognize it from the journey in on the plane. And also from Survivor! They made a whole episode about it. The ground shook, lives seemed to be in danger. It was very dramatic.
As we're watching, a couple of spectacular orange flashes light up the clouds around the peak, followed, a moment or two later, by a crackerjack bang that sends great gray cauliflowers of smoke outward and upward, joining earth to sky in a column of sulfurous gases that inspires at least one member of our party, I won't say who, to query out loud whether, given our easy expendability in the eyes of Nature, we really should be visiting a live volcano in the first place.
Just a thought.
Though not one that is heeded, alas.
To my dismay—okay, it was me!—minutes later we're right there on the volcano's eastern flanks, splashing across a shallow river onto a vast sloping plain of deathly gray ash, even as more violent explosions, like a series of quarry blasts, rend the air overhead, causing the earth to tremble.
Today's mystery destination, it turns out, is not the volcano per se, but a small village called Namakara, which cowers on its northern slope and is therefore, one might suppose, perpetually in harm's way. Clean and well laid out, its houses are solidly built of wood and volcanic soil, and appear to have been completed to the highest possible specifications, as laid down by perhaps the greatest master architects in history: the Three Little Pigs. As a result, the structures are able to withstand the force of a 120-mile-an-hour cyclone tearing through the jungle, or, to a much lesser extent, a wolf blowing on them. I would even go so far as to describe Namakara as quite charming and a good place to live.
Well, except for—
BOOOOOM!!!
—that. A guttural splutter-bang explosion flings a spray of red-hot debris into the sky, giving the crew a start. Nobody in the village even bothers to look up.
The inhabitants of Namakara have let go of the traditional grass-skirt-and-nambas look, succumbing to more progressive gear: light summer dresses for the women, shirts and long trousers for the men. At the center of the village, four tall flagpoles stand side by side before a neat wooden chalet. The flags