Global Adventures: A Picture Takes A Lot Longer To Upload Than A Thousand Words: Third Photo Edition

OK, well, guess what? It's time for another photo issue. My family from the US came to visit me in Tautu and currently all of us are in Australia. This means two things: first of all, my family took a lot of pictures of Tautu, since the place was new to them and they had no fear of appearing too much like tourists by walking around with a camera. Second, Australia has really fast internet. Like, really fast. It's amazing. You type in the address into the browser and *bang* you're there. No waiting, no loading, it's unreal. The bottom line being I have a lot of pictures for you and the means to upload them all. Hope you enjoy. Unfortunately, this isn't a themed photo issue, more of just a hodge-podge of pictures I happen to have.

Here it is, at long last, Dan in Vanuatu, sporting the traditional native garb of shorts, afro, machete, and a water bottle. It's really all you need around these parts. I like to keep a spare shirt slung over the shoulder as well, just in case. I don't often need to wear it, but it's useful for a number of other purposes including: towel, handbag, sweat rag, and pot holder.

Here's me opening a coconut to make coconut milk. The first step is impaling the coconut on a sharp stick to remove the outer husk.

After the husk has been punctured enough, you can start to rip it off.

It's very fiberous, however, so sometimes you need to go back in for a second impaling.

Contrary to popular belief, the hardest part of coconut opening is getting the husk off. Once you've done that, you just hit the nut (the part that you can buy in the produce section of the grocery stores in the US) a couple times with the flat of a machete to crack it open.

Finally, you take the coconut halves and scratch the meat out of them using a circular metal disk with teeth around the circumference, leaving you with a bowl full of coconut shavings. You can then squeeze the shavings to extract the coconut milk (also contrary to popular belief, the liquid inside a coconut isn't the coconut milk, it's mostly just water).

Here are the infamous lap-laps, just out of the underground ovens and still wrapped in banana leaves. My host family in Tautu was very excited about the visit of my US family and prepared a grand total of five lap-laps for them over the course of a week.

A row of lap-laps unwrapped and ready to eat. Notice the white circle in the middle of the nearest one, that's a pool of coconut milk. Filling the middle of a lap-lap with coconut milk is a serving style unique to Malekula. My Mom, Dad, and brother are being good sports and digging in.

Speaking of food and drink, here's my family's first shell of kava. They were good sports about that too. Notice I'm watching for one of them to spit it out so I can get a good laugh. No kava for Nick, my little brother, however, maybe in six years or so.

Here's me tending my oven: a hole in the ground which I put an aluminum pot in and cover with hot coals. Sounds primitive, I know, but it turns out a reasonable batch of cinnamon bread.

Rounding off the food photos, here's me tending my little weber grill with my machete (all work in Vanuatu can be accomplished with a machete). Due to the lack of charcoal, I have to light a wood fire in the grill and wait for it to ember before cooking.