Well this trip should be the complete opposite of the NZ holiday last year. The South Pacific is a world away from the NZ South Island in winter.
We went to Fiji and stayed in a great Bure at a resort, back in 2012 when the kids where really young. So whilst I won’t say I’d never go back, we’ve done Fiji so I was looking at other options. Vanuatu came up as probably the best balance, easy to get to. Reasonably priced.
I started to look at resorts, and while some where OK, I remembered back to Fiji. The resort was great and the food was pretty good, but the need to go to the restaurant for three meals a day wore off after a few days.
Then I came across the idea of hiring a house. Vanuatu has a quite a few. Heaps more space than a resort cabin, a full kitchen. Some even came with a car!
So after eyeing off a number of houses, we ended up booking a three bedroom house for 16 nights. It has a great deck and in-ground pool, right on Vila harbour. It’s about a 15min drive or so from Port Vila, not far from the Cruise Ship terminal (no car however).
Arrow pointing to the house
While this is much more economical, it really about more the space and flexibility, it is probably half the cost of some basic resorts and maybe a third less than the fancier ones. So what might have been a 7-12 day trip can be extended to 16 days.
As we’ve got the space we end up inviting my Brother Ken and our sister in-law Chris to come over for a bit, followed by Justine’s mum Dawn afterwards.