We are nevertheless once again proud to present our Photos of the Year – the travel pictures of the year 2011 that most captured the imagination of The Travel Word team and a group of expert external judges. Unlike our Photo of the Year 2010, this year (2011), we had a tie for first place.

Click on the image below for more information about them. See further below for the judges’ comments about them and the rest of the shortlist.

Krishna Mandir on Krishna Janmashtami, Patan, Nepal

Cheetahs Posing, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

About the Photo of the Week and the Photo of the Year

A bit more than two years ago, we started featuring one picture each week (or, lately, every other week) on The Travel Word. We spotlighted favourite images pulled from our growing collections on Flickr.

We then asked the photographer or owner of each selected Photo of the Week to submit a short and revealing text about it – covering the subject of the photo, the general location, the experience of taking the picture, technical aspects of photography etc.

These text-image combinations have proven to be very popular. We believe that this has a lot to do with the special emphasis we have placed on the honesty of the images, all taken or sourced by our partners, who are local travel experts in their destinations. Through their eyes, and given their knowledge of what makes their homes unique, we felt confident that were discovering something special.

The Shortlist

Our methods were decidedly unscientific. For each month, The Travel Word team singled out one photo of the month. To this list of 12 we added afew wild cards that had made a particular impression on us. This shortlist is what we sent to a group of five skilled photographers for their assessment.

Below are the nine images, ranked in order, that caught the judges’ fancies along with their comments. We thank the judges for their contribution and encourage you to learn more about their work.

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+ WINNERS: PHOTOS OF THE YEAR 2011: Krishna Mandir on Krishna Janmashtami, Patan, Nepal AND Cheetahs Posing, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

Comments about Krishna Mandir on Krishna Janmashtami, Patan, Nepal, photo and text by Navin M. Shrestha:
“This photo does an excellent job of capturing both the manic movement of the crowd and the ethereal nature of the temple.” — Mike Richards

“Here’s a unique image of the Durbar Square of Patan that not only does a good job of displaying the beauty of the temple of Lord Krisha, but bringing the square to its full cultural context by choosing to photograph it on Krishna Janmashtami (the birth anniversary of Krishna), full of devotees, prayer and a long enough exposure that bleeds the light and gives the scene a more spiritual climate.” — Arog Vila

“This picture is amazing for the fact that at first glance it could reflect a scene dating back centuries. Truly a timeless shot.” — Matt Stabile

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Comments about Cheetahs Posing, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, photo by Ward Graham, accompanying text by Shafina Bandali:
“Luck is the final element, together with well-studied technique, good planning and plenty of patience, that results in this gorgeous golden-hour capture of two cheetahs looking back at us. This image has a rich tonal range accentuated by a pronounced vignette, which in this case does more than spotlight the cheetahs, it completes the interplay of light within the frame.” — Arog Vila

“Great light, composition and pose, it’s almost tells the viewer that these wild cheetahs are longing for some patting.” — Rafael Pinho

“From a technical perspective, the depth of field and vignetting are just right to single out the pair of cheetahs. They appear curious, ominous and regal all at once.” — Mike Richards

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+ RUNNERS UP: Church of Tisco, Arequipa, Peru AND Beautiful Waters of the Bocas Islands, Panama

Comments about the Church of Tisco, Arequipa, Peru, photo by Alberto Gonzalez, accompanying text by Mariel Gonzalez:
“Travel photography at its best evokes faraway experience in a single image, and this shot of a remote Peruvian church does just that: the totemic ochre ornamentations and roaming landscape transport the viewer to the high fields, far from home.” — Linus Gelber

“Just the right amount of grunge and color provide a contemporary artistic take on a classic stone structure.” — Mike Richards

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Comments about the Beautiful Waters of the Bocas Islands, Panama, photo by ATP, accompanying text by Melissa:
“Transparent green water makes any destination appealing, even if it’s all there is to it. This image portrays the dream-like environment all urbanites long for.” — Rafael Pinho

“I’m a sucker for visions of tropical paradise, probably because I so rarely experience tropical paradise. A jetty with amenities, lifted above clear entrancing waters, with balmy skies above – does it get better than this?” — Linus Gelber

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OTHER FAVOURITES OF OUR JUDGES:

+ Sleepy Lions, Kidepo Valley National Park, Uganda, photo by Steve Cunliffe, accompanying text by Nicola Swann

Comment:
“As anyone who has gone on safari knows, finding lions is the ultimate reward, and to find them in such a natural state must have been a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Oddly enough, this also looks like my family’s living room after Thanksgiving dinner.” — Matt Stabile

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+ The Children of Yakel Village, Tanna, Vanuatu, photo and accompanying text by John Nicholls

Comment:
“Seven strange children range along the ladder entrance to a treehouse home on Tanna Island; they may never hold an Xbox controller or argue the merits of teen fashion, but they smile, gaze, consider and go about their business just like children anywhere else. The wild differences highlight that we are, at heart, pretty much the same.” — Linus Gelber

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+ Smile from a Little Girl, Cusco, Peru, photo by Pieter Roos, accompanying text by Fernando Carrasco

Comments:
“This heartwarming portrait of a little girl is technically sound and beautifully communicative of the colorful personality beyond the girl’s colorful costume. An image that is very easy to connect with, well done!” — Arog Vila

“This girl’s amazing smile reminds me of what is truly great about travel: the people.” — Matt Stabile

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+ Migratory Birds, Lijiang, China, photo and accompanying text by Lily Zhang

Comment:
“A skein of geese, which might have just recently taken off, before forming a V, makes this a chaotic but amusing composition where each element has a certain clumsiness to it.” — Rafael Pinho

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The Judges

We sincerely thank our five judges for the time and effort taken to review our shortlist. We value their opinions and their readiness to share them with us. Please take a moment to check out their work.

Linus Gelber is a photographer from New York City, where he shoots cityscapes and live performances (notably burlesque) and sees way too many movies, if such a thing is possible. His work is represented by Getty Images. Linus would like to go to Antarctica one day, and if you knew how he felt about New York winters you’d think that was weird too.

Born in Brazil, Rafael Pinho took up photography after finishing his architecture studies. He set out as a freelancer in 2005 in Belo Horizonte and spent the following years between Berlin, New York, Reykjavík and São Paulo. His work has been shown at the Florence Biennale (2011) and the Biennale di Roma (2012) and appeared in the The Wall Street Journal, Modern Painters (US), Forum AID (Sweden), FFW Mag! (Brazil), Nýtt Líf (Iceland), Trip and Tpm (Brazil).

Mike Richard is the editor of Vagabondish. He lives in Rhode Island – a spit of land in the northeastern US - where he is a professional web designer and travel junkie with an unhealthy addiction to backpacking, camping, hiking and seeing the world. He enjoys knit hats, small, declarative sentences and speaking in the third person.

Matt Stabile founded and runs TheExpeditioner.com, through which you can read his writings, see his videos, purchase the book he co-edited or contact him via email at any time.

Arog Vila is a New York-based photographer who developed his unique aesthetic and rule-breaking composition studying at the International Center of Photography, the New School and the School of Visual Arts. He delivers crisp and edgy images of photojournalistic human narrative, pointing his camera on the expected from an entirely new angle, then turning to the unusual and connecting it to something familiar and beautiful.

Often also used in conjunction with today's International Day of the World's Indigenous People, this is officially the logo of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (PFII), an advisory body with a mandate to discuss indigenous issues

When is International Day of the World’s Indigenous People? Today! Proclaimed by the United Nations, it’s a day  on which, as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said, to “celebrate and recognise the stories, cultures and unique identities of indigenous peoples around the world.”

This year the focus is on indigenous designs – celebrating stories and cultures, crafting our own future. According to the UN, it “highlights the need for preservation and revitalisation of indigenous cultures, including their art and intellectual property…. It is also a reminder of the responsibility of individuals as consumers, to understand that there is a story and a personal experience behind every piece of cloth, textile or artwork from an indigenous individual or community.”

In Support of Indigenous Culture

On this special day an in keeping with this year’s particular focus, The Travel Word is very proud to join the world in saluting the cultural roots from which we have all sprung, roots that remain robust but require our admiration, care and protection.

To this end, and given the broad reach of the WHL Group community, of which The Travel Word is a part, we have concentrated for the last two weeks on sharing word from the indigenous people and native communities in our network. Our posts have examined indigenous culture and travel as it relates to:

• an Aboriginal tour guide in Cooktown, Australia
• the indigenous shea-butter-producing communities on the fringe of Mole National Park in northern Ghana
• an arts and ethnography museum in Laos that provides important information about the country’s ethnic groups
• the indigenous Rungus tribes of northern Borneo, Malaysia
• the Tzotzil indigenous people of Chamula, Mexico
• the Maori on the North Island of New Zealand
• the Embera indigenous community of Panama
• the Sámi indigenous people of northern Scandinavia
• the Bassari villages of rural Senegal
• the hill tribes of northern Thailand
• in Vanuatu, a Yakel village on the island of Tanna and the Namba population of Malekula Island
• the aboriginal Pemon people of Canaima National Park in Venezuela

We also have older articles about indigenous culture that explore Bhutan, Colombia, Georgia, Malawi, Mexico, Pakistan and Peru.

Poster announcing Indigenous People's Week, August 8-12, 2011. By planeta.com

There’s More: Indigenous People’s Week

In extended appreciation of indigenous people, The Travel Word is also throwing its weight behind Indigenous People’s Week, which takes place from August 8 to 12, 2011.

According to Ron Mader of Planeta.com, one of the week’s co-organisers, Indigenous People’s Week is “an innovative and fun ‘unconference’ ” that calls for recommendations of educational and engaging videos, podcasts, websites and online resources as part of “a wonderful mixing of cultures – indigenous and non-indigenous – as well as cyber-savvy and friends who simply don’t want a smartphone. We don’t all have to do the same thing or have the same background to contribute to a win-win effort.”

Please start adding links or questions now to the Indigenous People’s Week event pages on Facebook and LinkedIn. When tweeting about this topic, please include the hashtags #indigenous and #ipw.

Living what some outsiders would consider a feral existence is normal to the children of Yakel, a Kastom village on the island of Tanna in the Vanuatu archipelago.

The settlement is referred to locally as a Nambas village – the Nambas being the sole item of apparel worn by men, hiding their private parts. This means that the village rejects everything introduced by the Western world. The children shown in the picture below will never go to school. Their clothing, food and entertainment will be provided solely by the forest in which they live.

Visiting Yakel, or other Kastom villages in Vanuatu, is partaking in a voyage where time is of no consequence, where birthdays do not exist as there is no way of remembering this or any other event marked on a calendar – even if the residents had any inclination to record anything. One male from the village will be chosen to receive sufficient education in either English or French to act as an interpreter and guide to the outside world. Many of the Yakel villagers do not even speak Bislama, the creole language used throughout the archipelago.

The  Yakel tribe performs dances for visitors and sells handmade carvings to raise cash for basic tools such as machetes, axes, pots, pans and medical equipment, and to maintain the one old truck that services the tribe, a group consisting of around 700 people.

There’s an old story that in the past a chief was asked by his community “What do you do with all the money we collect?” The chief happily displayed his pride and joy – a mattress made of weaved Pandanus leaves and stuffed with currency notes from all over the world. He had not known what to do with all the strange-looking ‘White-Man leaves’. Rightly, he believed this was better than sleeping on the ground at his advanced age. Nowadays, the money is kept in a bank.

There are many other villages in Vanuatu where one experiences a spontaneous friendliness, dancing and indigenous art, and many of these can be visited as part of an organised tour. There are also many accommodation options that allow visitors to experience several different perspectives of life on Tanna.

Silvana Nicholls and her husband, John Nicholls, were some of the earliest local partners to join the whl.travel family. They launched their Vanuatu destination portal in November of 2005 and have been strong collaborators ever since.

Silvana Nicholls and her four-legged baby Chloe at her former home in Kuranda, Cairns (Australia), the morning after the caviar-and-champagne event (see below). Everyone was so delighted to be reunited that Chloe was never left alone again.

Silvana was born in Italy and moved to Melbourne, Australia, at the age of four. In the late 1990s, she slowly moved her way up Australia’s eastern seaboard – first to Sydney for seven years and then to Queensland for five years. She arrived on the island of Vanuatu in the South Pacific in 2001 and spent the first three years on the volcanic island of Tanna before moving to the capital city of Port Vila on Efate Island, where she and John still live.

WHL Group: Which is your favourite WHL Group destination and which would you most like to visit?
Silvana: Favourite? There are so many! I love archaeology, hence Greece would be high on my list in order to visit all that history, but I also dream of trekking in the highlands of Peru.

WHLG: What would you never travel without?
Silvana: After a valid passport, credit card and local currency, it would have to be a reliable map of the destination I was to explore, insect repellent, snack food, a water bottle and a good book. You never know how long that flight, train, ferry or bus is going to be…

WHLG: What do you miss most about home when travelling?
Silvana: It would have to be my husband’s humour (and rants) if he is not with me. When we travel together, I miss the comfort and karma of our home the most. Although I would rather spend money on seeing and doing than sleeping, I have never been the backpacker type; I need a good and clean bed in a secure, private environment at the end of a packed day on the road!

WHLG: What’s the most adventurous trip you’ve ever taken?
Silvana: Moving to Vanuatu. I left a great job, packed all my belongings – including my dog – put my house up for rent and flew to an island that I had never known existed in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean. Not to mention the fact that it was created by its still-very-active live volcano and that the place is known for Melanesian cults and their past cannibal culture. The place did not even have electricity or running water – we had to generate our own!

WHLG: What is your funniest travel experience?
Silvana: When I won a Christmas party costume contest as a very pregnant Virgin Mary. The prize was an ‘indulgent’ weekend in the penthouse of a five-star resort in Cairns, Australia. At 2am the first night, we felt so guilty about leaving our dog Chloe behind by herself that we couldn’t even sleep. So we took the complimentary champagne and caviar, and returned home for what became a great weekend with our four-legged baby.

Silvana Nicholls and her husband, John, pose with a guest's little boy. In addition to her dog Chloe (left), Silvana adopted a Papillon (small breed of dog) whilst managing a resort in Vanuatu. Guests and their children had a menagerie to chose from: two lovable dogs, a pet pig that thought she was a dog, coconut crabs (fed instead of eaten), injured turtles and numerous flightless birds that found sanctuary on the protected grounds.

WHLG: What is your scariest travel experience?
Silvana: Hmmm. Between facing an oncoming four-metre-high tidal surge, a 7.5-force earthquake or a category-5 cyclone, I’m not sure which to choose. They were all terrifying.

WHLG: If you could go on holiday with anyone famous – living or dead – who would you take?
Silvana: Sir David Attenborough. I would just love to forage and find fossils with him.

WHLG: Describe the best and worst accommodation you’ve ever stayed in.
Silvana: It’s ironic, but the best was the penthouse of the five-star resort in Cairns, Australia, mentioned above, that I left to be with my dog. The worst was a hotel in Kuranda in North Queensland, Australia. The mattress was infested with lice and felt as if it was created for an S&M torture chamber.

WHLG: Describe your earliest travel memory.
Silvana: When I was four years old, my family emigrated from Vibo Valentia in southern Italy, to settle in Australia. So returning to Italy some 16 years later to see my extended family and the village of my ancestors was an emotional experience. In addition, we visited other parts of the country I had never been to before, like Florence, Rome and of course iconic Venice to find out who was producing that contorted alien-like glassware in my mother’s home.

Silvana Nicholls stands back, elated after successfully coordinating the first official wedding on top of Mt Yasur volcano, Vanuatu, including negotiating government red tape and completing the celebrant's paperwork

WHLG: Please briefly explain what you think local travel is.
Silvana: I think finding the ultimate solution to changing the prevailing ‘Me!’-travel culture to one of local travel is important. Local travel needs to be felt in order to be manifested. It is akin to comparing real love to self-love. Local travellers will make that extra effort to empathise, understand and share in another person’s life, as opposed to those who use a destination as a new host to satisfy their whims and indulgences.

Frankly, I don’t understand some travellers. Without an emotional interest in a country, what is the point of visiting it? If one cannot feel for the people and country one is visiting, then one will not comprehend the local-travel concept. Caring about others – their welfare and the environment – and balancing your own self-gratification with support for local people when travelling should come naturally. How you behave and what you do will follow, as is mentioned by all my WHL Group counterparts.

WHLG: In what ways do you see local travel benefiting the country in which you live?
Silvana: Travel is a fantastic opportunity to experience how others live and it engenders global tolerance. Independent, sustainable travel in particular can contribute enormously to local communities who need opportunities to develop some economic strength in a fast-moving and interconnected modern world. As whl.travel local partners, we have a role to play as educators, promoters and facilitators connecting travellers to the most effective tourism service providers in our regions whilst leaving as minimal a footprint on the environment as possible.

A more detailed explanation of our activities in this area is found at http://www.vanuatu-hotels.vu/aboutus.

Exactly one year ago, we started featuring one picture each week on The Travel Word. We spotlighted favourite images pulled from our growing collections on Flickr (here and here).

We also asked the photographer or owner of each selected Photo of the Week to submit a short and revealing text about it – covering the subject of the photo, the general location, the experience of taking the picture, technical aspects of photography etc.

These text-image combinations have proven to be very popular. We believe that this has a lot to do with the special emphasis we have placed on the honesty of the image. All taken or sourced by our franchise partners, who are local travel experts in their destinations, they conveyed (we believe) something special. We weren’t looking for postcard images, even if we did end up focusing on a gorgeous sunset or backlit kid. We still always knew we were looking at a place through the eyes of someone who’s seen lots of kids and sunsets and knows their worth or when a scene comes along that really is exceptional.

The Shortlist

Our methods were decidedly unscientific. For each month, The Travel Word team singled out one photo of the month. To this list of 12 we added four wild cards that had made a particular impression on us. This list of 16 we put to a group of five skilled photographers for their assessment.

Below is the resulting list of nine images, ranked in order, with comments from the judges:

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+ Winner: Photo of the Year: The Dazzling Colours of Sunset, the Maldives

Comments:
“Nice composition, perfect exposure. I like that the photographer chose
to silhouette the people and the bridge. It definitely makes me want
to be there!”

“This stunning sunset in the Maldives is a classic example of being in the very-right place at the very-right time. What separates this sunset photo from most is the focus the people on the pier gives the viewer. Taking us far away and drawing us into the scene, in doing so we end up wishing that we ourselves were right there in the photo.”

“Sunsets never get old, and this one is quite spectacular. There is something really inviting about the whole scene, and I deeply envy those people on the pier.”

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+ First Runner Up: Mt Yasur Eruption, Tanna Island, Vanuatu

Comments:
“I like the abstract quality of this image. Proper exposure could be
challenging and this is nicely done.”

“I’ve never seen a live volcano up close, and given that I live in Brooklyn in New York City, I count that as a good thing. This view of a sudden and unexpectedly powerful eruption is an instantly-accessible peek into a foreign world. I like the easy way it reminds me of everything we don’t expect to run into in the course of a regular day.”

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+ Second Runner Up: Boats Bob in the Waters of Melissani Lake, Kefalonia, Greece

Comments:
“Crystal-clear waters in a shocking blue against the weathered gray stones of the surrounding cave walls – what’s not to like? This image has a simplicity and a purity to it. It’s a casually-composed shot, a day in the life of some guys who just happen to work in this incredibly beautiful spot.”

“I chose this one because it just had it all. The photograph itself is beautiful, it is wonderfully shot and of a spectacular moment in what looks to be an amazing place.”

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Other Favourites of Our Judges:

+ Yummy Penny Bun Mushrooms in Latvia

Comments:
“This basket of mushrooms picked in Latvia looks simply stunning. The photographer has found a whole world of textures and rich colours framed by the equally tactile grass and basket. The high contrast and dappled light creates a larger-than-life image that makes me crave mushroom soup.”

“Here’s a beautifully composed image that has a nearly artificial tone to it suggesting a leisurely adventure that’s always fantastic: mushroom picking. The photograph with its colors, the arrangement of the mushrooms in a basket, takes the viewer right back to fairy tales and stories of enchanted forests.”

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+ Gorillas in Our Midst, Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Uganda

Comments:
“Gorillas make very good models and the one in this picture is nearly human in its cinematographic expression. The image has a curious temporality as it freezes the movement of a beast that’s decidedly about to do something. The frame is suggestive of movement and one is tempted to imagine what’s beyond the frame and beyond the time frozen in it.”

“This handsome portrait of the gorilla really struck me. You can really feel the impact of his stare through the photograph; it was captured perfectly. I really have to give it to the photographer for getting that close.”

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+ Sifting Rice for the Day in Muang Sing, Luang Namtha, Laos

Comment:
“This photo of a girl carrying out what is for her a day-to-day chore offers for the casual viewer a brief window into her world in a photo filled with context and brought to life with action. In the background, the rural character of her village on stilts is clear and everything about her from her unwashed clothes to her slight Mona-Lisa smile gives you a wealth of detail in this brief snapshot of her day. Contrasting this detail the rice is a blurred fountain of movement and adds a bit of magic to the every-day.”

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+ Traditional Soap Making, Tripoli, Lebanon

Comment:
“Travel photography is a genre where the portrayed object is more important than the image itself. It’s a matter of finding the most peculiar scene, place or event and then register that in a way that is pleasant to look at. A row of ladies stirring soap in steamy cauldrons is as catchy as a photograph can be.”

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+ Fire-Knife Dancing in Samoa

Comment:
“I love fire as a photographic element; it’s stark and full of motion, and when you capture it right you can almost hear the sizzle and crackle. This shot made me think about how performance is a kind of shorthand, in some ways. While the picture was taken at a hotel during a cultural program, it still evokes dark nights on sandy beaches, on foreign shores.”

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+ Young Novice Monks in Vientiane, Laos

Comment:
“Very nice shot of the playful interaction. Many people are too intimidated to photograph strangers, but the people we meet are such an essential part of the experience.”

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The Judges

We extend sincere thanks to our five judges for their time and effort. We value their professional opinions and their readiness to share them with us.

+ Ian DeLaune is a New York-based artist working primarily with issues of media and information dissemination, and drawing on a wide array of digital and analogue techniques. He received his MFA in 1998 from SVA and currently works and teaches at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.

+ Linus Gelber is a photographer from New York City, where he shoots cityscapes and live performances (notably burlesque) and sees way too many movies, if such a thing is possible. His work is represented by Getty Images. Linus would like to go to Antarctica one day, and if you knew how he felt about New York winters you’d think that was weird too.

+ Richard Jephcote has taught traditional photography and Photoshop in colleges in North London and created several films through the artistic collective Tea Fuelled Art, which he co-founded with writer/composer George Lewkowicz and artist Katherine Harding. In addition to freelancing in photography/design and filmmaking, he has been pursuing an MA in Filmmaking (specialising in cinematography).

+ Born in Brazil, Rafael Pinho took up photography after finishing his architecture studies. He set out as a freelancer in 2005 in Belo Horizonte and spent the following years between Berlin, Reykjavík and São Paulo. His work has appeared in Modern Painters (US), Forum AID (Sweden), FFW Mag! (Brazil), Nýtt Líf (Iceland), Trip and Tpm (Brazil).

+ Although Jennie Zeiner received her undergraduate degree in Journalism, it is her images that have appeared in Reader’s Digest, Fast Company, Forbes, Money Magazine, Inc., BusinessWeek, Newsweek, ComputerWorld, Utne Reader and Village Voice. Her corporate/advertising work has been used by Bank of America, General Motors, FedEx, FCB, VISA, Mastercard, Larry King, Disney Latin America and Discovery Network.

Every so often, a photographer finds him- or herself in the right place at the right time, although the circumstances may not be ideal. This shot (one of a series of 10) is the result of such a unique time and place.

Mt Yasur, although a Strombolian volcano only 500 metres high, is indisputably the most accessible live volcano in the world. There is no doubt that every person who makes the short (15-minute) trek to the crater is increasing the prospects of a shortened life, but that’s why thousands do it. There’s a violent explosion of 3,000-degree C magma every five to ten minutes. The experience of witnessing this phenomenon is addictive.

There are different categories of danger, which is carefully monitored. Categories 1 and 2 are relatively safe for viewing from the crater. Category 3 is not; no one should be near the crater. Category 4 means that no one should be within a 20 kilometre radius of the volcano. Category 5 obliges evacuation from the island.

The volcano usually hovers around a category 1.5 to 2. On most occasions, it is a simply beautiful pyrotechnic display and has an natural artistic grace to it. Oddly, the magma splattering softly into the crater resembles illuminated cow dung.

On the night of my photograph in 2002, Mt Yasur was doing its usual category 2 performance for an enthralled audience. Suddenly everything became much more frightening: the explosions increased in intensity and did not appear to be abating. Before we knew it we were in a category 3 situation. Deformed elastic chunks of magma the size of cows flew over our group’s heads. I knew we were definitely too close, but we would not make a run for it down the mountain. It was too dark and far more dangerous to run than to stay. Running, we would trip over black boulders and maybe get hit in the back or on the head with falling magma. The safer option was to stay alert to falling magna. This we did, and as my camera was on a tripod, I continued to shoot whilst looking up in the black sky for magma bombs.

This scanned-from-print image was shot with a Canon EOS 30, on 800 asa Kodak positive film at around 1/125 of a second. It has now become the country’s most-used iconic image of the volcano. Tanna Island is a 45-minute flight from Port Vila, but the volcano is another 90-minute 4WD drive from the airport.

I have returned over 30 times to Mt Yasur and continued to photograph this beast (yes you get to relate to it). It is in continual growth and I have had a different experience every time I visit. On the last occasion, there was an earthquake whilst we were on top of the crater. That certainly adds a new dimension to fear, as I was imagining the whole side of the crater – little more than compacted ash, like giant sand hill – caving into the vent!

You want an adrenalin high? The Tanna beast will give you one every few minutes! I am happy to advise/coordinate anyone’s Mt Yasur volcano expedition (we offer three options – an overnight trip, and a budget or deluxe seven-day option). I have never lost anyone to the beast… yet.

Visit the whl.travel Flickr photostream for a set of more pictures of Vanuatu.

Although a parallel ‘turtle emergency rescue’ program of buying turtles captured by locals as a step in saving them from the cooking pot unfortunately had to be discontinued as it created a new industry – the capture of released turtles in order to sell them back – the resort nevertheless became the island’s de facto animal refuge, even providing veterinary assistance when need.

A White Grass Ocean Resort turtle emergency rescue program of buying turtles captured by locals had to be discontinued when released turtles were captured and sold back to the resort

As part of their efforts, the Nicholls’ also banned coconut crab from their menu (see more information), a practical step in helping to building the first and only coconut crab habitat in Vanuatu.

“Instead of eating them, our guests could handle and photograph living crabs. The kids had a ball seeing, touching and hand-feeding these awesome creatures, which are coloured in beautiful greens and blues, rather than seeing them cooked red,” said John. “In order to immediately sensitise people to the unique, fun eco-experience in store for resort guests, I sometimes welcomed them with a giant coconut crab… a live one, that is!”

Although their efforts initially made little impact, and maintaining the habitat was no easy task – these largest land-living crustacean can cut themselves out of any corner with their powerful claws and easily climb any surface, like the coconut trees from which they take their name – John and Silvana persisted.

“When travelling to the capital, Port Vila, we were appalled to see coconut crabs sold in restaurants,” confirmed John. “The irony of it is that they are actually quite bland in flavour, hence inevitably covered with strong sauces to make them interesting to eat. There was quite a trade in coconut crabs and we knew this was not sustainable, as numbers were dwindling fast. When we contacted a few experts on the subject, our fears were confirmed: there was a real problem.”

The coconut crab weighs over five kilograms when fully grown and measures metre wide from claw to claw

Predictions were that if coconut crab consumption could not be curbed, a number of islands in Vanuatu would feast them into extinction. The problem was not specific to the resort’s island of Tanna; it was true of many other islands as well.

“We then set out to make the tourism industry aware of the coconut crab plight,” continued John. “At the beginning, most hospitality colleagues did not know much about us and discarded our message as coming from recently arrived tree-hugging greenies. Only a few backed our little movement. But in mid 2002 the country’s iconic resorts banned coconut crab from their menus and things changed rapidly for the better. The message was being taken seriously.”

The movement relied not at all on a committee, printed brochures or criticism of anyone persisting in selling crabs. It simply consisted of information (see more information) shared via regular emails, at association meetings and on the resort website. With the hospitality industry in Vanuatu composed principally of independent individuals, many who have left their countries of birth “to get away from the top-down approach of their governments and local associations,” John and Silvana believed that their movement would function better with a grassroots approach.

With everyone allowed to come to their own conclusions based on the information provided, the strategy appears to have worked. In Vanuatu, coconut crabs are rarely found on menus.

“New or ignorant restaurateurs and some greedy ones persist,” added John. “It’s tough fighting ignorance. The owner of the resort where we built the habitat closed it down shortly after our departure. We just have to keep bringing the facts to the public, then those restaurants will be reminded of the coconut crab plight from their patrons and will have to change their ways. The next stage is then to encourage indigenous inhabitants to see the coconut crab as a tourist attraction and create venues for them to be protected, prosper and generate an income from the accessibility to this fascinating creature by the public.”

More Information

• Read a coconut-crab-conservation-vanuatu written by the Nicholls when working at the White Grass Ocean Resort.
• Read more about the coconut crab on Vanuatu Hotels.
• Read about the Vanuatu Post’s support of coconut crab conservation efforts.