Champagne Bay

Champagne Bay is a small cove on the east coast of Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu’s largest island. We’d been advised that our stay at Champagne Bay would be shortened due to an outbreak of coconut rhinoceros beetles. Apparently if the ship stayed past sunset the lights would attract the beetles and then we’d transport them to another locale. An understandable precaution, but it meant that our departure time was moved up from 7:00 PM to 4:00. The captain did do his best to shorten our transit time from Mystery Island and got us to our anchoring station by 11:00 instead of the scheduled noon. With the first tender leaving at around 11:30, that would give us four hours or so on the beach.

Unsurprisingly there was a mob scene in the Insignia Lounge to get tender tickets. We got there early and Thomas held his ground in line despite some rather aggressive pushing by some folks (“segmenters” as Thomas rather snootily referred to them 😊 ) and got us tickets on the first tender.

The beach was absolutely gorgeous. Aquamarine water, clean white sand, and trees leaning over the beach to provide shade all made for a perfect location. We set up shop under an enormous tree on the east end of the beach, where we’d read that the bubbles that give the beach its name can be seen. We never did see any bubbles, but we had a great time anyway. The boys dashed right into the water, which was warmer than we’d experienced the past couple of days. We then snorkeled pretty much the whole time we were there. It was terrific, with a wide variety of coral and fish, including some large staghorn coral that we rarely see any more (this may not be the technically correct name, but it’s the branching coral that used to be common and is now nearly all dead).

We were very happy to be joined on the beach by Mike, Sarah, Ken, and Jennifer. The whole afternoon had the feel of a giant Oceania beach party as our ship was the only one there and we had the beach to ourselves. With the weather cooperating, the beautiful beach, the excellent snorkeling, and the outstanding company we had a perfect day. It was capped off by taco night in the Terrace. We all agreed it was one of the best days of the trip.もっと詳しく