SUPERIOR PLACES ON THE GLOBE - PART 1

I am in South Africa to observe a commercial on a skin care product. 

Why South Africa? 

The light is really “real” here.   When shooting on film, there are many lens filters, but these days with the Red Epic, hardly necessary to dim a light or increase the vibrancy – Cape Town has the rays and density to filter any lens.   This is its specialty.

The team flew in from the West whereas I flew from the East  riding the equator and then heading south to Johannesburg.    A quick turn around and on the horizon Table Top Mountain majestically draws nearer.  

Cape Town, besides its distinctive wine is also widely known among movie-makers for its clear “light” unclouded by sea mist, ozone layers, or city pollution.   It is as if the hues are taken from a color palate making the sea a deep blue, the grass an emerald green, the sky at sunrise, a stunning orange bursting through the horizon.  

Looking out to sea, sipping the South Africa’s Hamilton’s best prize chardonnay, I am experiencing the sun setting  with its intensity of  caramel  orange disappearing second by second.  This is definitely what DP’s talk about  (Director of Photography) if you didn’t already know.      It’s the thinnest spot of the Ozone hole. The King Protea’s pink petals were shockingly pink, the emerald green grass, so bright like a spilled can of paint.  The sapphire blue sea, implied incalculable depth, suggested God was involved in creating this planet.  It is us humans, that have spoilt global beauty with our pollution requiring a movie crew to fly all the way from America to South Africa for its “light” so real – difficult to capture anywhere else.

 

                                       Smoking: The double volcano on the island of Ambrym in the Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu.

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I am here in Vanuatu to plunge myself in volcanic mud and drink their elixir called Kava

The short 3½ hour flight from Auckland on Air Vanuatu’s 737-300 illustrated the narrow scope in my mind of the vastness of  the Pacific ocean.  Freaked out by the smallness of me and my 737, however this feeling never surfaces when travelling over land mass; the finite of the ground below serves to make me more part of the earth.  

The breezy tropical hot wind whips the ocean salt as I step out of the aircraft in Port Vila, Vanuatu.   Déjà vu is what hits me, and I am transported to a very happy time in similar atmosphere several decades ago.

The mud and elixir specifically found in Ambrym island, is yet another 60 minute flight from Port Vila to Ambrym  on a Turbo Prop.  An eight seater, my team were the only people on the flight, this equally small aircraft unnerved me just a tad.    The short grassy runway and the little shack was the airport.   Our guide, Samuel was there, waving to take us to the guest house.  This is so “way out” of what I am used to and very apprehensive of being stuck in this extremely small dot in the middle of the Pacific.  The village children smiled and waved, clad in shorts, we must have appeared strange, with backpacks, cameras with odd-looking shoes. 

My trip to Mt. Marum will need the assistance of Samuel and John, our expert guide. Ambrym is an amazing volcanic island in the centre of the of Vanuatu archipelago, when Ambrym blew up a thousand years ago, it ejected 25 cubic kilometres of earth into the atmosphere. When the eruption ended, these vents sealed up, but left very distinctive crater shapes called maars, in the landscape. These are the black half moon and circular shapes in the diagram.

After a long and arduous trek, we were able to see Mt. Marum boiling underneath.  The site of the lava is surreal.  Watching liquid rock boil as if in a large natural pot is intense. Every few seconds an explosion and a burst of lava spews into the air. The stench of the gases is incredibly putrid.   The view is amazing and being one with nature makes faith in God’s creation all the more real.

Back to base camp I decided to immerse my body in  volcanic mud to increase the magnesium in my 5ft 1inch frame.   For example, did you know that the presence of Magnesium in the bloodstream and cellular fluids is necessary for more than three hundred different metabolic functions?   

I plunged and emerged feeling totally  and inexplicably renewed.   

Now for the Kava.

Kava comes from the root of the yaqona (piper methysticum) bush, a relative of the pepper plant. The root is ground up and then strained with water into a large wooden communal bowl (or sometimes a plastic bucket, depending on what you have on hand). Simple preparation for a simple drink.  Kava Does NOT Taste Good, in fact it is similar to drinking a bowl of dirty water, like mud, bitter, peppery mud.   My mouth was numb and although offered a second cup, I declined.   Body relaxed, mind relaxed, I am renewed from the depth of the earth.