hi friends
Thanks for those who contacted me this week to check how we fared. The cyclone wasn’t bad. The winds did pull down some really nice trees around the area including my neighbor’s yard. Luckily we just lost half of our bananas and papaya which are very fast growing. Edward our legend gardener is coming tomorrow to help me clean up!
I just heard the news about the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Vanuatu is on tsunami watch. The tsunami is expected to hit us at 1am local time.
Anyway please don’t worry about us – we live in a concrete bunker (well a pretty concrete bunker) on the top of a hill. Tsunami and cyclone proof and mostly earthquake proof. Maybe bomb proof but I never want to find out!
I do feel very safe here, and it’s a great step up from last year when we rented a bungalow on the beach – I would not want to be sleeping there tonight. Hope all my friends with lovely beachfront villas and bungalows are OK tomorrow. I’ll keep you informed.
Our thoughts and blessings go to the people of Japan and any other Pacific islands affected by the earthquake and tsunami. I hope everyone can get their life back on track as quickly as possible.
best wishes
Simon
Update: The tsunami hit Vanuatu at 1am without incident, was only 1 metre (3′). I’ve just been watchign the JApenese update on TV, looks much worse than I realized yesterday. I sure hope they get those nuclear plants under control.
The really crazy thing for me personally is that I was meant to be in JApan today. I’ll write about this in my next blog.
On another subject I want to touch on why we moved to Vanuatu - there were many reasons but one of them was Evette’s intuition 2 years ago was that a string of natural disasters was going to hit Australia, New Zealand, Asia, etc, and that Vanuatu would be the safest place. So far the place that was our second choice in Queensland is under floodwater and several other favorite spots like Christchurch are under earthquake rubble. I think Evette and I chose really well. I can put up with the odd cyclone stealing my bananas, it’s a small price to pay!
Liz Barnard 
Hi, Simon
Nice to hear that you’re ok. Hope to hear new updates on how did you and Vanuatu survive this disaster.
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