Espiritu Santo: Blue Holes, Limestone Caves and the Coolidge Wreck

The largest island

Espiritu Santo is the biggest island in Vanuatu and the one with the most varied interior — limestone country, rivers, and a mountain spine that includes Mount Tabwemasana, the highest point in the country at 1,879 metres.

Blue holes and the coast

The east coast carries a series of blue holes: spring-fed freshwater pools where the limestone has collapsed, clear enough to see the bottom at depth. Champagne Beach and Port Olry sit further north along the same coast.

Luganville and the war

Luganville is the country's second town, and its shape comes directly from the Second World War. The Americans built a base here for roughly 100,000 personnel, and when they left they pushed a great deal of equipment into the sea at what is now called Million Dollar Point.

Offshore lies the SS President Coolidge, a converted liner that struck a friendly mine in 1942. It is one of the largest accessible wreck dives anywhere and the reason many divers come to Vanuatu at all — see diving.

Scale

Santo covers around 4,000 square kilometres, roughly a third of Vanuatu’s total land area, and rises to 1,879 metres at Mount Tabwemasana — the highest point in the country. The west coast is effectively roadless; almost everything a visitor sees is on the east.

The blue holes

The east coast carries a set of freshwater sinkholes fed by underground springs moving through limestone. Nanda, Riri and Matevulu are the three usually visited. The water is startlingly clear and cold, and the blue comes from depth and from the mineral content of the spring water. Riri is reached by paddling up a river; the others by road.

Champagne Beach and the north

Champagne Beach on the north-east coast takes its name from bubbles released by volcanic activity through the sand at low tide. It is the most photographed beach in the country and the reason a good many cruise passengers come ashore at Luganville. Port Olry, further north, is quieter and has the better food.

Luganville

The second town in Vanuatu, with a population in the low tens of thousands, laid out along a single main street on the Segond Channel. The grid, the wide road and the Quonset huts still standing are directly inherited from the American base — see the Second World War.

Millennium Cave

Inland from Luganville, a full-day guided trip involving a walk through gardens and forest, a descent by bamboo ladder into a cave system, and a return by floating and swimming down a river gorge. It is run by the surrounding villages and is physically demanding and not a stroll.

The west coast

Almost everything written about Santo describes the east. The west coast is a different island: cliffs falling into deep water, almost no road, and villages reached by boat when the sea allows. Mount Tabwemasana and the interior ranges sit behind it, and the walking routes across are multi-day undertakings arranged in villages, not booked.

Cattle

Santo carries most of Vanuatu’s cattle, a legacy of the plantations, and the country exports beef on the strength of it. The animals graze under coconut on land that was planted for copra, which is why the landscape between Luganville and the north reads as pasture with palms and not as either one.

What the war left in the ground

Beyond the Coolidge and Million Dollar Point, the base infrastructure is still legible: coral runways now used as roads, Quonset huts in service as sheds, concrete foundations in the bush. Bloody Mary’s bar and the names on the maps come from the same period.

Big Bay

The bay on the north coast where Queirós attempted a settlement in 1606 is still called Big Bay, and the rivers running into it drain the island’s highest country. It is reached by road from Luganville in a few hours and is the starting point for walking into the interior ranges.