Maewo in Vanuatu: A Narrow, Wet Island of Year-Round Waterfalls

The wet island

Maewo is long, narrow and among the wettest places in Vanuatu. Rain falls across most of the year, which is why its waterfalls run when others have stopped and why its forest is as dense as it is.

Water and forest

The Big Water falls on the west coast drop in a series of pools close enough to the shore to reach on foot. The interior is steep and heavily timbered, with walking tracks where roads would be elsewhere.

Reaching it

Domestic flights serve the island from Port Vila and Santo, and boats run across from Pentecost and Ambae. Maewo and Pentecost were treated as a single entry in the old tourism material, and the two are still commonly visited together.

Water everywhere

Maewo receives some of the highest rainfall in Vanuatu, and the consequence is visible: rivers run year-round where neighbouring islands have seasonal creeks, and the forest is dense to the ridgeline. The island is about 50 kilometres long and rarely more than six wide.

The waterfalls

The Big Water falls on the west coast are the best known — a series of drops and pools that run directly to the shore, reachable on foot from the coastal path. Several smaller falls along the same coast are used by villages for washing and are approached accordingly.

Kastom and kava

Maewo has a reputation across Vanuatu for the strength of its kava and for the persistence of custom practice. The island is also where a number of the region’s dances and songs are said to originate, and those rights stay with the families that hold them.

Getting there and staying

The airstrip at Naone in the north carries what scheduled service the island gets, and Maewo has boat connections to Ambae and Pentecost. Accommodation is village bungalows. The island has almost no road, and travel along the coast is on foot or by boat.

Gardens and rain

The rainfall that makes Maewo difficult also makes it productive. Taro is grown in irrigated terraces fed by permanent streams — a system that requires the water to be reliable and that exists in only a few places in Vanuatu. The terraces are old and are maintained collectively.

Songs that travelled

A number of dances and song cycles performed elsewhere in the north of the country are held to have originated on Maewo and to have been traded outward. In a system where songs are property, that origin is a claim with weight, and it is one reason the island’s cultural standing exceeds its size.

What a visit looks like

There is no itinerary to follow. A stay on Maewo means walking the coast between villages, being taken to the falls by whoever is going that way, and eating what the garden produced. That is the whole offer, and for the small number of people who go, it is the reason.

Boats to Ambae and Pentecost

Maewo sits close enough to Ambae and to northern Pentecost for open-boat crossings to be routine in settled weather, and islanders move between the three regularly for family, market and school. Visitors can use the same crossings, with the same dependence on the sea.

Living without a road

Maewo has no road of any length. Villages along the west coast are connected by a footpath and by boat, and the east coast is harder still. Freight comes by ship to a handful of landing points, and from there it is carried.

Health and school

Like most of the outer islands, Maewo runs on an aid post and a primary school in each cluster of villages, with secondary schooling meaning a move to Ambae, Santo or Port Vila. That movement is the single largest fact of outer-island life and it shapes who is present in a village at any given time.