Visiting this pristine, wild Pacific island is like stepping back in time

It’s said that a visit to Tanna is a chance to see Vanuatu as it really is. On this island in the South Pacific archipelago, resorts are rarities and visitors can feel as if they’re stepping into another world, one where the clock has turned back. Roads are few and far between; most are unsealed and potholed. Power supplies are intermittent and arranged marriages are common.

Even my transfer from Tanna’s White Grass Airport is a throwback to another time. After a 40-minute flight from Port Vila, I’m collected in a safari-style vehicle with open rows of seats fitted in the back. Our driver, whose impressive dreadlocks hang halfway down his back, drives us three kilometres north along a dusty track before turning into the White Grass Ocean Resort, one of just a few on the island.

It’s set among swaying coconut palms on a coral bluff overlooking Tanna’s sheltered north-west coast. It opened in 2001 and, with a 3.5-star rating, still ranks as the island’s ritziest, with 18 beach bures or two-bedroom family villas. A big asset are its genial Ni-Vanuatu staff, most of whom have been recruited from nearby villages. They’ll soon make you feel so at ease you’ll begin to entertain thoughts of inviting them for dinner.

Not so long ago, Vanuatu was ranked the happiest place in the world, following criteria that measured wellbeing, equality and life expectancy against a nation’s environmental impact. The simple things in life are what matters most here.

None come simpler than what you’ll find in ″⁣kustom″⁣ villages across the island’s rainforested interior. In communities like Yakel, a bouncy 20-minute drive inland from Lenakel, women wear grass skirts and bare-chested men wear penis gourds. Barefooted children scamper on earthen floors and pigs and chickens scurry nearby. And their airy homes are huts made from bamboo stalks beneath thatched roofs.

Yakel is also home to the “cargo cult” that idolises the late-Queen Elizabeth’s husband, Prince Philip. A signed portrait of the royal from a 1974 visit to Vanuatu on the Royal Yacht Britannia reportedly hangs inside a hut somewhere in Yakel. The village chief at the time declared the now late Philip to be a descendant of a Tannese mountain spirit and foresaw a time when the ageing prince would return cradling handouts and bestowing abundant harvests upon the island. Obviously, that has been proved to be wishful thinking.

Over on the island’s east coast, Sulphur Bay villagers venerate American servicemen who descended from the skies and sailed in from the seas in World War II. After supposedly introducing themselves as “John from America”, their warplanes and naval ships brought bounteous cargo that was warmly welcomed by the locals.

When the war ended, the soldiers abruptly disappeared and the cargo stopped coming, so the villagers tried to tempt them back by erecting makeshift air control towers and by gouging landing strips out of the jungle – or so the story goes. Even today, Sulphur Bay villagers congregate in a hut each Friday, singing their praises to a mythical deity called John Frum.