Aerial view of a woman swimming, Blue Lagoon, Eton, Efate island, Shefa Province, Vanuatu. Photo: Vanuatu Tourism Office Aerial view of swimming at Blue Lagoon. Photo / Vanuatu Tourism Office
With new kayak tours, inflatable waterparks and scooters for hire, Vanuatu is reinventing itself as the South Pacific’s best adventure hub, writes Christine Retschlag.
Port Vila-based Kiwi tour operator Andy Martin was casually chatting with dive shop owner and fellow New Zealand-born Joshua Ernst when a 7.3-magnitude earthquake hit the Vanuatu capital in 2024.
“I was standing next door at Big Blue talking to Josh and we were literally rubbing our hands together saying ‘this is going to be a good year, the people are here, the vibe is good, the planes are flying in’,” Martin says.
“And just out of the blue it went bang … a big shake which threw me off my feet into the corner of his shop and Josh fell off his chair. The cafe was full and everyone just ran out. Outside it was a ghost town. Everyone had just run away, all frightened of a tsunami.
“I just walked outside and went ‘holy smokes’.”
It’s March 2026 and I’m sitting along the Port Vila waterfront with Martin, tracing the scars of the December 2024 earthquake that killed 14 people and flattened buildings across Vanuatu’s capital.
En route, I’ve paused at the rock memorial along the main street built at the Billabong site where Martin joined rescuers for three days digging people from the rubble.
But there’s a quiet buzz building in and around Port Vila. A murmur of a different kind. Of resilience, resurrection and of a South Pacific capital seizing the opportunity to reinvent itself.
Martin, a former chopper pilot from Twizel who runs Watersports Vanuatu, is so optimistic that he’s launched half- and full-day sea kayaking tours, with plans to introduce a five-day Efate sea kayaking trip soon.
Two New Zealand jetboats he brought into the country in 2015 are also poised to be relaunched any day on Port Vila Harbour. Martin previously ran them from 2015 to 2020 before the global pandemic hit.
“One good thing that’s come out of the earthquake is that cruise ships now come to the seafront instead of the wharf [the road to the wharf was destroyed in a landslide],” Martin says.
“Unlike New Zealand’s jetboats, here it’s a 20-minute blast in the harbour over nice shallow reefs.”
I wander along the waterfront, pausing at the Mama Market with its handicrafts, and further along at the Fresh Produce Market, rehydrating on a $1 coconut.
A sweaty saunter up the hill sits another New Zealander and eBikes Vanuatu owner Greg Mitchell, from Hamilton, who has similar Kiwi confidence in the capital, launching the island’s first scooters with 15 yellow bikes for hire.
Mitchell provides guests with a map of the island’s main attractions, citing the Banyan Bay Beach Club, Blue Lagoon and Ewor River Waterfalls, among the highlights.
“The earthquake was a b****. But by April 2025 I had three times the bookings of the previous three months and August last year was my best month since I opened this business,” Mitchell says.
“These scooters have been my absolute bread and butter. I’m really looking forward to this year. Vanuatu is just such a cool place. The freedoms here are fantastic.”
At the core of Vanuatu’s next chapter sits the iconic Grand Hotel and Casino, Port Vila, where I spend three nights in a luxe Panorama Suite with its 280-degree glass views of the harbour.
Hotel general manager Mark Stanford says the 74-room hotel closed for 15 months largely for cosmetic reasons and to strengthen the building, reopening in March 2026.
Melbourne-based owners the Zagame family have worked with renowned local engineer Cyrille Mainguy (who lost his cousin in the Billabong collapse) and New Zealand-based structural and civil engineers Markplan on the building, which has rebranded as a “boutique hotel” replete with refurbished rooms, suites and restaurant.
The hotel has plans for future “activations” such as live entertainment on Wednesdays and a poolside DJ on Fridays.
“We’ve always been the heartbeat of Port Vila. We want people to know that this is the place to be seen. Vila’s been missing that,” Stanford says.
In Vanuatu, it’s about the culture and the geography and there’s potholes, and you either love it or hate it.”
Later, I join Vanuatu-born Gateway Shore Tours owner Alfred Hosea, who is operating new group and individual tours of Efate.
In early May, Hosea will open the South Pacific’s first inflatable waterpark – measuring 100m long and 70m wide – along the Port Vila waterfront.
“What I’m trying to do is create something different, another product. I think it will boost a bit of tourism in Vanuatu,” he says.
We drive one and a half hours from Port Vila, striking those famed potholed roads and avoiding chickens and kids, past working blokes brandishing sharp bush knives and blunt senses of humour, and arrive at Siviri Village.
Former Australian policeman Micheal Haschka has created Turtle Cove Villas, which opened in December last year.
These four simple yet elegant villas all face Undine Bay – home to hundreds of Hawksbill turtles (and the odd dugong or two), who inhabit the shoreline, and from which this resort has taken its name.
Just offshore, I snorkel the pristine 2km reef, which is the longest continuous reef on Efate, brimming with fish and coral.
Over on Eratap Lagoon, the former Aquana Beach Resort has been rebranded and its 16 bungalows refurbished as E’Nauwi Resort, which is now one of only a few in the nation owned by a local Ni-Van resident.
I feast on its signature seafood platter: think coconut crab, local lobster, mussels, fish … and view the day spa perched on the lagoon.
E’Nauwi Resort general manager Linda Kalpoi believes Vanuatu offers something more than other South Pacific countries because of its unique history of French and British rule.
“It has been voted the happiest place on earth three or four times now. It used to be known as the ‘untouched paradise’,” she says.
Australian/Ni-Van couple Samara and Benie Masauvakalo launched Mali Beach Club overlooking Mele Bay last September after deciding Vanuatu needed its own version of a “Bali-style beach club”.
I find swings (without the influencers), fire pits and cocktails (try the Pain Killer – vodka blended with sweet pineapple and orange juice and finished with a hint of Midori and a splash of grenadine to emulate the sunset).
“Compared to the rest of the South Pacific, Vanuatu is untouched. It is more rugged,” Samara says.
Back at the Grand, I sit on my balcony late at night and listen to the hum of boats as they criss-cross the lagoon. It’s a hum that is slowly turning into a buzz and will become a roar. Of resilience and revival.
The writer travelled as a guest of The Grand Hotel and Casino Port Vila and Vanuatu Tourism.