 
Wallaringa Club (OSA) member Ben Schultz has been marooned in Vanuatu - a country of 83 islands in the south-western Pacific. Ben has done an amazing job of promoting, mapping, organising and running several events on the main island of Efate whilst in the country. The islands are volcanic and coral in origin and in some part incredibly steep and rocky, whilst being covered in thick jungle.
Ben describes one of the events in an email:
Attached is the full long-map from yesterday’s event at Mangaliliu on Efate in Vanuatu....10m contours, so not flat. It is mainly secondary-growth jungle terrain, so difficult to see far but the contours and boulders are prominent (many of the larger boulders are around 8m high, yet we still missed a couple when mapping - the joys of jungle) (Note the bilingual control descriptions). In the end people found their way around the course so the map must have been at least reasonably accurate; something of a relief.
We had a long, short and kids course. The long-course wasn't very long, but the difficulty of the terrain and the lack of experience amongst competitors meant the fastest time was 1 hour 22 minutes.
We expected around 30 people and had 100 turn up. Fortunately, there were just enough maps to go around (with a bit of sharing for some who went in groups). It was a great day, people loved it however as there were only two of us organising the entire thing (including map making) we were utterly knackered by the end.
We had around 30 from the local village join which was fantastic and the chief of the village has asked for another event to be held. I think the village kids are hounding him :)
Thank you to Ben for sharing your experiences and for showing the way orienteering can bring us all together in a time when we are so far apart.
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