The other day while on passage from Santo to Gaua, I put on some music from Fleet Foxes. Very soon, Lolo and I were annoyed with it and wondered how or why the Fleet Foxes ever garnered any interest in the first place. It was "retro" in the sense that it sounded like 70's music, but at best it resembled bad 70's music. After a few songs, I went down below to change the music and decided if we were going to listen to 70's-like music, that we might as well listen to good music from the 70's. Since Fleetwood Mac was close on i-tunes, it jumped out at me and I put it on. Wow, the talent was miles above what we'd just heard, so I let it play. A song came on and I asked Lolo (who is a huge marching band fan) if she knew that the USC marching band was featured on that song. We listened to the primal drum beat that carries the song and I pointed out the marching band stuff - which was hard to hear above the waves while sailing, but we enjoyed listening through a few albums. We had a nice sail into Gaua and dropped the hook at the village of Dolab. That night, as I finished the book I was reading and remembered a special book that Lolo and I had started reading to each other back before we left on our trip. It's called "Bride in the Solomon's" and is the personal account of a young couple that went looking to document canibalism just before WWII. As the title suggests, it was written about the Solomon's. We'd left the bookmark at about three-quarters though the book, then had put it down - probably out of sheer exhaustion at getting Radiance ready for this trip. But it suddenly and mysteriously came to mind that we should pick it up again. That day, we'd been given a bundle of island green nuts by our village host, Steven. It had arrived neatly wrapped in a banana leaf and tied at the top with grass. As we munched on the large raw almond shaped nuts, it became clear that we were going to have to ration them as Lolo could not stop talking about how delicious they were. That evening, I suggested we start reading Bride in the Solomon's to each other again. Lolo opened the book to the marker we'd placed over a year ago and began reading. In the first paragraph the author spoke of hunting for wild pidgin and finding them in a tree covered with a strange fruit that one of the natives explained was island green nut. The author described them perfectly and it was clear she was talking about the nuts we'd just been raving about. Lolo and I looked at each other in amazement. "That was weird," I said. I mean we have not picked this book up for ages and all of a sudden..... The next day was to our last at Gaua and so Steven had invited us to his home on the hill for a traditional meal with his family and to also see their traditional "water music." Lolo and I had heard of this custom - that is only performed by the villages of this island, but we had no idea what it was. When it was time for us to come ashore for dinner, Steven directed us to the black sand beach where three women were standing. There was a warm gentle breeze and the ocean swell was gently washing ashore with the sun just starting to set. We had no idea what to expect as I handed the recorder to Lolo so I could take some photos. To our great surprise, the women waded into the sea - in their dresses - up to their waist and formed a line in front of us, then began to slap the sea with flat and cupped hands - both in unison and also in a syncopated fashion. The rhythm created was simply amazing and we watched in awe at the scene. I tried to get a few pics and also protect the camera as the seawater was being splashed around. The rhythm they first played was strikingly familiar and the syncopation and variety in tones was incredible given that there were only three people in the water. The women were soaked to the bone and water covered their dresses. We headed up the hill after rinsing in the nearby freshwater spring to drink fresh kava and eat our custom meal. I felt bad as the women were still soaking wet in their dresses, but luckily things dry quickly in this tropical environment. That night as I lay in bed, it occurred to me that the rhythm was very similar to the Fleetwood Mac song we'd just listened to a few days before. Could it be the kava playing tricks with me? The next night we read on in our book only to find that it took a sudden change of location. Since the Johnson's had been unable to find evidence of modern era canibalism in the Solomon's, they had sailed to the New Hebrides (today know as Vanuatu). Before we realized it, we were reading about places we'd just been on our own visit here in Vanuatu. That night, we decided to watch a short documentary movie given to us by friends aboard Pacific Bliss. The movie, much to our surprise, was mostly about the island of Tanna and the John Frum Cargo Cult - the one we had visited just a few weeks ago. To our even greater surprise, up popped some original video footage taken by the Johnson's of ni-Vanuatu natives in 1938 including a few cameo's of Olsa, the author of our book. Wow, how weird and cool. The next day, my curiosity could wait no longer. I first put on the recording of the water music and listened to the beat. Then without delay, I queued up the Fleetwood Mac song. To my utter amazement, not only was the beat of the water music exactly the same...but so too was the tempo! Wow. Did Mick Fleetwood come to Vanuatu? In the middle of the red, black and green of the Vanuatu flag lies a prominent feature - a large one-and-a-half curl tusk of a pig - which has long been a sign of wealth here. The name of the Fleetwood Mac song....Tusk.