🇻🇺 Vanuatu
Port Vila
Port Vila is the capital of Vanuatu, an island nation of 300,000 people scattered across 83 islands in the southwestern Pacific Ocean (1,750 km east of Queensland, Australia), and one of the most unique countries in the world by several measures: it has the highest density of languages per capita of any country (110 languages for 300,000 people, more than 1 language per 2,700 people); it ranked as the happiest country on earth in the Happy Planet Index for three consecutive measurements (2006, 2009, 2012); it was one of the last places on earth to have first contact with the outside world (some interior tribes of the island of Tanna had no contact with outsiders until the 1960s); and it has an active underwater volcano accessible to scuba divers (the Vanuatu volcano SS President Coolidge wreck is one of the largest and most accessible wreck dives in the world). Port Vila itself (population 50,000) sits on a natural harbour on the island of Efate and has the character of a laid-back Pacific capital — the central market, the waterfront Promenade, the kastom (custom, the Vanuatu word for traditional indigenous culture) villages and the surrounding Efate island ring road passing waterfalls, blue holes and traditional villages are the city's main draws. Vanuatu is also home to the John Frum cargo cult on Tanna island (the religious movement that awaits the return of 'John Frum from America' who will bring material abundance — the movement began circa 1936 and continues today, with followers marching with bamboo rifles on Fridays) and Mount Yasur on Tanna (one of the most accessible active volcanoes on earth, where visitors walk to the rim of an erupting crater). The currency is Vatu (VUV) and the country was a joint British-French condominium ("condominium" — the most surreal colonial arrangement in history, with two parallel legal systems, police forces and school systems for the same territory) until independence in 1980.