Vanuatu

Lately I've just been using my new mini-computer and neglecting my bigger laptop, for many reasons: the new one is new and exciting and so cute, and my last one was lacking in speed and mouse-capability and antivirus software. The new one also has limitations though. The most obvious: it's really mini. It's hard to play the Countries Game when the whole map doesn't fit on your screen. So I've been neglecting my geography lately.

But recently I powered up my big computer (which reminded me of all its downfalls) and re-installed some antivirus, and explored Sporcle again. On the World Countries game I missed six (189/195): Barbados, Malta, Chad, Tanzania, Singapore, and Palau. Not too bad considering my long absence!

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When I was in Banff a few weeks ago, I came across some chocolate from Vanuatu in the candy store. I found that very exciting - Vanuatu is such an obscure place to have chocolate from! I bought it, and it was really really good. It's milk chocolate and usually I prefer dark, but that's because milk chocolate often just tastes more like sweet than like chocolate. This stuff actually tastes like chocolate, it's just lighter than dark chocolate. And it doesn't have bizarre stuff added in to make it weird like Mexican chocolate does. (Maybe it helps that although the ingredients came from Vanuatu, the chocolate was made in Belgium. Mmm European South Pacific chocolate!) The description on the box declares, This origin milk chocolate is rich in character and delivers a strong but delightful cocoa flavour, with a hint of coffee and spice, caramel and smoke. It tastes simpler to me than that.

I learned about the existence of Vanuatu through the Countries Game. It was one of the last ones I got, because it's so small and we hear so little about it (it's the 5th most missed on Sporcle). The back of the chocolate box tells me: Vanuatu is a nation of 83 islands in the South Pacific Ocean. Located 1750 km east of northern Australia and 500 km north-east of New Zealand. The country is drowned in amazing beauty with transparent waters, untouched rainforests, reeds and exotic birdlife. Cocoa beans thrive in the thin but highly nutritious volcanic soil. Wikipedia adds that Europeans began to join the native Melanesian people in Vanuatu in the late 1700s, and both France and Britain claimed the territory, calling it New Hebrides. In 1980 Vanuatu became an independent republic following the Coconut War. Two hundred and forty thousand people live there, and they drive on the right hand side of the road. Their anthem is "Yumi, yumi, yumi." I don't know what that means. Their GDP is $2,442 per person, and they score #120 on the Human Development Index with a score of 0.674. (In comparison, Canada's HDI rating of 0.966 gives us 4th place in the world, and we have a GDP of $45,085 per capita.) They don't have any indigenous large mammals, but they do have 11 species of bats. Back in October they experienced a series of earthquakes.