May 3 2025

Dystopic Newsletter

The World After 100 Days of Trump and A Final Postcard from the South Pacific

Panorama of Champagne Beach, Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu

This is the third and final Dystopic, based in part on my 3000 South Pacific Ocean Voyage through the naval battle grounds of World War 2. We’ll be back to our normal analysis of the technology behind the news next week

Next Stop Espiritu Santo

At sunset on Wednesday, April 23^rd, we weighed anchor and proceeded on a southwesterly course at roughly 12 knots to Espiritu Santo. It is a journey across nearly 1000 km of the South Pacific requiring a full two days at sea. Fortunately, we had fair winds and calm seas the entire trip. We enjoyed the company of our shipmates and the incredible entertainment provided by the Paul Guaguin crew, not to mention the 5-star meals. I’ll need to go on a diet after this trip! But I digress …

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Espiritu Santo is the largest island in the nation of Vanuatu, one of a string of roughly 80 islands under the rule of a joint British and French New Hebrides colony that eventually won independence in the 1980s. Beginning in May 1942, the island was completely transformed by the U.S. into an advanced forward base in support of the Guadalcanal/Solomon Islands and the Papua New Guinea campaigns. Thet base would grow to provide:

• A protected naval harbor capable of anchoring the Entire U.S. Pacifc Fleet
• 4 hospitals with over 1600 beds
• 3 Floating drydocks and the largest ship repair facilities in the South Pacific
• 4 major piers and massive warehouse facilities
• 4 four airfields near the naval base, three to support United States Army Air Forces bombers, one to support fighter aircraft

By the end of the war, 9 million tones of equipment had been shipped to Espititu Santo, and over 500,000 servicemen and women had spent some time on the base. In 1946, the base was completely abandoned. At the war's end, a vast amount of vehicles, supplies, and equipment at the bases was deemed unnecessary and too costly to ship to the U.S.. Instead, the Seabees, U.S. Navy Engineering Corps, built a ramp into the sea near Luganville Airfield. All the excess supplies were then dumped into the sea. Today, the site is a tourist attraction called Million Dollar Point. What an incredible, senseless waste!

Champagne Beach

Our time on Espiritu Santo would not be spent viewing old World War 2 sites. Instead, our first of two stops was at Champagne Beach, a roughly mile-long stretch of the most perfect white sand beach in the world. Champagne Beach is nearly inaccessible. Too expensive and remote for most of the locals to visit, the beach is nearly exclusively visited by small cruise ships and private yachts. Ideal for the Paul Guaguin, we accessed the beach by tender, docking at an old World War 2 pier that sits at one end of the beach.

Rather than trying to describe paradise, I hope the few pictures that follow will do justice to one of he best beaches I’ve ever been to!

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Luganville Port and RiRi Blue Hole

We weighed anchor, departed Hog Harbor and Champagne Beach, and headed South, rounding the famed “Million Dollar Point.” Within 3 hours, we were docked at the Port of Luganville, site of the former U.S. Navy Docks and anchorage for the Pacific Fleet in Canal du Segond (Second Channel)

Luganville is a sleepy little port town of about 19,000 residents. It has a quaint main street, Boulevard Higinson, which has a handful of boutiques and souvenir shops catering to tourists. The waterfront just off of Boulevard Higinson holds a few classic island watering holes, Smuggler’s and the Sandbar.

Before hitting the watering holes, Mindy and I took a few hours for a small adventure and a chance to stretch our sea legs. We scheduled a canoe tour of the RiRi River off the eastern coast of the island, about 10 miles north of Luganville.

The river is famous for the RiRi Blue Hole. Vanuatu boasts a number of these iridescent blue holes, a direct result of Vanuatu’s unique geology. When it rains, water from the islands’ volcanic mountains flows underground into limestone caves. The water corrodes the limestone and creates underground streams. Eventually, these streams resurface as freshwater springs, or what we know as the blue holes. The waters in these blue holes are incredibly clear, creating a dazzling luminescent effect that seems almost too perfect to be natural, as you can see from a few photos of our adventure.

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With just a few hours to kill before we weigh anchor for the last leg of our journey, a two-day 1,200-mile trek to Fiji, it's time to hit those famous Luganville watering holes. Canoeing is a thirsty business!

Last Stop Fiji

We made port at 6:00 AM on Thursday and bid adieu to the Paul Gauguin for a few days of R&R at a little seaside bungalow. Fiji is an idyllic tropical paradise and the vacation playground for Australians and New Zealanders. The economy and infrastructure are significantly improved over the Solomon Islands or Papua New Guinea. As you read this, we are likely still on that beach but will soon be back to sunny Texas and home.

Should you ever want an adventure in the South Pacific, I strongly recommend Paul Gauguin’s Tahiti / Bora Bora cruises. I can say from experience that service, food, and entertainment are spectacular.

As a final thought, I found a picture of my uncle’s B-25 “The Wasp Nest” taken before their fateful mission. Nine brave men who paid the ultimate price for our freedoms. Another 407,307 American service personnel would travel the same path. Our collective memory of these heroes and a world at war 83 years ago is fast fading. However, the heroic dead live on in the collective memory of their families. This is but one of those memories.

People you meet along the way …

Spending 17 days at sea with just 190 other passengers gives you the opportunity to meet people from around the world and gain their perspectives. Mindy and I were lucky enough to spend time with Author Peter Heller and photographer Jad Davenport, both of whom gave lectures during our trip.

Peter began his career as a reporter and then went on to author several New York Times best sellers. While we were on the cruise, he received the news that Ridley Scott, of Gladiator and The Martian fame, had finalized the option to make a movie of his book, The Dog Stars. Needless to say, everyone aboard celebrated Peter’s achievement. The Dog Stars is a great book, and I’m sure Ridley Scott will make a compelling movie of this compelling dystopian survival story.

As it turns out, Peter's grandmother was a close friend of the famed Admiral William "Bull" Halsey.

You can find out more about Peter HERE​

Jad Davenport spent twenty years as a war photographer in Bosnia and other hot spots across the globe. About ten years ago, Jad returned to his first love, photographing wildlife. He became a National Geographic photographer and reporter who began to spend more and more of his time in the Arctic studying a wolf pack that the local iniuit indians described as the only natural predator that hunted polar bears. Jad’s story and his amazing arctic photos of both the wolves and the polar bears were fascinating. You can join Jad on one of his Arctic trips as he acts as a professional guide several times to keep tabs on wolves and bears.

I suspect that after years of photographing the horrors of war, Jad had had his fill, and the Arctic with its wolves and polar bears provided him peace of mind.

You can find out more about Jad and his Arctic expeditions HERE​

Of course, there were many more people and stories, including a retired Australian Rugby Pro and his wife, a French diplomat, and several entrepreneurs, among others. The people we meet along the way are as interesting as the history and beauty of this journey.

While we were away ...

The World After 100 Days of Trump

The world has been busy while I have shared this journey with you. I’ll have plenty of material to report on in the coming weeks. Here are a few highlights – in case you missed them:

• Trump reached 100 days in office. While he has had some success (i.e., securing the border), his impulsive and transactional approach is undermining his and the American people’s chance for success. In particular, Trump’s tariff policy has resulted in unintended “knock-on” effects that need to be resolved quickly. If left unresolved, the world economy could fall into recession.
• A peace deal for Ukraine remains elusive. As I’ve always maintained in my previous Dystopic newsletters, the U.S. and Europe will have to step up and arm Ukraine to force Putin to the table to achieve peace.
• The U.S continues ratcheting up pressure on Iran and its Houthi rebel clients. While the U.S. tries to negotiate an end to Iran’s nuclear program, there is little progress, and time is ticking. Israel certainly has limited patience
• We lost a beloved Pope, and the Cardinals are beginning the process to select a new one
• Violence in Kashmir. Kashmir Militants, backed by Pakistan, mercilessly gunned down 28 civilians and wounded more than two dozen in Pahalgam, a well-known tourist destination in the Indian-administered region of Kashmir. India and Pakistan, both nuclear powers, appear headed for armed conflict after these attacks. Escalation of conventional conflict between nuclear powers should always be a concern. Vice Admiral Bobby Inman, former Director of the NSA, once defined the golden rule between nuclear powers: "No great nuclear power engages in conventional warfare directly with another.”
• China and the Philippines are making claims and counterclaims for possession of three sandbars in the South China Sea known as Sandy Cay. Sandy Cay is the latest flare-up in a long-running dispute over territory in the hotly contested South China Sea, which China claims almost in its entirety.

Until Next Week ...

Dystopic- The Technology Behind Today's News

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