‘We had not really planned to go to Vanuatu, but had no other choice’

Leaving Australia, Marianne Urth never planned to make landfall in the islands of Vanuatu, but the experience was magical

I’m looking up at an almost naked young man 60 feet in the air. He’s balancing on a platform built of sticks and branches, raised on a mountain top in the Vanuatuan jungle. All you can see from here is fluorescent green treetops covered in cascades of lush vines, while deep below us, far away in another world, lies the dark blue Pacific Ocean.

Men and women wear traditional dress...