Pentecost Island is one of the 83 islands that make up the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu. It lies 190 km (118 miles) due north of capital Port Vila. Pentecost Island is known as Pentecôte in French.

Pentecost is a lush, mountainous island which stretches North to South over some 60km. The chain of mountains, dominated by Mount Vulmat (947 m) marks the dividing line between the humid, rainy eastern coast and the more temperate western coast. The coastal plains, cross-cut by small torrents, are generally very green and ideally suited for plantations and livestock.

Pentecost was discovered by European explorers on 22 May 1768 by Louis Antoine de Bougainville. It was influenced by various successive missionaries but lost nothing of its customs.

Pentecost Island is most famous for being the spiritual birthplace of the extreme sport of bungee jumping, originating in an ages old ritual called the N'gol, or Pentecost Land Diving. It was first given international exposure when David Attenborough and a BBC film crew brought back footage of the ritual during the 1950s. The Pentecost Island village of Bunlap is the subject of a series of shows airing on the Travel Channel.

Pentecost Land Diving

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The ritual of the N'gol is an extraordinary event, with real risk to life and limb that bears no more resemblance to bungee jumping than abseiling down a sixty foot (20 m) cliff does to catching a lift down a six story building.

According to local legend it began centuries ago when a beaten woman ran away from her husband, Tamale. He found her hiding in a tall tree and called to her that if she came down he might beat her. However if he had to get her she would be sorry. She refused. He climbed the tree and as he made his final grab, she leaped. In anguish at her death (or anger that he had missed her) Tamale jumped after her, not realising his wife had tied liana vines around her ankles and survived the fall. Tamale perished. ^*

The ritual evolved over the years, to stripping a tall tree of its surrounding branches and building a tower of sticks to support the trunk. Platforms of woven leaves and branches are built into the platform and the liana vines, filled with water and very elastic following the wet season, are shredded at one end and tied to the tower at the other.

Men and boys, some as young as seven years, climb the tower and leap from the platforms in a show of strength and a statement to women that they can never be tricked again. It is also a fertility rite, for as the vines stretch, the land diver's heads curl under and their shoulders touch the ground, making it fertile for the following year's yam crop.

Every year, as soon as the first yam crop begins to show its green tips in early April, islanders in southern Pentecost begin building at least one huge wooden tower in each village, often as high as 23 m (75 ft). On one or two days from April to early June, men jump from these towers with only two long, elastic vines tied to their ankles to break the fall. While the jump has its origins in island mythology, Pentecosters believe jumping is necessary to guarantee a bountiful yam harvest, and the divers' hair is meant to brush the ground to fertilise it.

The ground under the tower is tilled to soften the earth, and all rocks are removed. As each man psyches himself into the dive, his friends tie vines to his ankles, and when he raises his hands the people below stop their singing, dancing and whistling. Just before he dives, he tells the crowd his most intimate thoughts, which may include family and marital problems. Because these could be his last words, the women below remain silent, despite any public airing of family secrets.

Each diver claps his hands, crosses his arms over his chest and leans forward until he falls over the edge. When his body becomes horizontal, he jumps out as far as he can. This is the "trick" to surviving land diving. If the diver were to fall straight down, he would hit the ground before being restrained by the vines. The extra couple feet added to the dive by jumping out enable the ropes, which are measured precisely for this purpose, to pull back the diver. As he jerks to a stop, male relatives rush forward to help him untie his feet and stand him up as the crowd roars its approval.

Only one land diver has died as a result of this practice. Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom visited in 1974, and a land diving display was prepared for her. However, the visit was during a dry season, which made the vines used less elastic. Several of the vines snapped, and one diver later died. ^*

The government cancelled the N'gol in 1995 as they believed it had become too commercialised and wanted to revive the ceremony's cultural value. Two sites at Pangi and Rangasusu have been set aside for the entertainment of tourists. Villagers from surrounding areas take it in turns to dive there.

Islands of Vanuatu | Extreme sports

Пентекост | Pentecostés (isla) | Île de Pentecôte | Pentecost (eiland)