The Santo Project – Prelude to the Story

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The Santo Story

Our love for Vanuatu is incredible, the people and culture and the pure essence of happiness. This is our raw honest  and humble experience of over 3 years of owning land in the tropical Pacific Island of Espiritu Santo

Prologue– 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 – 11 – 12 –13 – Epilogue

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Our Quest For Off Grid Living

It’s been a passion of ours for sometime now, the thought of living off the grid has appealed to us.

Elena has always wanted to live on a large piece of land but unfortunately the prices around Brisbane have just got up and up.
It wasn’t until we discovered Vanuatu that we realized there was an opportunity for us to actually achieve this dream.

I’ve also been fascinated in the idea of getting a shipping container and turning it into a house. Elena is so tired of me talking about this project but we’ve moved on and quarrel about it’s merits and pitfalls.

After returning from our fourth trip to Vanuatu and spending two days on the island of Espiritu Santo looking for property, we were smitten by a 2 acre block with 40m of its own beach and totally covered in native bush. We were in love at first sight.

So, this is it. We’re about to take the first step to live totally off the grid.
We have a few ideas of what we want to do, but our only firm decision is that we don’t want to connect this land to the power grid, nor do we want to hook into a town supplied water system.

We want to rely on wind, solar and welled water. Although we have found out that the water will be full of calcium, so we’re going to have to rely on a water tank for our drinking water.

Our selective downsizing over the last couple of years has seen us reduce our household clutter and only two weeks ago I sold my motorcycle (my pride and joy).

We are totally green on this project, so there will be ups and downs along the way. The learning process is going to be daunting but fun and rather than create a separate website we decided that we would just bolt on another section on our current site.

Our long term goal is to have a couple of one bedroom self contained units on site to rent out to like minded holiday makers who want to learn and share our lifestyle in Espiritu Santo.

By the end of the month we’ll be making our offer on the block.

Oh, well here goes.

Here’s hoping that the price is right….

 

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Building a house on Espiritu Santo Vanuatu

Finally after 2 months of waiting our papers are all filed and we now own a 65 year lease on our new property in Espiritu Santo Vanuatu

The building of out next project will begin with us taking a trip to the island and surveying for driveway access and building positioning. Our number one priority is to have minimal impact on the environment.

There will be a lot of research going on and in talking to different people we’re starting to see a direction is what we would like to build on our little slice of paradise.

Speaking with a colleague at work I’ve discovered that a client has purchased land in the cook islands and is planning to import a demount-able home from China.Last night saw me frantically searching the internet finding websites and comparing prices with what we had been looking at here in Brisbane Australia.

The unit we were looking at in our own suburb was only small, however that’s all we really need. Too many people go overboard in building a house. We want to be debt free and enjoy what we have and not be constrained to working forever to pay the loans off like so many others.

Cant wait …. in 3 weeks we will be in Paradise!!!!

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Prologue– 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 – 8 – 9 – 10 – 11 – 12 –13 – Epilogue

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