Leaving Samoa, we again had to fly through Auckland. Our flight had been delayed in Samoa, and I
was stuck sitting in the middle seat between two Samoan-sized Samoan men (I
think you know what I mean), so by the time we arrived in New Zealand at about
5:30 in the morning, I was beat. I use
the public restroom as my personal bathroom, and the duty free lotions again as
my personal toiletry stash; do you know Chanel make a cream that’s $450?!!! Anyway, we got our spots on the plush lounge
sofas in the international terminal, I put on my eye mask and ear plugs and
settled in for a few hours of sleep; it’s not so bad, see? We left the airport early afternoon, so we
didn’t have too much idle time after exhausting our 30 minutes of internet.
The flight to Tongatapu, Tonga was easy and got us into
Tonga with plenty of day light. The
first man to approach us offered us a ride to our accommodation, which Jared
had reserved. We drove in with a couple
other people, and the driver, Mana, told us that he could provide us with a
tour of the island for the next day if we wanted, so Jared, myself and another
woman decided we would take him up on the offer. The drive into Nuku’alofa, the city, was not
long, and we arrived at Dayspring B & B; unfortunately, the manager was not
informed of our arrival, so there was a bit of a dispute regarding the deposit
we paid, but in the end, she quoted Jared a bit less than was listed online, so
it worked out being the same. It also
actually worked out well, because Jared had originally booked us into the
hostel for four days, but changed his mind that morning in Auckland…well he
didn’t exactly “change his mind”, more like he forgot how long we reserved, and
booked a flight for the two of us to go to Vava’u two days later. Anyway, like I said, it all worked out fine
in the end. As usual, the first thing we
had to do was find some food. Judging by
the map, we weren’t too far from the center of town, and the manager told us
the walk into town would take about 30-45 minutes. I HATE getting walking times from locals,
they always SUCK, and it happens EVERYWHERE; people always kind of smile and
say “oh you know Cook Island Time, Samoan Time, Tongan Time”; NO, I don’t know,
that’s why I’m asking. It is HOT people,
we do not want to have to walk for an extra hour and a half, thinking we are
lost, because you clearly have zero sense of time…anyway, I digress!!! About an hour later, I looked at my phone map
and it barely looked like we had moved at all in relation to the center of the
city; we still had a very long walk. It
was also incredibly and uncomfortably hot and humid. The only sources of food that we could find
were little kiosks set up behind metal bars with things like overpriced tuna
and corned beef; on a side note, canned corned beef is EVERYWHERE in the
Pacific, I dunno why, but if you like the stuff, any island will be able to
keep you well stocked. We kept walking,
our resolve fading, quickly until we finally passed a little shack with a list
of 5 prepared meals, all of them in Tongan.
The only one we understood was “Kentucky”, which we correctly assumed
was fried chicken. Someone actually came
in, ordered that, and told us it was really good, so we ordered the same and
just decided to split the very large quantity of fried chicken and manioke. It did in fact fill us both for dinner and
cost a grand total of about $2.50. After
getting our food, we walked back to the hostel, ate, and took cool-off
showers. We lucked out big time with
this place, because there was wifi, so the rest of the night, we planned,
booked, emailed and paid for things before going to bed.
Our first full day, we had the breakfast that was included in
our hostel stay. At about 10am, our cab
driver from the day before, Mana, came to pick us up for our day tour, along
with a couple other girls. Our first
stop in town was the market. No matter
where we are, we always enjoy the markets.
Along with the normal vegetables and fruits, we inevitably find some alien
edibles. We also get to check out the
local handicrafts and some of the prepared treats they have, usually baked
goodies. There have been a lot of really
good baked things in the islands, so we’ve indulged a bit in carbs. We drove around town to the King’s house,
surprisingly understated, big, but understated, and the graveyard of the old
king’s tombs, which are mounds built high above the ground in tiers, capped by
the normal sized mound you might see when a body is buried below; it seemed a
bit anticlimactic. We made a few stops
throughout the tour, including the South Pacific’s “Stonehenge” named Trillithon,
I’m not coining that myself, I’m quoting the guide books. I have not been to Stonehenge, but if that
was any indication of what I might see, I think I’ll pass. We stopped to have some lunch from some
vendors on the side of the road; we read that one of the traditional cuisines
was the same taro leaf in coconut milk that we loved, but in Tonga they add meat
or fish, so we were siked when this vendor sold that dish. We were however, incredibly disappointed when
the whole thing was sort of ruined by the bones fat and miniscule amount of
actual meat inside. Unfortunately, we
had ordered two, so I gave mine to Jared for dinner. We saw more tombs of old kings, along with
the standard front yard graveyards, the Mapu ‘a Vaea blow holes, Hufangalupe
land bridge, which sort of looks like an area where the earth has just fallen
away into the ocean creating a natural bridge in the earth; we went to an inconspicuous
house, which Mana said belonged to the Queen and saw a ton of gross fruit bats
in the trees, and lastly to the Anahulu underground caves. I was a bit suspicious of Mana’s knowledge of
Tongan history during the tour, because I would ask questions, such as the
religion prior to the arrival of Christian Missionaries to which he responded
that Tongan had no religion prior to Christianity…hmm, that doesn’t seem
right. Later during our stay in Tonga, a
man lamentingly explained to us that the church seems to have “beaten” such knowledge
out of the Tongans. At the end of the tour, Mana dropped us back
off at our hostel, and we had a bit of dinner, before showering, playing on the
internet and heading to bed.
On a side note, there are a few things that I want to
address. Normally, when you travel to
these “Paradise” style islands, you might not venture into the culture,
politics, and beliefs of the people, but I’ve learned a few things along the
way that seem to ring true throughout the Pacific. I explained in Samoa how the church exploits
the locals, impoverishing the impoverished, well the same seemed to ring true
in Samoa; though Samoa did seem a bit wealthier is a country. It is actually illegal in Samoa to walk
around without a shirt; when people swim on public beaches, they are to wear
shirts and long shorts. I understand how
the church thinks in regards to people showing their bodies, but it seems
interesting that a people that walked around half naked a century ago are now
so staunchly opposed to the sight of flesh; it also seems a bit impractical on
super hot small islands, I’m just saying.
Samoa is the only surviving monarch in the South Pacific, though, much
like Great Britain, there is a Parliament, Prime Ministry and local elected
officials. The Tongans do not pay taxes,
and when I asked how they paid for things like roads and city maintenance,
everyone said it was from aid money. But
none of that aid money was being used for things like agriculture and
education…are we aware that this is happening!?!?!? I met a guy, Harry, from the US who works
with the Peace Corp. I think he’s doing
a great thing and that Tonga is really lucky to have people willing to dedicate
themselves to educating the population…in theory. In reality, Harry lives on a teenie island
(which I’ll get to later) and teaches English class in the small school for two
hours a day…that is it. That is all he
does with his time in Tonga; I’m sorry, he also seems to drink an excessive
amount, or at least excessively talks about drinking. In a country like Tonga, I think resources
like money and actual humans could be put to much better use than they
are. Just a bit of food for thought. Oh, by the way, I feel pretty bad for Harry,
he seems excruciatingly bored living on this really small island with no one to
hang out with. Lastly, is anyone aware
of China’s presence in the Pacific Island region? In every single island we’ve been to, the
locals tell us about the Chinese. In
Tonga, they were physically present more than we noticed in any other place,
with almost all of the small kiosks selling food run by Chinese. Apparently, the Chinese are benevolently
donated buildings, construction material etc to the Pacific Islands in exchange
for the right to fish jussssttttt a bit in their waters. Seriously?
“Just a bit” of Chinese fishing is like a hostile takeover of the
underwater kingdom. There is nothing
that the Chinese government uses “just a bit” of, there are over a billion
people there! Alsooooo, word on the
street is (and I learned this from the owner of the hostel in Nuku’alofa while
sipping Noa with him) they are trying to post naval bases on these
islands. Poor poor Pacific
Islanders. At least there is some
resistance, because all the land is privately owned and passed down through the
generations. So we’ll see how that
goes.
Alright, back to adventures.
Tonga was actually probably our laziest country (though I’m saying that
as I’m sitting in Fiji being especially lazy, so it might end up being a lazy
tie in the two countries; I’ll let you know); almost all of the islands are
coral islands, rather than volcanic, there is no hiking or trekking, so the
options are pretty limited to beaching and culturing, though as I mentioned
before, much of the traditional culture seems to have been…replaced. We did still get to see a lot of traditional
attire; almost all of the men and women wear sarongs and shirts and large
tightly woven grass skirts over the sarong; pants are almost never worn. The tradition of dancing is less prevalent on
the island also.
The day after the tour, we packed up our things again and
got picked up by Mana to go back to the airport. We were flying to one of Samoa’s farthest island
chains, the Vava’u islands. The flight
was easy, and we were quickly picked up by a cab driver. We weren’t exactly sure of where to stay in
the city of Neiafu on Vava’u, so we told him to bring us to a backpackers, and
easily found some cheap accommodation.
It’s been low season everywhere we’ve been, so we were actually the only
two people in the hostel; love when that happens! We settled in and decided to head out for some
information on how to spend our five days there. The actual Information Site was closed…at
2pm, so we instead found a Go Kart tour place, run by a couple expats, and they
surprisingly we able to help us set up all of our activities. It’s a very small community, so the woman was
able to call everyone directly and set things up for us on the spot! She did toot her own horn and convince us to
go on a Go Karting tour around the island, which was really the only way to get
out of town unless you wanted to hire a cab.
So we booked that for the afternoon, and headed to the market to pick up
a few things, including manioke, which we had never prepared ourselves but
wanted to try some local unknown items.
When we got back to the hostel, we made some lunch, where I peeled and
boiled about 1/9th of the manioke, and did not like it at all! Uh oh.
Next we put on “clothes [we didn’t] mind getting dirty” as instructed by
the Go Kart woman, and headed out. By
the way, all these things were within probably 100 yards of one another, so
nothing was a far walk. Jared and I
shared a kart, and we drove out of town to see some of the better things on the
island, including a few lookouts, Utula’aina Point and Keitahi and Ene’io
Beach. To be honest, we had the most fun
during the tour driving like maniacs through the woods in the Karts. Jared was more of a daredevil behind the
wheel than me, but we did both get to do some donuts, and without helmets or seatbelts
the whole thing was probably a bit more exhilarating! I have no idea how people get to the places
without a kart, there is no road and the path is often so overgrown and
occluding I can’t imagine trying to drive a car through it. Anyway, normally I would look at propaganda for
tours like that and scoff at how cheesy it must be, but it was actually really
really fun. We were so covered in dirt
and dust by the end, I was actually picking out huge eye boogers of dirty until
the next morning, gross!! After the
tour, we took showers aggressively scrubbing the dirty off. We grabbed some of the local beer, made a
surprisingly good dinner where I made chips out of the manioke, and settled in
for a movie before bed.
The next morning, we woke up early, grabbing a nice
breakfast, before heading out for a snorkel trip with a man named Don. Along the way, through the islands
surrounding Vava’u, he told us a bit about the history of Tonga’s European
discover and Polynesia including the mutiny aboard the HMS Bounty by Lieutenant
Bligh. On the trip, we stopped at two
caves, one about two yards under water, and completely sealed even during
lowtide, that was apparently used by William Mariner, the British teenage ship
clerk that was spared from Tongan cannibalism, lived in Vava’u with the native
and returned to England years later to write a book on Tonga; that would be an
interesting read! We swam two reefs,
both with really nice coral life, but not a ton in the way of fish. Damn Chinese government. Anyway, we were the only two people on the
tour, so we got to spend as much time as we wanted in the water, and by the end
of each swim, I was freezing. Don
provided us with snacks and a light lunch along the way, before heading back to
shore and treated both myself and Jared to a couple of margaritas at one of the
handful of local bars set on the bay and run by expats; it was there that we
met the Peace Corp volunteer, Harry. It
was also at this location where we learned of kava, a local drink made from
basically sticks, ground up into dust and mixed with water; the drink
apparently has narcotic properties and people spend ages drinking at night and
singing together. Say what!? Yes, we could participate! They also told us about a rum punch that we
just HAD to try, so it was looking to be a sloppy night for us. Once we had finished our margaritas and
chatter with the local expats, we made our way back to the market for a few
more groceries and to the hostel to clean up and make dinner. Unfortunately, after dinner I was wiped out
from the sun and snorkeling, but Jared braved on and went to a kava bar to
drink with the locals. By the time he
was back, I was passed out. He reported
back though that drinking at that kava joint was by donation; he paid 10 pa’anga
(the currency) and was able to drink an unlimited amount of kava…but he
preferred to just try a bit. The first
glass made his mouth numb, and the rest had no effect, but he got to watch as
the locals participated in impromptu sing-a-longs.
After a good sleep, we leisurely woke up, ate breakfast and
packed our bags. We were headed farther
into Tongan country to a very small island called Ofu; there was one backpacker
lodge there and that was the only place to stay on the island. Late morning, a man picked us up along with a
few other people and drove us to the old harbor where a small motor boat was
waiting, along with Harry hoping for a ride back out to the island where he
lived, Ofu! Jared and I were the only
ones staying more than one night, and we had to bring our own food and water for
every meal, so added to our normally huge amount of stuff and the two other
couples, we packed in tightly on the small boat. The ride was only about 20 minutes, and
dropped us off at a small house right on the beach. The family had built two rooms about 20 feet
from the beach, and that was the entire hostel; thank gosh it was low season. Our boat driver/the owner of the hostel gave
us the ten-second tour and left…back on the boat to the main island, and told
us he’d be back that night. Literally,
he left the place entirely empty when he dropped off six stranger to his
home. Anyway, we settled in to our cozy room,
and immediately started doing nothing…but on the beach, so it was a good
northing. The water was clear and the
beach was nice. They had lounge chairs
and hammocks, so it was an optimal reading/doing nothing environment. We had planned on staying for 3 days, so we
weren’t in a hurry to do anything but lie.
After a few hours, we grabbed some kayaks with a few other people,
including Harry, and paddle out to an even small island with a super expensive
resort on it. There couldn’t have been
more than 3 nice sized rooms on the entire island, which you could probably
walk all the way around in less than 10 minutes. One of the couple who joined us looked into staying
there and said it was a bit of $400 a night; HA and we got to stay just a touch
away for about $45 pa’anga! The owners
of the place we also expats, but they had gone away sailing for the holidays,
so they left the place in the charge of a cute young English girl who was just,
you know, traveling around. Lord, that
was a lucky find! After throwing back a
few beers at the beachside bar, we kayaked back to our place to get ready for
dinner and watch the sunset. I will say
the place was pretty bare minimum, we did have our own room and bathroom; you
don’t really need too much when your plan is to lounge on a beach, but the
kitchen was pretty nasty. They made zero
attempt to perk it up as a kitchen to cater to foreigners; now I’m not a priss,
but there were flies everywhere, no good sponges to wash things, junk left on
dishes etc. Gross. I tried to make dinner as quickly as possible,
while using as few things as possible inside the kitchen. We decided to live off the land a bit, and
grab ourselves a breadfruit from one of the trees around. Jared went on a hunt, came back with a nice
big one, which we cut into and…hmmm, it’s brown inside. Is it supposed to be brown inside? I dunno, I’ve
never seen an uncooked breadfruit.
Neither have I. Isn’t it always
white when we eat it? Maybe it turns
white when you cook it? O, Lord. I crossed my fingers and boiled the meat of
the breadfruit, mixed it with our sautéed vegetables, and basically ruined the
entire dish. The breadfruit was
definitely too immature to be picked, apparently they are not supposed to be
brown on the inside. Well, this whole “living
off the land” thing is all about trial and error. We chocked down dinner while watching a nice
sunset, said goodnight to Harry and the two other people staying there, and
headed to bed.
It was Sunday next, and we had heard there was not a
lot going on on the island on Sunday. Oh
my god, were they right! Somehow, people
managed to do less than they had done the day before, which was absolutely
nothing. Church services started at 5am,
then 10am and again at noon and 2pm. The
people who were not in church during any one service only left their home if
they wanted to sleep outside in the shade with the breeze. There was absolutely no one around anywhere;
no noise, no laughter, nothing. It was
actually somewhat eerie, but it did make the place kind of feel like our
own! After hours of doing nothing, we
grabbed the kayaks and headed out to a teenie island where we were in fact the
only people. I actually commented on the
milestone we hit; we’ve been the only tour group on an island, sometimes
consisting of just a handful of other people, we’ve been the only people on a
beach, but never before have we been the only two people on an entire island. I thought it was pretty cool! Let’s seeeee, what did we do the rest of the
day. Oh right, nothing. When we went back, I’m pretty sure we
probably lounged again for a while reading.
Honestly, when absolutely nothing happens to the degree at which it
happened on that island, things just kind of start to blur together. At some point during dinner, Harry popped by
as he was incredibly bored and in search of friendly faces. I think that night was when I really started
to feel bad for Harry, listening to his stories of solitude and cultural isolation. Anyway, in a gesture of good will, Jared let
him borrow his tarobyte hard drive and download shows and movies to his heart’s
content, which he seemed to really appreciate.
In exchange, he gave me a chocolate bar!
I’m not sure how Jared won with that exchange, but I was happy.
The next day was our last on the small island; we decided to
cut it a day short for outbound flight reasons.
Anyway, not-so-long story, even shorter, we did nothing, took the 10
minute walk in both directions from where we were staying until the road was
blocked. At some point, we again took out
the kayaks around the island, which we actually discovered is quite big, but
only inhabited in that teenie area, which again, we were unable to explore any
farther than the road cut off (like the Cook Islands and Samoa, all land is
privately owner so we couldn’t just go a-wandering). That evening, we packed ourselves up and hopped
back on the teenie boat back to Vava’u and Neiafu. We got back with a few hours of sunlight left
and headed to expat run Bounty Bar for the supposedly amazing rum punch, which
were in fact very good, and we even got comped an extra on by the owner. We went back after to take a shower and
headed over to a restaurant down the street; we were told that the owner’s son
was a former Marine who returned not long ago, and Jared wanted to meet
him. Unfortunately, we did not find the
guy, and instead, decided to stay at the restaurant to try their ota ika, which
is basically ceviche marinated in coconut milk, sadly though, the dish was
pretty bland. After dinner, we went back
to the empty hostel and went to bed.
The next was our last in Vava’u. We had breakfast, packed and waited for our
cab driver who took us to the airport.
When we arrived back in Tongatapu, Mana picked us up again from the
airport. On the way into the city of
Nuku’alofa, Mana stopped on the side of the road to pick up some fresh fish and
invited us to dinner with him and his wife that evening. This time in Nuku’alofa, we stayed at a
different hostel closer to town. Upon
arriving without a reservation, we were somewhat curtly shuffled into the dorm
room, which ended up being the same price as the private room we had at
Dayspring B & B, and without internet; we were not impressed, but it was
right in town, so we decided to stay.
After settling in, we were immediately invited onto the porch with a few
other travelers, locals and the owner of the hostel. He was a local man who brewed his own liqueur
called Noa, made from coconuts and coffee; it was really good and tasted a lot
like Kahlua. We spent the next couple
hours sipping on Noa and chatting with everyone, until Mana came to pick us up
for dinner. He drove us out to his
place, where his wife Isabel was waiting.
We spent the night sitting on the floor talking, drinking from coconuts,
and eating the fresh fish she had cooked in coconut milk with peppers and sweet
potatoes that wer blue! After a few
hours, Mana drove us back to our hostel, where we slept well.
The next morning, we woke up and headed to the market for
breakfast. We had planned on attempting
to go to a small island called Eua for the next two days, but Mana talked us
out of it, saying that the weather was meant to be a bit unpredictable, and our
ferry back could very well be cancelled, which would make us miss our
flight. Instead, we thought we might
take a ferry to a closer island just for the day. Prior to heading out, we got walking
direction to the port, and wouldn’t you know it! They were wrong! As instructed, we walked out to the coast and
took a left; supposedly, the port was about a 15 minute walk along the water. Turns out, we were supposed to turn right,
which we were told by a local after about 30 minutes of walking without seeing
anything resembling a port ahead along the water. Unfortunately, because that had taken so
long, if we tried to double back we would still miss the morning ferry out. Jeeeez.
Anyway, we decided to just head back to the hostel and regroup. We attempted a different route back, getting
us a bit lost, but landing us smack dab in front of a different hostel, which
had a private room for less that we were paying for a dorm room. Gotta love those finds! We raced back, packed up and left. Since we had absolutely nothing to do, and we
were now going to be staying in the city for the night, we went back to the
market to pick up a few things. We were
pretty lazy the rest of the day, given a bit of rainy weather and humidity, so
we just made some food and watched a movie that night.
The next day, we sort of debated attempting to go back to the
port to try to catch another ferry, but questionable weather and extreme
laziness prevented us. Instead we
lounged the day away reading, popping back over to the market for some more
browsing and some ice cream. In town, we
ran into Mana who invited us to his place that night for a BBQ. Later in the day, he picked us up and drove
back to his place. Jared and I grabbed a
few drinks for “everyone”, which ended up just being me, Jared and Mana,
instead of the 6 people that were expected.
Mana showed us how to use a machete or knife to form spiked…well they
looked just like spears I guess, but they were used to cook the meat on the
fire. Jared and I were both pretty bad
at making our spikes (a big machete is actually pretty heavy), and Mana took
over to get all the meat on at the same time.
I bit later, he received a phone call from one of the girls who had gone
on the city tour with us a few days prior, asking him to pick her up from the
airport in a bit. Hmm, bit of a
conundrum as the meat was just put on the fire.
Now, you might think, no problem, Mana go pick up the girl while Jared
and Kathleen just watched the fire and meat, rotating the sticks occasionally,
right? Shockingly, that was not how it
played out. Instead, Mana gave me the
keys to his van and asked me to drive to the airport, giving me spotty
directions, and just to bring the girl back there where he would drive her back
to town. Lord, that was a terrible
idea. I mean, it was fine in the end, I
had no troubles getting there (there aren’t many roads to get lost on) and
back, but it probably took me double the amount of time it would have taken
him, because I was driving so cautiously in the dark…without my license on me. Anyway, after a bit of a delay, we finally
started our BBQ. The other guests never
showed up, so we had a surplus of cooked lamb and boiled manioke, which worked
out well for me and Jared. Late into the
evening, Mana drove us back to our hostel for the night.
Travel day as next; we had to leave Tonga. We had a late flight, so we leisurely ate,
packed and lounged around reading until Mana came and picked us up. Our next flight to Fiji was the first direct
flight we’d had in a while!
