Tonga - The Friendly Isles

The Tongan people lived up to their name of friendliness, but not overly so.  They are a proud and good looking people, rather large.  English is spoken quite widely and literacy is high.  On the island of Taunga, still in the Vava’u group, we met the local headman who called himself King Six.  He and his wife Pauline and four beautiful children invited us to dinner one evening. We struggled with the food a bit – mostly yams, baked unripe bananas, tapioca and taro.  But the fresh fish, pawpaw and grated coconut were good and the company excellent.  We took in the usual gifts of wine, tinned food, clothing and some toys for the kids.

Pauline had a wound on her leg which she admitted had not healed for some time. It looked infected to me but there was no doctor on her island so she had just left it. I worried about her leg and tried to bully her about going to a doctor.  The children’s legs were also covered in lumps and bumps from what looked like insect bites. The next day, Sunday, we took in a tube of antibiotic cream which I had been persuaded to buy in case we ever cut ourselves on the coral. Fortunately, we never did.  Tongans are a very religious people (Methodist) and they invited us, rather determinedly, to attend church with them – there was a lot of good singing.  They have a queer system here where the cash donations made in church are announced loudly for everyone to hear. We yachties all thought it a rather unpleasant system, forcing parishioners to contribute generously, whether they could afford it or not or be considered mean by their neighbours.  After church we went back to King Six and Pauline’s house for tea.  They gave us some mangoes, pawpaws and bananas from their garden, and Pauline presented me with a gift of a lovely tapa which she had made herself.  Tapas are made from the beaten bark of the paper Mulberry tree and then painted with traditional designs, and are common all over Polynesia.  They have special social significance in Tonga and I was very honoured to receive one as a gift.

On Vakaietu Island we went snorkelling at the ‘coral garden’.  We parked the dinghy on the sand and then, at high tide had to swim over a shallow bar to reach the ‘garden’ which then dipped quite deeply into the ocean.  This was quite amazing and by far the most beautiful coral and tropical fish we’d ever seen (or ever would again).  Returning over the bar later was a tense business as the water level had now dropped, surfing in with the incoming tide, our bellies just inches over the sharp tips of the coral reef.

On 10 October we left the Vava’u group and headed south for the Ha’apai group of islands, stopping first at Lifuka harbour to do the official check-in (they liked yachts to check in to each of the island groups).   This was a mere formality, but we had forgotten that our visas had expired on the 6^th!  The Immigration man (who was also the local policeman) was very nice about it and let it pass.

Lifuka Harbour in my new t-shirt

It was very beautiful and typically ‘tropical islandish’ in this area, the water shallow, clear and the most divine colour again.

At Nomuka Island Mike met three Tongan women with whom he traded some freeze-dried meat we had aboard for fresh water and brought them aboard for coffee.  The following day they invited us back to their house where they fed us dried octopus meat burnt on the naked flame of coconut husks and fresh coconut juice. 

We had seen plenty of these octopuses stretched out tightly on sticks stuck in the sand, drying in the sun, and had been curious – so it was interesting to get to try it.  Rugged sort of way to cook, but the octopus was tasty, quite chewy. Then they gave us some papaws, coconuts, bananas, lemons and one dried octopus to take home.  After that we brought them back to the boat for coffee again and gave them videos, music tapes, a lipstick and some stationery.  Their English wasn’t good but they were nice girls. Entertaining experience.

Three ladies paddling Mike to shore

On the island of Kelefesia, we met up with John and Christina on the catamaran, Taraipo.  Poor old Taraipo had suffered a dismasting in the Atlantic and now again in the Tuomotus.  It was currently running under a jury rig, so struggled to move well against the wind, but otherwise managed rather well.  Christina was an uninhibited blond Swede and was standing naked on deck hanging up her towel as we came in to anchor nearby.  She waved to us and invited us over for a drink - I never saw Mike prepare the dinghy so fast!  (Sorry guys, no picture of that one.)  They were good fun and Kelefesia was a lovely anchorage with just our two boats.



We got totally into eating coconuts and would scavenge for the brown ones, though we still couldn’t crack them open ourselves, nor could we climb the trees to collect the delicious green ones.  If lucky, we would find an obliging kid to do it for us – they could skim up like monkeys.

On 21 October we sailed on southwards to the capital of Nuku’alofa. The trip started out well but then, inevitably, the wind blew up and the rest of the trip was particularly nasty. Poor Forever spent many hours beating against the wind into huge waves. The problem was exacerbated on two counts; firstly, we didn’t have good charts for the area so weren’t sure of a good spot to stop, and secondly, the virus in my computer (which I’d first noticed in the Bahamas) had got worse and it was becoming more and more difficult to boot up. In defeat, we finally anchored very unsatisfactorily for the night against a reef and bounced unhappily all night. The wind eased the next day and we were able to continue to Pangaimotu Island where we anchored. On the way in Mike caught a fish, a delicious mahi mahi, but in the excitement of getting it aboard, the fishing gaff that Colin had so kindly given us back in the Marquesas was lost. My fault - naturally. We spent four days at Nuku’alofa and shared our fresh fish at dinner on Freyja with the Canadians Basil and Angela.

There were a lot of yachts there all waiting to make the last hop to New Zealand. A lot of the boats we knew had already left Tonga for Fiji, but we made the decision to stay longer in Tonga for now and go there later if we felt like it. Mike wasn’t keen on Fiji for some reason and I didn’t mind either way. The cyclone season, which officially begins on the 1st of November, was looming large. We all kept a sharp eye on the weather forecast as cyclones can arrive early. It was time to go south, beyond the cyclone belt, and we were ready but with very mixed feelings.

We felt so sad to be leaving these divine island nations of the Pacific. To me, there was something incredibly exotic about the Pacific, it was somewhere I had never even dreamed of visiting, so to actually be there was – well, extraordinary. We’d had an amazingly good, relaxed, laid back and sociable time and we’d met some great people. We barely ever saw or heard any news from the rest of the world – wars, bombs and floods ruined lives, World War III could have broken out and we wouldn’t have known it, and at the time we couldn’t have cared less. And – importantly for us – we’d spent remarkably little money, all things considered. I worked out that we had only spent about £800 in the seven months since Panama.

But there were good reasons to move on. Despite our frugality, our financial situation had become extremely dire by then, what little capital we’d started out with was now seriously depleted. We comforted ourselves with the thought that we would find work in New Zealand to boost our cruising kitty. And there was also the exciting possibility that we might actually find a new life there. Returning to our homeland, Zimbabwe, was no longer an option for us and we were hoping to find somewhere a bit more sunny than the UK to settle. Mike’s brother, Nick, was (and still is) living in Auckland with his family and Mike was looking forward to seeing family again.


So, on 25 October 2004 we stocked up with water, fuel and the bare minimum of fresh food, and set off on the last 1100 miles to New Zealand.