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| Tonga - the last kingdom | Tonga seems to be the last TRUE kingdom on earth. the king seriously tries to keep his country as isolated from western (evil) influences as possible. only the tourists affect the country a lot. and luckily we had all the possibilities to do some new things like diving and sailing aswell as see some of this mixed up and still beautiful culture!
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 | deserted beaches
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After arriving in Nuku'alofa and its typical mixed atmosphere of a capital town in the pacific - noisy, tourists and annoyed inhabitants - we quickly decided to hit the smaller islands up north and got a kingdom pass with Royal Tongan Airlines. The only good memory of Nuku'alofa is the food - after weeks of taro, eggs, breadfruit and papaya (pow pow). The first island group to go was Hapa'i, where we instantly ( including flight, drive, boat trip, walk) went to Captain Cook "resort" owned by a true original character. He is about 60 although he never revealed his real age and a gifted story teller. In the past he supposedly was a bit too much attracted by the palangi (foreigner) single women travelling and staying at his place. Thanks to his caretaker Maria and skipping the alcohol he is not "harassing" them anymore.
One time he has been to Japan and been offered a delicacy from his home islands by a friend - pumpkin. he refused with the words: " thank you but we feed the pigs with that at home" - different countries, different specialties. | |  | sand castles
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The islands of Hapa'i are still very religious and its not allowed to do a thing on Sundays. The rest of the week the inhabitants dont do much else... except talk - called coconut wireless and its supposed to be faster than telephone (or the there unknown of internet). the stories of other islands and any gossip is distributed mouth to mouth. after a few days we had the full inside view and surely its more fascinating than watching tv. We keep ourselves busy with building sand castles, sun baking, reading and talking with the few other guests. a danish man was very surprised by our plan to not work for a year - "but you have to be productive and work!" I have no clue what he was talking about - I have no urge to be back in the threadmill again . After beeing with Captain Cook for a few days we moved on to Billys place and enjoyed its there aswell with rusty bicycles and gorgeous breakfast. Sandy (the owner) is the one to be thanked for all the gossip :)
Tours around the island on rusty bikes are a true relaxing and peaceful experience. But after a while we had to move on to the next islands...
flying in these small planes gives a very pretty view of the islands below. so we could choose the ones to go on the plane already - good service by royal tongan. | |  | spinning around!
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The islands of Vavau give shelter not only to a hundred of foreigners but starting in August to whales aswell. Humpback whales give birth and make new babys in the warm and safe waters of Tonga. The area belongs to a whale reserve, so the former whalers are going out to show the whales to tourists now - and the business actually is better by that! finally a good aspect of tourism! Of we went and saw some pretty impressive skills performed by the whales! It seems they lost their fear of boats and came pretty close aswell. | |  | Diving masters
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finally we went for the dive course we had planned to do for a while already. Thanks to Wendy, our very foregiving and helpful dive instructor, we managed underwater. I would recommend to do this for everybody. the world underwater is just a little more alive than u might think :)
I havent seen a shark, but the clown fish and the rest of these colourful things are amazing!
We went to a cave full of bait fish, f.e.. its an experience to be surrounded by hundreds of fish!
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Updated 08.09.03 Written by jeinsen 57345 reads |
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A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
-- Lao-Tzu |
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