The Kingdom of Tonga

We successfully sailed to the future! On our sail from Niue to the Kingdom of Tonga, we crossed the International Date Line. We lost a day, so while our sail only took 40 hours, we departed on a Monday evening and arrived on Thursday morning. The sail was a bit lumpy but otherwise uneventful. We were greeted by humpback whales frolicking in the sun as we made our way into the islands of the Vava’u Group in Tonga a few hours after sunrise. Our customs and immigration check-in went smoothly at the large wharf in Neiafu and we then found a mooring ball to tie up to in the bay. Most of the bay is full of mooring balls with an inexpensive nightly rate. Anchoring in the bay is allowed in certain areas, but it is deep and full of rubble so its not the best place to drop the hook. We spent the next week taking care of business in town, like laundry, provisioning, diesel top up, and refilling one of our propane tanks. We met up with cruising friends and enjoyed restaurants, a dance performance, margaritas at a Canadian-owned floating bar, trivia night, dancing at a local bar, and a hike in the Mt. Talau national park. Neiafu is just about the right size town: not too big and not too small; busy enough to have a great fresh produce market and lots of well-stocked small shops; small enough to explore on foot. Tonga has a different feel than the other South Pacific islands we’ve visited. Tonga was never colonized and has its long-standing monarchy in place ruling over the country. It does not have the outside influences we noticed of France in French Polynesia or New Zealand in Niue. It’s hard to describe, but Tonga really has its own feel. People are very nice and welcoming, and little kids walking down the street smile and say “goodbye” as we pass. We often see people in traditional ta’ovala and kiekie which are woven mats worn around the waist over the clothes. Men often wear long tupenus which are generally black ankle-length skirts under the ta’ovala. Working, swimming, whale watching tours, and fishing are all prohibited by law on Sundays, though they make exceptions for some tourist-focused businesses such as restaurants and resorts. No taxis are available and flights do not go on Sundays. The biggest outside influence we see is that many of the grocery & supply shops are run by Chinese immigrants. There are some good Chinese restaurants too. It’s interesting to see that the Chinese community speaks very little Tongan or English (the two official languages) and really appear to keep to themselves. We’ve only been here in Tonga for about 3 weeks so we’re just barely scratching the surface of learning about the culture of the place.

Mt. Talau is the highest point in the Vava’u Group, at 131 meters (430 feet) above sea level. By contrast, the highest point on Niue was 60 meters (200 feet) above sea level. Here is the legend of why the mountain is flat, as posted at the entrance to the national park: “A very, very long time ago, some tevolo (mischievous spirits) from Samoa were looking out over the oceans from their tall mountains. Their mountains were so high that they could see everything around them except when they looked south towards Tonga, Mt. Talau stood in the way of their view. ‘We will go and steal the top of that mountain’ the Samoan tevolo planned, ‘then we will add its height to our mountain, so we can see all of the world without obstruction.’ One night, because tevolo are only able to come out at night, the Samoan tevolo came to Vava’u and taking out their hele pelu (bush knife) started to cut away at the top of the mountain. The people of Vava’u seeing what the tevolo were trying to do, started crowing like roosters as loud as they could. They hoped to fool the Samoan tevolo into thinking the sun was rising. However, the tevolo did not fall for the trick and finished cutting off the top of Mt. Talau and prepared to carry it back to Samoa. ‘We need help from our own tevolo!’ cried the people of Vava’u. They sent a request to ‘Eua where a tevolo named Tafakula lived. Tafakula was very famous for her cunning ways and she quickly went to the eastern side of the island where the sun rises. She then bent over lifted up her skirt and exposed her buttocks. The Samoan tevolo, seeing the bright light reflected off Tafakula’s buttocks thought that the sun was rising in the east. They instantly dropped the top of Mt. Talau and fled back to Samoa. The theft had been prevented. The top of Mt. Talau has been flat ever since and what was once the top can be seen just southwest of Mt. Talau today – it is now known as the island of Lotuma.”

While anchored in the Neiafu bay, we took the opportunity to dive a ship wreck there, twice. The Clan MacWilliam was a copra steamer built in 1918. She sank after a fire onboard in December 1927. She is 127 meters (423 feet) long and most of the deck and hull is still intact. She sits in about 120 feet of water, with the top deck rising to 70 feet. It’s a deep dive, so time is limited, and each dive left us wanting more. After nearly 100 years on the sea floor, she is covered in life including moon jellies, bubble coral, daisy coral, anemonefish, trevally, honeycomb oysters, granular sea stars, highfin fangblennies, and a massive school of scissortail fusiliers. We’ll be back in Neiafu later on and will likely dive her again.

After some strong winds that led us to stay in the protected bay in Neiafu, we departed for an anchorage in the Vava’u group away from town. We only stayed a few nights and enjoyed some excellent snorkeling and cave explorations via dinghy. Tonga is home to flying foxes and we’ve seen them flying around in the evenings as well as resting upside down in trees and caves during the day. After a few weeks surrounded by lots of people and busy anchorages, we were ready to move on to the less-visited Ha’apai Group about 65 miles south.

Next Stop: Hopping around Ha’apai