"For the wretched of the earth
There is a flame that never dies.
Even the darkest night will end
And the sun will rise."
...which is "Hello!" in tongan. So here I am, Tonga, in middle of Pacific. Really bizarre feeling to be here and I'm struggling to find words so I'll do it the easy way and describe events of past few days, all the way to thursday when I left Australia and landed to Tonga.
Already on check-in in Sydney international I had good vibes about the trip. I was in queue with 2 gay guys going to Tonga as well and we just had hilarious time chatting. Flight was 4.5h long so not too tough at all. We landed on Tonga at 22:00 local time and immediately as I stepped of plane I knew I was somewhere FAR away from home. Humidity, heat and the smell was something I have never felt before. I got my bag out and headed out to find guy holding sign "Toni's guesthouse"(my pickup) so there I went. 30 minute journey from airport was experience itself driving through surprisingly densely populated main island dodging other cars, kids, adults, dogs, pigs and chickens.
Now, I told in earlier entry that I was finnish magnet and what you know? In Tonga and in Toni's Guesthouse I run into 2 finnish girls again, Tiina and Sara. Later it turns out that they had arrived to Tonga as well earlier the day and they had exactly the same itinerary as I did, even the same exact flight away from Tonga. So needless to say that we teamed up and are now traveling together around the Kingdom of Tonga.
I arrived on thursday and on friday it was Kiran's birthday(english girls who was traveling there with her friend Shawn) so we took her to Toni's famous island tours. Entire day we spent driving around island seeing its major sights which included 37 mormon churches, 28 catholic churches, 3-headed palm tree, blowholes and Captain Cook's landing site. Toni is clearly getting old but he is still funny as hell, his humor is so full of sarcasm. Here are some pics I took during tour.
After tour we started preparing for Tongan dinner show where Toni managed to get us seats. It included buffet menu from local dishes and really great dance show by local village dancers...dont get to experience something like that too often so I was impressed. Great night, great food, great company and great show.
For some reason Shawn, Tiina, Sara and I stayed up that night drinking local booze and chatting all the way till 6am so you can imagine the tropical hangover next "morning". I managed to get myself into town of Nukualofa and ate best bacon panini I have ever had. Otherwise we just chilled at the hostel and waited for our flight to Vavau which we had booked day before at Air New Zealand office in Nukualofa.
So on saturday 3 of us flew to Vavau from main island. It was about 50 minute flight and surprisingly comfortable considering the plane looked like it was ready to crash any second. We arrived at Vavau 18:50 in the evening, found a cab, drove to main town of Nefaia and checked into Tonga's only backpacker place, Adventure backpackers.
To those who care, there are about 70,000 people living in main island of Tongatapu, but only 22,000 in Vavau so its lot smaller. Then again Vavau is also lot prettier than Tongatapu.
Now its monday...on sunday everything is closed in Tonga because this is highly religious country, nothing was open but we were able to find person who was able to drive us on south tip of the island for some swimming at very picturesque beach and turqoise water.
We had quite weird incident on the beach as well...when we arrived there we were only people on beach, kinda what we expected. But then after 30mins I saw warship closing in on the bay. It kept coming and coming and coming until it finally dropped anchor about 100m from shore. Then rubberboat came out, people went in and they started to drive directly toward us. Now, I suppose everyone has heard about stories where pirates/terrorists kidnap tourists in Pacific and demand ransom from their governments. To be honest I was little scared but it turned out it was New Zealand survey ship and soldiers just came to shore to have some RnR. So what was secluded paradise beach was instantly turned into 20-year old soldiers playground with all sorts of watersport equipment, kinda weird.
Today, monday we booked whale watching tour on tuesday(supposedly Tonga is best place in world to see whales), flights to Haapai for saturday(we originally wanted to go to Haapai by ferry but ferry isnt going for next 3 weeks cause they have no fuel...) and walked to hill close to town for some amazing scenery.
So what is my impression of Tonga? It is different than any other place I have ever been to, thats for sure. People do speak very good english here though. They are very friendly for most the time and kids here are just fantastic, I just hope my kid one day would be something close to tongan kids cause they seem so happy and enjoying life...plus they are polite.
Weather here is very humid which makes nights tough to sleep cause we keep sweating all the time. And then there are insects, dont come to Tonga if you are scared of insects or spiders. This place is literally full of big palm-size spiders(they are totaly harmless but huge). But all in all, I love this place. It is so different, so chilled and so fun every single day.
See ya all on other side,
Tero(far away from home)
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