Tonga - Vanua Levu (Fiji) in Google Maps (web browser) and in Google Earth (separate application)

After ten days of easy cruising in Tonga’s Neiafu Group, we are heading to less charted and chartered islands – Tonga’s Ha’apai Group. Dozens of islands offer numerous anchorages with hardly any boats, but we manage to encounter both Gabor and Isolde on Kestrel and John and Nicole on Taraipo.

We are sharing with John and Nicole a few stormy days, catching up on our cruising adventures over the last two years. The stormy weather limits our ability to explore islands and to continue our journey and makes many anchorages uncomfortable. As beautiful these remote islands and their beaches are, they become a bit repetitive and I feel a bit bored. It’s so much more rewarding to meet interesting people!

It doesn’t help our planning that I can’t download the weather forecast via satellite phone; it seems Tonga is one of the few weakly covered spots on earth. We are exploiting a small weather window to make a quick 40 miles dash to Nuku’alofa, Tonga’s capital. I am a bit anxious to bring Blue Bie to the pier med-mooring style in 30 knots of wind.

Luckily, there is only one other boat on the pier where normally more than 30 yachts are moored in high season. I can anchor in the middle of the basin and let Blue Bie settle back on anchor in the wind before bringing out stern lines and winching her to the pier. We even find free WiFi on the dock and start exploring the town.

Nuku’alofa is the quaintest of all the South Pacific metropoles. There is not much traffic or tourism, the streets are clean the people are friendly and unhurried. I’m once more surprised how much the markets differ between the different countries.

Not only the fruits and vegetables offered are much different, also the clothes and souvenirs differ greatly: Pareos were in French Polynesia and the Cook Islands omnipresent – here men and women are wearing traditional tapa mats over thick skirts. Tonga is the only country in the South Pacific, which has never been colonialised and we have difficulties to find potatoes, but find plenty of local root crops like tarot, yam or sweet potatoes.

Tonga is until the present day a Kingdom, but will move to a more democratic representative monarchy later this year and we are visiting the Royal Palace.

We see on an island tour a stone trilithon, erected by rulers thousand years ago, aptly called the Stonehenge of the South Pacific. We also see blowholes, subsistence farming and every hundred meter another tiny Chinese shop, which are all selling the same. Sometimes I wonder …

The highlight of our time in Nuku’alofa has been the dinner show at the Oholai Resort. The owner has been living in Australia. The resort was owned by his father before, but came into disrepair for health reasons. He rebuilt it and an access road with the help of local people over three years for it to be destroyed by a cyclone this spring. He and the locals rebuilt it once more and it became a jewel. The helpers are all working in the resort today. It’s not the first time that I see an islander return and create something fantastic.

Twice a week they offer a Tongan feast with a great variety of local dishes (and fantastic roast pig). The owner is personally moderating the evening and the evening is completed with Polynesian dances and a fire dance in a cave. It’s easily the best I have seen all over the Pacific and I can only recommend the Oholai dinner show to all fellow cruisers.

In the mean time the strong winds have abated and we set sail for Fiji. It is a very comfortable passage in 8-12 knots of wind and beautiful sunshine. Why can’t it always be like that?

We are sailing through the 4 mile wide Oneata passage in the middle of moonless night. I don’t know how accurate the charts are, but can at least confirm the position of the main islands with the radar. All goes well and soon after we are crossing the antemeridian and I return to my home-hemisphere. Does this mean that I have reached the half-way point of my journey, too? You and I will find out!

Travelling Western Australia

22.01.2012