Chapter 7

TONGA - IT'S THE PEOPLE YOU MEET

* the friendly feudal isles: home of the oldest and last Polynesian monarchy*

It's not the journey or how you get there that's important, it's the people you meet. I tried to remember this maxim as we struggled to make port in northern Tonga. Sailing conditions had been ideal when we left the island of Penrhyn in the northern Cooks, but as usual, states of mind and sea are always temporary.

Two days from Vava'u we encountered boisterous seas and high winds. The seas whipped themselves into a fury in a matter of hours, getting much higher than the wind conditions at the time would have dictated. With a sixteen foot (five meter) swell and winds to 40 knots, we scooted along at close to seven knots under a tiny triangle of mainsail, no jib. Lots of seawater came aboard, uninvited. Intermittent rain and squalls, common to the convergence zone between Tonga and Samoa, obscured our vision and eventually we closed up the boat, venturing on deck only to check or adjust our course. Down below, the heat and noise and movement were oppressive. Sailing without radar, we were in God's hands.

I confess. Sailing is not always water dancing along the hull and seabirds singing overhead. Sometimes the water and wind sounds of sailing are awful. And after a few days, listening to the wind howl in the rigging can get really annoying - it makes no difference if you're at sea or at anchor. It can aggravate the digestion, torment the soul, gall the spirit, gnaw at your sanity, pester the mind, bedevil your sensitivities, bug the body. I read something like this once and thought: Too right!

Fifty miles from port we took down all sail - a daunting task on a deck that's leaping and lurching underfoot - and ran with bare poles at four knots through the night. We made landfall in the morning, rounding the cliffs of Port Refugio before heading towards the town of Neiafu. With the rain, cool temperatures and fiord-like harbor entrance, our landfall reminded us more of the Pacific Northwest than the South Pacific.

Checking in with customs and immigration in foreign ports is often vexatious, but here in the Kingdom of Tonga it was easy. We tied to the wharf and in between visits from customs, agriculture and immigration, a schoolboy introduced himself and guided me to the bank and the propane depot. 'Hiki' was fifteen years old, attending Vava'u High School during the week and returning to his village and family on another island, Matamaka - "number fifteen" - each weekend. Hiki told us that English was his favorite subject in school, and I got the impression he was good in all his subjects "except maths!"

Hiki was not alone on the customs dock. The Tongan passion for food and feasts appeared in the form of Mr. 'Aisea Sikaleti, one of many Tongan entrepreneurs who organize Tongan feasts for the pa'alangis (non-Tongans) that visit Vava'u. He had come to announce his weekly feast at Lisa Beach, "number ten". Later, at "number eight" a policeman invited us to dine on "island delights, wrapped in taro leaves, delicately flavored with coconut cream, garlic and onions and cooked to perfection in a Tongan microwave".

We must have looked puzzled because our Tongan host soon confessed that his Tongan microwave was none other than the traditional underground oven or umu. The Tongan microwave's temperament matches Tonga's - taking hours to do what can be done in minutes, but with it's own flavor.

All the anchorages in Vava'u are known by numbers rather than names because that's the way they are on The Moorings' chart. Even the locals use them. It results in "Cruising by Numbers" - and conversations on the VHF were entirely cryptic, unless you knew the code. "We'll stay at number six tonight, then head to eight for lunch, probably number thirty tomorrow night" was a typical transmission.

Tongan entrepreneurial skill and tenaciousness was reaffirmed again and again as we visited many of the thirty-four islets that make up the Vava'u group. Bum boats of all designs and sizes stopped by to trade or sell baskets and shells. Near Mala Island a young Tongan girl named Mele paddled out to our boat in her leaky outrigger canoe, intent on selling her family's handicrafts.

We were seriously concerned for her safety and, while we worried, the hull of her canoe kept filling up with water almost as fast as her younger cousin could bail it out! We quickly bought two very sturdy Tongan baskets made of pandanus wrapped around coconut-leaf midribs and sent her on her way. Mele's anchorage was "number six" and a popular spot since it was close to town. The following day we went ashore and watched her mother and aunties work at their handicrafts. The basket work in Vava'u is excellent, perhaps the best in the Pacific.

On the beach, Mele looked with undisguised admiration at my dilapidated running shoes. She wanted to play sports at the local Mormon School and needed shoes. Globally, over 7.7 million people follow the religion of American Joseph Smith, who found the mysterious golden plates and translated the hieroglyphics on which is based the book of Mormon and the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints. Joe Smith conveniently lost the ancient plates soon after translating them. The LDS church, based in Salt Lake City, Utah, oversees a prolific school system - funding teachers, sports, school buildings around the world. In Tonga, teenagers often convert to Mormonism, with the obvious benefit of good schooling and sports training. The term "school Mormon" is a result of this.

Not surprisingly, when we discovered that we had the same size feet, Mele had a new pair of shoes. To thank us, her mother and aunts prepared a special lunch of paka (crab), lobster and manioke (cassava) smothered in coconut cream. Ana, one of the aunts, showed us how to extract all the meat from the red-spotted paka. The method was as messy as the crab was delicious. The aunts' fingers continued weaving baskets while we ate and talked, while Ana's husband, tired after fishing all night for our feast, slept soundly nearby.

All the women we met in the Kingdom of Tonga kept their hands busy with crafts and because there is no mass production, each item is unique. At the Vava'u Handicraft Shop near the Neiafu post office, gentle and talented Luisa Tuifua created round baskets, square baskets, jewelry baskets an inch high, laundry baskets a meter high, picnic baskets, even baskets sized-to-disguise and accommodate boxed "Chateau Cardboard" wine. She also created handbags, fans and slippers using pandanus leaves and tapa. Tapa is a traditional cloth made from the under-bark of the paper mulberry tree (Broussonetia papyrifera). The bark is beaten into strips of cloth which are pasted together and pounded, then decorated with hand-painted designs in black, red and brown. The finished products, tapa in lengths of 25 to 250 meters, are exchanged at weddings, funerals and other occasions.

In Vava'u, traditions are respected and many Tongans still wear their distinctive ta'ovala to work, to town and to church. Made of finely woven pandanus, these special mats are tied around broad middles and secured with a coconut-fibre cord called kafa. Both ladies and men wear these oft-tattered 'crunchy' mats which are usually highly-valued heirlooms. They seem to be a fashion accessory unique in the Pacific. Women generally wear a decorative belt or kiekie made of pandanus, hair or leather decorated with shells, beads or colored fabric. The kiekie can be worn alone or over the mat.

Although tourism is becoming more important, Vava'u remains an island group whose economy is based on a subsistence lifestyle. At low tide, families comb the reefs surrounding the islets, harvesting clams and other shellfish. While anchored at Nuku Island, we went ashore at low tide to do some beachcombing ourselves and crossed paths with a Tongan lady who was busy picking things up off the reef and putting them in her basket.

"Good morning!" we smiled as we asked her what she was doing. She looked up, pried open a clam with purple wavy lips and cut it into five or six pieces. I think she said "Try it, you'll like it!" in Tongan, but I'm not sure. We tried it, and didn't, so politely said malo 'aupito and walked away before discreetly removing the rubbery mollusc lips from our mouth.

It was disheartening to see the Tongans destroying their marine environment by over-fishing the reef for local and tourist consumption. One good sign - the appearance of several designated reserves where circles of giant Tridacna derasa clams are protected. Triton or trumpet shells are another marine resource that should be left alone since they are the best defense against destructive Crown of Thorns starfish infestations which destroy coral reefs.

The caves in Vava'u are incredible. The best one, Mariner's Cave on Nuapapu, is named after Will Mariner, perhaps the first European to see the cave and to learn its secrets and legends. Mariner arrived in Tonga in 1806 aboard the ill-fated privateer Port-au-Prince. The local chief took young Will under his wing and he soon became privy to local culture and politics. Later, Mariner was persuaded to write about his extraordinary experiences, providing a fascinating record of pre-Christian Tongan life and its customs, language, government.

Mariners' Cave is reached only by diving or snorkeling fourteen feet through an underwater passage. The entrance is difficult to find, unmarked except for a submarine dark patch at the entrance to the cave. So the first time we went looking for the opening, we trolled Foster, equipped with a mask and snorkel, off the stern of the boat while carefully sailing alongside the face of the cliff! Our companions of the day, Americans Dave and Larry aboard The Moorings' charter boat Noname were equally baffled by instructions to look for a tall coconut tree. Which tall coconut tree?

When we thought we'd found the right spot, Dave, Larry and I voted Fos as the man most likely to succeed if he dared to go in. But what if he swam deep into the tunnel and it wasn't the right one? He'd not have enough air left in his lungs to swim out and tell us! Always game for a challenge, down he dove, down, down, into the black hole. . . and beyond. He didn't return.

Five minutes passed and we all waited, me fearing the worst, when suddenly a smile beamed as it broke the surface. "Wow!" was all he could manage.

The anticipation of swimming through an underwater tunnel without banging my head and scraping my backside frightened me, normally a confident swimmer. It took a few minutes to regulate my breathing and summon the courage to enter. As I dove down I almost panicked. "Go for it, Sal!" I urged. I kicked as fast as I could and when I finally resurfaced inside the silver bubble, slightly out of breath and heart racing, I was wide-eyed with amazement. What a magical place! As the ocean swells flow into the cave there is a change in air pressure that creates a mysterious haze, an almost flickering fog. The weirdness is quite unbelievable and immodestly accentuated by the glow of the late afternoon sun.

Swallow's Cave on the north end of Kapa Island is equally beautiful with a cathedral-like chamber that lights up in multi-tones of blue and green as the sun sinks lower in the sky. Inside, too, is a resounding bell-rock. The birds of Swallow's Cave are actually swiftlets (Collocalia spodiopygia) and hundreds of them nest in the dark recesses. This cave can be entered by dinghy or snorkeling, and reaches far back into a subterranean grotto with ample spelunking.

Dave and Larry proved excellent companions. Sequestered in their luggage was a paperback book of "Faulty Towers" comedy scripts. After a few Royal Tongans (beer, that is), Sybil, Basil and Manuel came to life at number thirty. Between scenes, we closet thespians prepared and devoured a huge feast. It was my first birthday south of the Equator.

When we returned to town for supplies, we witnessed the best-ever example of how news travels fast on the coconut telegraph. On the main street of Neiafu, Foster and I ran into Jim and Ann Cate of U.S. yacht Insatiable who had, in their possession, a head of cabbage. No big deal? Wrong! Fresh cabbages and other pa'alangi foods like carrots and corn are rare in this land of kava and coconuts. Ann passed the tip that there were still a few cabbages left at the Burns Philp store so we rushed over and bought one. A short while later, on the dinghy dock, Maki of the Japanese yacht Apolima saw my cabbage and begged, "Please, tell me where you found that." Back aboard FellowShip I flipped on the VHF and within five minutes we heard Apolima calling Jakaranda, and Insatiable calling Annie's Song. Cabbages, cabbages, the VHF was all abuzz with news about cabbages. The word was out. Dinghies from every corner of the harbor roared to life and a thin blue line of outboard motor haze slowly rose into the atmosphere in the vicinity of the BP. Three weeks later you could have substituted "cheddar cheese" for "cabbages" and you'd have had a reasonably accurate account of a repeat performance, albeit with different players!

Vava'u was an easy place to fall in love with. The islands are beautiful, the people friendly and the sailing great - flat water, steady winds, easy navigation and changing vistas that get more beautiful on each tack. No wonder it is a Mecca for cruising boats in the South Pacific. And no wonder, after this first taste of Tonga, we found ourselves drawn back the following year and, yet again, a few years later.

Tonga is a port of call for most international sailing rallies and during this first trip to Vava'u in 1991 we shared anchorages with many of the seventy boats that had come north with an early New Zealand "Island Cruising" Regatta and some of the forty boats participating in Jimmy Cornell's Europa '92 Around the World Rally. Stu Yellen, a Californian friend of ours aboard Annie's Song, was asked by a Europa rally boat skipper if he'd sailed up as part of the New Zealand Regatta or was he chartering from the Moorings.

"Neither," said Stu, causing the guy's eyebrows to raise knowingly.

"Aaaah then," the fellow replied, "you must be one of the independents!"

The independents - those of us who are too undisciplined to follow a pre-ordained itinerary, be it a race or rally. I suppose we are joined by our laissez faire attitude and our ignorance of where - or if - we'll sail tomorrow!

Eventually we get the urge to move on, though. This time, when desire and motivation struck, we sailed south from Vava'u to the Ha'apai group in central Tonga, an area of dangerous reefs and low coral islands that present a navigational challenge - even for experienced mariners - but are fabulously off-the-track. In good weather, the Ha'apai group of islands can be transited safely. Anchorages at Ha'ano, Uoleva, Ha'afeva, Nomuka, Nomuka Iki, Lifuka and Foa Island offer protection during normal tradewind conditions.

It was an easy overnight sail but, IMHO, the toughest passages can be these short hops that are simply a bit too long to tackle in daylight hours. You never have time to relax or get into the rhythm of the journey and, after alternating watches all night and sleeping fitfully (or not at all), you need to be alert so you can make a safe landfall in the morning. Personally, I'd rather do a 20-day ocean crossing - though I'll qualify that statement and add: "in fine conditions allowing plenty of reading, eating and sleeping". Nonetheless, we had a good passage and morning found us in the Ha'apai group of islands, smack in the middle of the Kingdom of Tonga, midway between Vava'u and the capital further south at Tongatapu.

After dropping the hook in the shelter of Ha'ano Island and before catching up on lost sleep, we snorkeled around several coral heads that loomed ominously nearby. Pangai, the modern administrative center of the Ha'apai group, was on the next island south, a traditional island, we were told, notwithstanding her landing strip. The runway crosses the main village road and before a plane can leave or take off, officials must clear it of pigs, dogs, goats and stray horses. We planned to visit if conditions allowed but the entrance was difficult and poorly charted.

Next day we decided to sail on towards uninhabited Uoleva island. The clarity of the sky and water looked ideal for shifting. Since our route would zig and zag through the reefs and islets, we would be relying heavily on eyeball navigation.

"No need to stow the dinghy, eh?" We agreed. "Let's tow it."

Ha! It hadn't looked windy at all from our cozy anchorage but within ten minutes of weighing anchor our dinghy had leaped out of the water twice and windmilled wildly in the air. After the second time, we hauled Shnoob aboard, and deflated and stuffed him in the cockpit. Shnoob, our inflatable Avon Redcrest, has a spirit of his own and is almost one of the crew. His shipboard life is sometimes full of fun, but at other moments indignities.

We never even raised the jib. With only a reefed main we rushed along at six to seven knots, covering reef strewn waters as fast as (or faster than!) I could plot our position. It was difficult working with a hand bearing compass weighted for the northern hemisphere and I had to be very careful that the contrary dip didn't hang up the swing of the card.

Taking fixes and plotting positions on what might well have been a bucking bronco was no easy task. Every ten minutes I'd get three fixes: plotting one position by GPS, another by distance and course, and a third by bearings to shore. None of the three pencilled positions ever agreed but taken collectively they gave us a fairly good feel for where we were in relation to the many unmarked reefs and shoals.

Foster looked a little frightened when my bearings produced large triangles or when the GPS placed us on dry land but there was nothing I could do about it. We pressed on and made record time to the anchorage, both of us breathing a deep sigh of relief after dropping and setting the hook.

Uoleva seemed a quintessentially beautiful island surrounded by wide sandy beaches with good shelling. Uninhabited except for a few pigs, goats and cows, it showed signs of haphazard husbandry. In the late afternoon, as we walked around the island, its sandy perimeter was enveloped in the hues of a water color painting: broad strokes in shades of purple, azure, turquoise, blues, greens, browns, yellows, beige and white. The tones seemed to radiate from both earth and sea. I tried to capture it on paper when we got back to the boat, but failed.

Beams of light piercing distant clouds periodically spotlighted a volcano on the western horizon, that of Tofua Island. It was especially striking at sunset, with steam trailing out from the north end. It was near here that the infamous "Mutiny on the Bounty" took place on April 28, 1789. Fletcher Christian, deciding he'd had enough of Bligh's madness which had manifested itself in pettiness, temper-tantrums, favoritism, and games, declared: "I have been in hell!" Christian prepared for his own escape in one of the ship's small boats but, egged on by his mates to lead a proper mutiny instead, Christian and the mutineers took the Bounty for themselves and set the Captain Bligh and eighteen seamen adrift. The castaways stopped for provisions at Tofua which proved a bad idea - Quartermaster John Norton was clubbed to death by the Tongans.

Two hundred years later, this piece of paradise seemed so exceptionally surreal we found it difficult to move on. Halcyon days flowed into peaceful star-studded nights. We kept our ear on weather forecasts from Kerikeri Radio (New Zealand) but, without warning, a frontal trough moved quickly towards the dateline. Our worst fear had materialized.

The winds veered, putting us on a lee shore overnight. We bounced around at anchor for twenty-four hours until, much to our relief, the system finally passed. Our desire to linger longer crumbled and we soon sought a more protected island to explore.

Sailing south from Uoleva to Ha'afeva we heard, and then saw, some of Melville's 'spouting fishes' on the horizon. As we watched, one humpback lobbed his tail twenty times in succession in an incredible display of power and perhaps passion. Humpback whales use the warm waters of Tonga as their winter breeding grounds and while sailing around the group we often saw giant humpbacks spouting in the distance. In Vava'u they often swam through the anchorage at Vaka'eitu. One day we sailed past three humpbacks frolicking in a charted shoal just west of the island of Hunga. Without a care and with a soft undulating motion they surfaced and disappeared only to resurface and disappear again.

Snorkeling was great at Ha'afeva island with vodka-clear water and a profusion of colorful coral and fish. The area around the wreck of the island trader Ekiaki of Nuku'alofa was a virtual Garden of Eden with coral that had never been spoiled by cyclonic winds or boat anchors. Coral is very easily damaged and it is rare to find an area that has not been hit by the high winds and turbulent seas of the Pacific cyclones that occasionally target Tonga. At Ha'afeva, the coral gardens were pristine and profuse.

When the wind veered to the north, we thought "Aha! Perfect for a spinnaker run to Nomuka Iki." Excited, we hauled anchor and got quickly underway. The breeze, however, was so light we could hardly keep the chute filled and our boat speed never topped two knots. We finally arrived but when we rowed ashore to stretch our legs, two suspicious-looking guys brandishing big bush knives started following us. This occasion marked one of the few times we've appreciated the work of Christian missionaries - though some of them ended in the stew pot, they had successfully convinced the Tongans long ago that eating strangers was bad manners. Or we hoped they had!

Eventually one of the fellows following us caught up and introduced himself as Dave, the Island Officer. He informed us that Nomuka Iki was a prison island and we shouldn't be walking around unescorted. "Whoops!"and "Sorry!" we mumbled. We breathed a sigh of relief when we found out there were only two prisoners on the island, one of whom accompanied us, machete in hand, along with Officer Dave and Mango, the prison dog. Along the littoral, we spotted hermit crabs, bats, frigate birds, herons, black-capped terns.

Some prison! The island is a paradise, almost completely encircled by waves breaking over the coral reefs, the blind rollers and white horses in perpetual motion. It would be a super spot for a low-impact resort - up on the cliff, with individual huts or fales by the sea - with the potential for great snorkeling and walking expeditions, cultural trips to the village on big Nomuka or to nearby deserted isles.

A small plantation worked by the prisoners is laden with bananas, coconuts, cassava, pawpaw and trees for making tapa. All seemed to grow like weeds in the fertile red earth. So we weren't too surprised to learn that the government had seized Nomuka Iki after discovering the cultivation of that notoriously nasty weed, marijuana. Meanwhile it was serving time as a prison. The prisoners gave us some of the fruits of their labor - a basket filled with pawpaw and coconuts, plus a crayfish. We left our frisbee and some books in return.

People in the Ha'apai always seem delighted to greet outsiders whether they come by yacht or by plane, or aboard the Resolution like Captain James Cook did in 1774. In fact, Cook's encounters with the residents of Nomuka and Lifuka inspired Cook to call Tonga "The Friendly Archipelago". At Lifuka, they had been royally entertained ashore - but only, it unfolded later, so the Resolution and Discovery could be raided and the seamen knocked off! Some say Cook's effusive thanks at his reception prompted them to change their minds. Others claim a dispute amongst the Tongan nobles as to whether they should attack by day or night prevented the ugly deed from occurring. We will never know for sure.

Chief Finau of the Ha'apai, however, was a less-than-honest informant and gave Captain Cook deliberately false information about Vava'u. "Absolutely no suitable anchorage in the Vava'u group", he declared. I guess he didn't want the Englishmen crowding out his favorite cruising spot. Cook headed south to Tongatapu instead where, in Nuku'alofa, he found he'd been deceived (or had his leg pulled, depending on your point of view). Vava'u would be put on the map later by the Spanish explorer Mourelle in 1781.

Captain Bligh, too, had encountered problems in the "Friendly Islands". Pre-mutiny, the Bounty crew had, on more than one occasion, overstayed their welcome and infringed on island hospitality in the Ha'apai group at Nomuka Island. We vowed to behave ourselves, and to be perfect guests.

Anchored beside us at Nomuka Iki was Kiwi yacht Ayla. Alan, Liz and their two kids Dylan and Brooke had recently arrived from a wintery New Zealand. Although sharing a warm tropical island with waving palms and white sandy beaches, Alan waxed poetic about the isolation, the hiking, the magnificence of the far south - especially Stewart Island. Then and there, I decided, we simply had to sail to Stewart Island.

Foster told me I was nuts. "Nobody goes there. It's too cold. It's too windy. It's too remote. It's 47 degrees south of the equator!"

"It's uncrowded and wild!" I countered. We went later that same year, loved it, and returned three times.

While Alan and Liz sketched out details of a few anchorages at Stewart Island, including favorite fishing and scalloping spots, I made hats for Dylan and Brooke out of palm fronds. My hats are unpredictable and always take on their own personality, depending on the peculiarities of the raw material. In his, Dylan seemed an invention of Mark Twain.

Steady trade winds seem to be unreliable to non-existent in the South Pacific nowadays. I made a note of this impression back in 1991, and ten years later have found no reason to revise it. The only reliable "constant" is that, as low pressure systems pass over the islands, the winds veer in a counter-clockwise direction - except, of course, when they back and do completely the opposite!

Keeping an ear to the radio, we religiously monitored the weather systems as they passed through Vanuatu and Fiji on an eastward track. So as soon as the wind started to veer in our locale we weighed anchor and took advantage of favorable winds to sail to Nuku'alofa, capital of the Kingdom of Tonga. On arrival, we stern-tied to the inner sea wall in Faua Harbor and headed ashore for our first mail packet in five months.

Nuku'alofa took us by surprise. After reading George Woodcock's entertaining South Pacific Journal en route, we expected a sleepy one horse town. Nuku'alofa of the Nineties seemed a two thousand Toyota town with all of them being driven erratically on the "wrong" side of the road by drivers who displayed no concern for the health and welfare of pedestrians. Later, an American friend described the oh-so-real fear and danger of thinking he'd made eye-contact with the person on the driver's side before heading across the road, only to realize it was not the driver who'd acknowledged him but a pre-school passenger! We found ourselves constantly in fear of becoming traffic fatalities. Several times Foster or I grabbed the other by the scruff of the neck, jerking and extracting our loved one from the jaws of death.

"Two yachties killed in road accident . . . " To have battled the high seas and come so far for that! The idea made me shudder. But there could be worse places to die than Tonga. The graves in the Kingdom's cemeteries are surrounded by colorful banners and ribbons, flowers, sunshine, beer bottles, blinding white coral, black stone and seashells, and perfumed by frangipani trees. What a way to spend eternity!

Tonga's claim to archaeological fame is a 109-ton stone archway called the Ha'amonga 'a Maui. A huge rock construction, it is Tonga's answer to England's "Stonehenge". We surprised the local Tongans by arriving by bus, a very dusty and harrowing trip at high speed through what seemed to be the entire network of back roads in rural Tongatapu. There were some astonished looks when we leaped off the bus, but it was understandable. Most "normal" tourists and Condé Nast travellers would have taken a taxi.

The mystery of the HaŽamonga Ža Maui trilithon (or Maui's burden) was solved in the sixties by the current King of Tonga. One of Polynesia's most fascinating ancient monuments, it is now believed to be an astronomical observatory, perhaps used for determining seasons and solstice phenomena. Oral history and archaeologists date it to the 13^th century when the god Maui - but probably one of the huge Tongan kalia (sailing canoes) - carried it to Tonga from Uvea in the Wallis Island group.

Our favorite side trip was to the Houma blow holes. Again we jumped on the bus and headed to Tongatapu's south shore. The blow holes are a natural phenomenon caused by waves and swells battering the southern coral cliffs. Water is forced through passageways in the limestone rock creating a mile or more of gushing, surf-driven geysers. The effect of this series of spouts shooting water a hundred feet in the air is awesome!

It was a stupendous end to our first tour through Tonga. We knew we'd be back.

Go to Chapter 8 - Return to Tonga