Hanging in Tonga

The trip from Niue to Tonga was a fast one. Our stay on Tonga was almost faster. It basically boiled down to hanging out in Vava’u for a couple of days, before we did a couple of cave dives and then sailed on for Vanuatu.

The reason for this sudden increased pace is that I got accepted to a Maritime School in Bodø in Norway … and it started 3 weeks ago. I am in other words very late. As luck would have it, they have given me a delayed start date, so I will start there October 18th. This gives me a little over a month and a half to get to Australia with the boat and myself back to Norway. So now we are doing the expedited tour of the western part of the South Pacific, but I get ahead of myself: Tonga.

When we cast off from the Customs and Immigration dock in Vava’u and made our way over to the mooring field, I noticed a guy waving frantically on land. It was Mads from Go Beyond. As soon as I found his boat I also saw Quartermoon. It dawned on me that it would be a messy evening. Again I am very thankful that few pictures survive to tell the tale of debauchery and drunkenness. We started the evening at the Giggling Whale and Thirsty Turtle, where we ate together with a large group of people and enjoyed a traditional Tongan dance show.

After the dinner it all went pear-shaped. Mike (from Quartermoon) and I returned to QM and did a few rapid rum shots and a couple of beers, before we joined the rest of the gang at a drag show (no, not the car kind). The evening spiraled out of control and thankfully also out of memory. The only reminder the next morning was a thundering headache.

We spent the next 2 days getting ready to set off for vanuatu. When we had resupplied and filled our watertanks, we sailed over to the tiny island mala, where we anchored and chilled out. There’s a beautiful resort on mala where we enjoyed a delicious breakfast and a spot of internetting.

We headed off after breakfast and sailed over to the Swallows and Mariner’s cave, and did a bit of cave diving. Mariner’s is particularly cool, because you have to dive down and swim through a coral tunnel to get into it.

Tonga is definitely a place I want to head back to with my next boat to explore it more fully. It was a beautiful place where people were very friendly. Our story moved on and we sailed on towards the volcanoes of Vanuatu.