The home where we had our meal did not appear very lovely.(Note the car which seemed to be the chicken coop.

But indoors a beautifully presented table awaited us.

  The meal was simple; it included lobster, poisson cru, yams, taro, corned beef steamed in taro leaf and fried fish, all accompanied by drinking coconuts. There was no charge and no money expected, but the 8 of us who went took various presents. We took a porthole shaped mirror that we have been trying to find a home for ever since we bought the boat, the great tail piece of the Wahoo we caught, and a number of other bits and pieces. The woman, her husband and family seemed delighted by their gifts.

The neighbour's car also needed a little work

On the way back to the boat we met these 2 Mormons, complete with their woven mat skirts, who lived in New Zealand but whose families came from these islands.

 The wearing of these “ta'ovala” is still very common, although there are a great variety of styles from these rather daring miniskirt ones to floor length bushy ones with layers of woven and loose strands worn by some of the older women. The ta'ovala are worn over black clothing for funerals and are worn for between 3 months to a year afterwards. The school pupils also have their own versions including for the girls a sort of vestigial waist mat with strands of woven pandanus palms known as a kiekie.

After a couple of nights we set off for Tongatapu, the southern most group of Tongan Islands and a good departure point for passage to New Zealand. We had an extremely rough overnight sail on our 28^th wedding anniversary to the island of Pangai and the anchorage at “Big Mamas”. This is a small resort catering largely for yachtsman. It was the end of her busy season as the cruisers all flee south in November to avoid cyclone season so she hosted a feast night that apart from drinks was totally free. Consequently the cameraman had some issues with focusing ...

 Checking out, fuelling and watering took nearly the whole day as it was interspersed with grabbing time in an internet cafe to do our emails and weather research as our Sat phone needs a new SIM card. Also buying a hard bottomed dinghy and outboard that were salvaged from the French yacht which sank after hitting a reef in the Ha'apai Islands. The owners and their friends are now back in France, the only insurance they had was for a flight home in the event of mishap so the poor souls lost everything but for the little that was salvaged, at least they are safe. We now have a good one year old dinghy made of Hypalon which unlike PVC does not denature and go sticky in the heat also a rather large horse power outboard which will probably frighten the life out of us.

Feeling nervous and excited about the last big passage in this part of our journey, we finally left on Sunday 31^st October. With perfect reaching conditions and a 1000+ mile passage ahead of us we knew the weather would become increasingly colder and possibly unsettled as we ventured south west.

We were sad to leave Tonga but unlike some of the other wonderful islands we have visited in this memorable year we will almost certainly return next season to spend more time getting to know these special islands and their utterly charming people.