Going deep, deep down

Kokamo's Pacifc Meanderings
Tom and Rachel
Fri 11 Jun 2010 02:52
Kokamo is at 18:39.3S 173:59.0W
 
Just a quickie to say we've spent the last 4 days or so in the main town of the Vava'u Group - Neiafu.  Vava'u is the northern main group of islands in Tonga, and is immediately different to the Ha'apai - with steep sided, volcanic islands, with lots of caves in their cliffs, and spectacular deep drop offs underwater.
 
Neaifu is the most visite/touristed place we've been to so far.  So, with an unintended inevitability, we've been taking advantage of somethings we haven't seen in a while:
 
- dive operators.  Rachel's been doing her PADI Open water certificate over the last few days, and has just passed - nice work Rach. (Even Rach didn't manage to get too worried by the PADI exam looming up this afternoon!)  She was occasionally getting a few frights underwater snorkelling in out of the way places, so hopefully it's all good for underwater confidence.  I took the opportunity to do some dives at the same time and remember how to do it all (having not dived since my qualification 3 years ago or so).  I dived some great caverns this morning - one of them had a big, banded sea snake swimming around at the top, which stopped us surfacing, and two others with young white-tip reef sharks in (eat your heart out Marve). Only about 1.5m long - a comfortable place to start in my up-close shark encounters I feel.  Having previously been a bit ambivalent about diving I have to say it was all a very cool experience.
 
- a decent range of fresh fruit and veg in the market (if you get there first thing).
 
- cafes with iced coffee and brownies.
 
- and of course the internet.... which is suddenly sucking away hours of time.
 
We're now going to tear ourselves away from the temptations and alarming expense of town and spend a week or so exploring the Vava'u Group, which has dozens of beautiful looking anchorages just a mile or two from each other.  Then back here to stock up before heading to Fiji on around 21st June.
 
PS.  The fishing success rate continues to be dismal (although we did 'help' catch some squid the other night in a hilarious episode involving four of us in our very small dinghy in the pitch black - they were delicious though).  I have now spent a small fortune on kit to build my own lures in the fishing shop here - so our luck had better change.