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.
|