Tonga
MALARKEY
Jo & Trevor Bush
Thu 20 Sep 2012 02:39
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18:39S 173:59W
Cruising the western part of the South Pacific is a
little more interesting. Not only because the destinations are a little
more funky but the sailing & navigation are more sport too. Until
now, most of our sailing has been down-hill westward tradewind stuff......not
very demanding and dare I say it.....a bit boring really. But now we are doing
some passages across the tradewinds both in a north & southerly
direction. So the gang of three, Malarkey, Blue Rodeo and Awaroa set off from
Samoa on a close-ish reach down to Tonga.
This part of the world is much busier from a
navigation point of view. It looks as if someone has taken a hand full of
porridge and thrown it at the chart. There are tiny little
atolls interspaced with larger island groups covering the whole area
between Samoa and Australia. Long gone are the lazy sailing days of flying a bit
of white canvas from the mast any old way and pointing the boat in the rough
general direction and letting the wind & current do its thing. We
actually have to sail the boat now and even look where we are going....a bit of
a shock to the system. Fortunately we had some company to give us a heading and
help keep us in order.
As it happens, nature gave us a break and kindly
put a nice little atoll directly enroute between Samoa and Vavau, Tonga,
our ultimate Tongan destination. This little atoll is called Niuatoputapu or new
potatoes, as we like to call it........well you try and pronounce it. As with
most of the atolls and islands in this neck of the woods, new potatoes is a
volcanic atoll and is the mostly northerly Tongan outpost.
It offered an excellent anchorage with nearly 360
degree protection from the ocean swell but unfortunately not much
else.
The atoll was hit by a tsunami recently. It
killed quite a few residents and pretty much wiped out the whole place.
Peoples homes were just washed away along with just about everything they owned.
But strangely enough,.....not the pigs. These pigs are smart little porkers and
when they felt the tsunami coming, they ran to the high ground. As a result it
seems that there are more pigs on the island than humans and they are pretty
much taking over the place, (smacks of 'Animal Farm' me thinks).
The coral has been decimated too, and with it, the
local sea life. But as testimony to mans tenacity, the local Tongans are
still scratching a living out of what is left and more than that, they even
had the good grace to invite us to the remains of their home for a pot
luck dinner. As it happened, we brought with us most of the food......well
nearly all of it actually, but the thought was nice and we were entertained by
the family singing to us before we tucked in. The local kids certainly enjoyed
the chocolate cake that Anne (S/Y Blue Rodeo) made.
The government and other sponsors are helping with
a rebuilding program but It was nice for us to be able to give these people some
of the bits & bobs we could manage without and they so desperately
needed. We were also invited to their church for a sing-a-long and were
given bikes to cycle to a few remaining attractions which included a
fresh water pool for swimming and a hike, or should I say scramble, over
the highest point for a spectacular view of the boats in
the anchorage. The nearby volcanic cone of Tafahi was in the
background, humpback whales spy hopping & breaching in the
foreground and of course,.......'pigs on the beach'. All we needed to
make the view point perfect was,........... a bar.
   View from
ridge
'Pigs on the
beach'
She made me a hat too
So off to Vavau, the next leg of our cruise to
Tonga.
If truth be told, I have found the sailing in the
South Pacific thus far, a tad mediocre at best and a bloody pain in the arse at
worse. Sure, its been easy enough, but the so called 'tradewinds' have been
particularly fickle with light winds mixed with squalls and large wind
shifts.....and when sailing dead down wind, this is far from ideal especially
when the distances are so huge. But now we are crossing the tradewinds, and the
weather is getting funkier. We are getting weather that is influenced by low
pressure areas coming out of the Tasman Sea and the Southern Ocean. This
means good old weather fronts and troughs. Its like being back in the English
Channel in a good summer. That might be pushing-it a little but the result
is......we are enjoying our sailing again. Don't get me wrong, the South Pacific
is the best cruising ground we have come across so far, and the destinations
here more than make up for the crap sailing.
So we were looking forward to the trip down to
Vavau. It was like a little over night two handed race of about 180 miles or so.
It was good fun jockeying for position through the night with the other
2 boats making the most of the wind shifts. Blue Rodeo, a Deerfoot
50, came out on top, and quite right too, after all, it is a stripped out
racer!! They even cut their tooth brushes in half to save weight and
share each others underwear......but I am not sure they do the
underwear thing just to save weight!!.
Only kidding about the stripped out racer
bit......Blue Rodeo is a damn fine boat and well driven.............There you
have it, I must be enjoying my sailing again,....I'm even writing about it.
Anyway enough of that old tosh, and onto
Vavau.
Neiafu is the main town in Vavau. It is more of a
township really. It is at the head of a perfectly sheltered lagoon,....almost a
hurricane hole. Lots of cruisers have swallowed the hook here and as a result
there is a radio net for cruisers and a whole host of bars, restaurants and
different types of local entertainment. It was easy to understand why
this was such a popular destination. It is a very safe and secure location with
lots of beautiful anchorages only a short hop away from a lively little town.
Another major pull for the area is whale watching. There are numerous whale watching excursion boats doing day trips
out of the lagoon. But these were fully booked when we arrived, so we
elected to go whale watching on our own from Malarkey.
I don't know how they do it, but the whales
(Humpbacks) have some kind of inbuilt homing signal/system and manage to find
their way back to the same spot every year to have their young and to mate
again. The warm protected waters of Tonga are obviously ideal for that sort
of thing and we were able to get all close-up and personal with about 8 mother
and calf Humpbacks. The sea was a bit lively to get in and swim with
them and so we just had to make do with watching them swim & play near
the boat. It was a great experience but we need to do the swim thing and
have eye to eye contact with the whales. Friends have done this, and were
blown away by the experience. So unfortunately, we still have that one to
tick off the bucket list.
We did do a lot of swimming, snorkeling and diving
(including a night dive) while in Tonga. And whilst we didn't swim with the
whales close up, it was great to hear their whale song while under the
water. But besides the watery stuff and eating & drinking to excess, we
also participated in other forms of entertainment. It was here we
experienced our first visit to a 'Flea Circus'.
We have heard about Flea Circus's........a form of
entertainment from the past we thought. But no, the flea circus is alive
and well in Neiafu. It is run by a zany Englishman from Bristol called
Billy. He set up the 'Baby Grand Theatre' just for something to do and earn
a couple of bob along the way. And talking about all close-up and personal.
This theatre was no bigger than a garden shed and could only fit in about 10
people, at a push, including Billy and his 'stage'. There were 11
characters in total and Billy played them all. From the usher &
safety officer to the puppeteer and flea circus ringmaster, Billy did the
lot. Was it good?? Well......it was different and we had a laugh, so yes, I
think it was good. It was certainly an experience, probably never to be
repeated, and it was great to see a fellow countryman in the middle of nowhere
having a go at entertaining the locals.
Another form of entertainment we didn't expect to
find in this enigmatic and slightly puritanical land was a drag burlesque
show......... Now, we really were hitting the
bottom of the barrel.
A bunch of local raving transsexuals put on a
show at Tonga Bobs every now & then, and we were...........,er um,
fortunate enough to be there at the right time. Me and John (S/Y Awaroa)
nervously took our seats away from the stage but Mark (S/Y Blue Rodeo) sat right
at the front of the table close to all the action. Bad move we thought, but when
the show started Mark was lapping it up......literally. He had them all sat
on his lap at some point, caressing and kissing his balding head. John and
I thought it was hilarious until one started heading our way, then the
situation turned a little fraught. But it was all in good humour and not taken
too far. But it is fair to say, that Mark seemed pretty comfortable with
the whole affair and clearly has had a miss spent youth. Maybe
he frequented other similar seedy joints back in the good old US of A,
perhaps during his stop-over's while jetting customers around the continent. But
Mark was only just getting into the sprit of things and confirmed it by
stuffing dollars in the bra of the ugliest creature there. In fact
he/she closely resembled a silver back gorilla in high heel shoes. One the
most bazaar sights I've seen so far this year.
   Billy's flea
circus
Mark with the 'silver-back' and 'other'
Clearly it was time to move on. Things, albeit a
great crack, were going down hill rapido. And goodness knows where we would've
ended up if we continued on the downward trend. So the gang of three were
to split. Blue Rodeo and Awaroa were heading slowly to New Zealand, while we
were off to Suva, Fiji enroute to Oz.
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