18.40.24S 174.01.95E Tonga

The Adventures of Sunboy the Sailboat
Al Sparkes and Deb Swain
Sun 29 Aug 2010 06:27
Tonga, Tonga, Tonga.

Almost 3 weeks were spent in the Vava'u Group of Islands in the Kingdom of
Tonga. We sailed with Go Beyond for the three day trip across from Niue
without incident apart from having to go up the mast and play around with
some rig fittings, and motored into the harbour about 8.00am to tie up
near the Customs Wharf. The clearing in process was a bit time consuming
but you learn just to be patient and be nice and ride the time out. We
had customs officers, health officers, immigration officers and
quarrantine officers all pay us a visit and take our fees before we were
cleared out to go and get ready to explore somewhere we had all been
busting to get to.

Tonga did not dissappoint in any way shape or form and for me and I think
for the rest of the crew it was absolutely fantastic. Small Nest and
Elena were already here and after we did our checking in and checking out
the main town, going to the local markets and attacking the ATM machines
we were ready to head out to the outer islands. The main harbour has a
wide selection of cafes and restaurants, small supermarkets with pretty
good range of product, frozen meat, chicken and sausages so all in all you
can get most things you need.

There are over 40 recognised anchorages in the Vava'u Island Group, each
of them different in their own little way but overall, all of them are
just beautiful. The cruising area is not large by any stretch of the
imagination so you can litterally go from one side to the other in a
matter of hours rather then days. We ended up spending a lot of time with
Small Nest, Elena, Go Beyond and Quartermoon, spending the days
kneeboarding, snorkelling,spearfishing and then at night, getting together
on a deserted beach, lighting a huge fire, having barbecues and getting
right on the pee eye double sss. Got to see a couple of pretty cool
caves, one being the Swallows Cave where you can go into the cave in your
dinghy and the other called Mariners Cave where you swim down under the
surface and then go into the entry of the cave while under water and then
come back up inside the cave. Snorkelling in some of the areas was
excellent as well as getting in a nice wall dive or two.

One Sunday we went to the island of Lape where quite a few boat crews went
ashore to go to Church and then we were hosted to a huge feast put on by
the villagers for lunch as a means of getting donations from us to help
rebuild their dock which has been a bit storm ravaged over the years. The
harmonies by the villagers singing in the church was beautiful and lunch
was even better with roasted suckling pig and beautiful salads and
deserts.

I think we ended up going to probably 8 - 10 anchorages in all but
everyone agreed that you could, like so many other cruisers have and are
doing, spending months in Tonga. No wonder the Sunsail and Moorings
Charter Boat companies have such big fleets here, it is such a special
part of the world to be in and we will be forever grateful for our
opporunity of visiting this wonderful part of the world.