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Published: July 28th 2008
Malo
It is just over a week since I arrived in the Kingdom of Tonga, and I have had some great adventures already.
My first stop was on the Island of Tongatapu, in the city of Nuku'alofa, where Dad is living.
Tonga has its own unique culture again from the other Polynesian islands that I have visited, and a lot of that is based around the fact that Tonga is an absolute Monarchy. The city of Nuku'alofa and the island of Tongatapu have been buzzing since I arrived with the preparations for the upcoming Coronation of King George Tupou V. On every street there are banners being raised, red and white flags decorating all of the houses, a paintbrush in the hand of every second Tongan and more balloons than a Christmas parade. There has been the Haelala festival running over the last two weeks and I have managed to catch the block party street festival on the Friday night, the beauty pagent parade (with the most marching bands I have ever seen) and several practices of the Tongan miliatary at the parade grounds. I even caught a glimpse of the King himself this morning speeding past the
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One of the many banners that are decorating the streets of Nuku'alofacafe in his black London taxi cab with police motocade in tow.
Tongan people are very religious, and this can be seen in two ways. The first is that the churches are by far the grandest buildings in all of Tonga (far superior to schools, houses and buisinesses) and the second is that everything is closed on Sundays. Everywhere you go you can hear the most amazing singing floating out from Churches, and the people are dressed in beautiful traditional clothing. For us tourists there are only a few places open for buisiness, these are the off shore islands just North of Nuku'alofa. Last Sunday we headed out to Pangimoto Island, about 10 mins off shore, where I spent the day swimming, snorkelling around the half submerged ship wreck of My Lady Lata II and relaxing in the sun. This Sunday we went out to Fafa Island, a 45 minute boat ride, where there was a lot more relaxing in the sun. I did a snorkelling tour out to an island further north again, we headed out in the dodgiest dingy over quite rough seas with no life jackets and no oars to use in case of emergency. It
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Marching band with a boy in traditional clothing took us an hour to head out to the island, which was very beautiful, and only 20 mins to return as the sea had calmed down by then. The snorkelling was pretty good and there were amazing sea birds riding the currents of the wind above the island.
I have had a bit of time to explore other parts of the island of Tongatapu. Dad took me on a tour of the Western side. We saw the Mapu'a 'a Vaca Blow Holes, which were amazing. It was a clear still day so the pools of water were acting like mirrors to the sky, and the blow holes were spraying water all up and down the coast line creating a fine mist in the air. From the blow holes we headed past the Kolovai flying fox sanctuary to see them all roosting in the trees and then on to Ha'atafu beach for a swim.
So that is Tongatapu, I will post a further blog about my trip up to the Northern Islands of Vava'u and my upcoming trip to Eua soon.
Farewell from the friendly islands.
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Mum
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Island Girl
WOW JO!! Looks wonderful. Any chance of going for a dive? LOL Mum XXX OOO