Our last tropical island for a while. We're going to miss the sunshine and swimming. Tonga was a great ending though, another amazing place.
Our ship was berthed at the cargo harbor, so we had to be shuttled into town. We hopped on the first shuttle to head in and figure out our day. Once in town I asked for the Craft Market. It was 3 blocks away. It's interesting how things are similar yet different at each of the islands we've been to. They make a lot of mother of pearl jewelry as well as weaving. Things seems to be less expensive in Tonga. We shopped for a bit and made a few purchases. They do a lot of carving out of cow bone in the islands but in Tonga we were seeing whale bone items. One lady told us that her husband had a larger store behind the market so we went to check it out. That man was a master carver. He had beautiful items in his small store. We'd seen carved marlin/swordfish swords in Bora Bora, but they were $650 up to $2k! Didn't feel like we needed one that badly. Here, we were offered a beautiful one for $50. How could we not buy it? It has a Tongan idol on the top with a whale, marlin and turtle carved into the narrower part, very nice. He also had a large mahogany whale, beautifully carved with Tongan symbols along the belly. Very tempting. We asked where would be a good place to go snorkeling. He said his brother would take us on a tour. We ended up spending the entire day with him! Very nice.
We went down a narrow road that ended at the sea. It was a Reef Reserve with rocks along the water's edge, a beautiful beach before that. There was one other person there, we had the place to ourselves. The water wasn't as clear as it had been in other places, but there were a lot of fish. Most of the coral was dead until we got closer to the barrier of the reef. We did see a beautiful star fish, bright blue!
We also saw sea cumbers that had lumps on them, very different than the ones in Roratonga. And I found Nemo! This one little clown fish wanted to check me out, kept coming toward me rather than hiding in the anemone like a good clown fish. They were very cute. We hadn't really seen them before.
We swam for about an hour then headed back to town...I thought. We first stopped at the blow holes where the waves crash up thru natural holes to cause geysers. The tide was low so they were not as spectacular as they could have been. I bought my first coconut of the islands. The milk was refreshing. I had William open it so I could eat the meat later. It's now in the fridge in our cabin. William took us to another royal grave site, the site where Capt Cook landed in the 1700's and pointed out all the schools along the way. All the children go to school until they are 16. The mormon school was the most modern looking and the largest. The girls all wore red or green dresses, depending on the school, with 2 french braids going down their backs. The boys wore wrap around skirts, almost to their ankles. At one school the boys were also wearing a woven skirt/belt, about 2' long, held by a belt at the waist. We saw a funeral also, where the men were in suits with the same woven belt/skirt. Interesting.
William took us back to his brother's store where we decided to buy the whale. It will be shipped home for us. We asked if he would then take us to an ATM, fabric store, then back to the ship for a bit extra $$. He was our own personal shopper. He even folded my fabric as the gal was cutting it. William is a basket weaver and uses fabric to decorate his bags. He knew this store and knew they would have good fabric. It was really beautiful and hard to choose which ones to buy. We were back at the pier by about 3:30. Sail away was at 4:30. We'll have 2 sea days before reaching New Zealand. It will be very different visiting large cities and having cooler weather. Looking forward to it!
Great pictures again !
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