TONGA BABY - Malo e Lelei

We left mary's with lots of time to spare and got to the airport and had the quickest check in ever. We were told that the flight was 40 mins late which is totally bearable and we had something to eat and proceed to the gate where we found out it was delayed by and hour and here the process begins, 3 hours later we are still waiting for the flight and they are smoothing things over by giving us $12 food/drink vouchers, now that was an insult as that would barely get you a mickey d's in the airport, so anyway 5 hours later the plane arrives and we take off, we finally land in tonga at 4.00am, not sure if al's friends were going to be there to collect us as we were due to land at 10.45am but fair play to them they both waited.

Now Al's friend is Sarah who is American and they used to work together for Adobe in IT, she is married to a guy called Tai who is Tongan but they both live in the states. They have 2 kids Tai Jnr (8) and Chase (2). Sarah also had her brother with her Carlo (15) - who loves to drink. We were all staying at Tai's brothers house.

We spent our first week driving around and seeing some of the beaches and beauty spots, some included blowholes which was one of the most amazing things i have ever seen, the waves are huge and they hit the rocks shoot up through the blowholes into the air about 5 metres high, it was an awesome sight. We also went to some excellent caves that had swimming pools in them. The beaches were so nice and the colour of the water was turquoise, Fab.

We also got to experience alot of the Tongan culture, apart from just stopping on the side of the road to meet random people who turned out to be related to Tai, you soon realize how small the island actually is. We met a lot of Tai's family which was really nice and we got to attend a Tongan feast at his cousins house, you have to see the picture to believe it.

We also went to a Tongan traditional night out where we got a Tongan feast and watched some traditional dances and someone (sarah) had one too many local beers and decided that she was celebrating her 30th that night and she got called up on stage and everyone sung happy birthday to her in english and in Tongan. Mental .....

We came over to one of the other islands - Pangaimotu which is tiny, takes about 30 mins to walk around the whole island land there is nothing on it only one resort, which we checked into and decided it was too nice a place to leave, our fale (beach hut) was about 10 steps away from the beach and there are shipwrecks everywhere, one of them is right beside the resort, super cool. The weather was fab for this week and all we did was chill on the beach and go snorkeling. We were slightly disappointed that we couldn't snorkel/dive with the whales apparently you can only do that from Vava'u which we didn't know about until our second week here and by then couldn't get flights up there.


But we did manage to have some bonfires here on the beach and Carlo went spear fishing and actually caught a fish, not a very big one in fairness but one none the less and we cooked it on the bonfire, it tasted ok.

It was the funniest sight when he actually speared it, he was like waist deep in water yelled out "i got it" and stood with the spear in the air, fish on the end, proud as could be. He was the only one to catch something. Tai actually made a raft to go fishing in but never really did. But it was all good fun and we had drinks around the bonfire. Al and I had another one before we left, just to mark the occasion.

Tai and Sarah left about a week early then expected, Chase hadn't been feeling well for a couple of days and they were both worried about him. They had been here 3 weeks already and it was there first time to travel with the kids which is a full time job in it's self so they did well to survive as long as they did. Tonga is not a touristy area and they are not very well developed. We both enjoyed it but me personally i would not like to come back here and if i did it would be to vava'u. But we did have an awesome time with Tai, Sarah & Co and Carlo was an awesome sport played good clean cards and could hold his liquor, well just about - but he's not allowed to go near any puppy dogs called "peanutty" (whole other story that is funny and gross but too traumatic to type about :)). Was good to meet them and the kids even though it was a shock to the system having kids around all the time especially a 2 year old but we all survived and he was really cute.

Guys malo for having us and looking after us, we had a blast and we hope you got back safe and sound, hope chase is feeling better soon and we are so disappointed that we forgot to teach him how to say Aaaasssss-Hhoolllleee :)