Author: richwest3

November 20, 2012

We made to to the southern Tongan island called Nuku’alofa. We got here yesterday and are in the “big city” today. At least it’s a big city compared to what we’ve become used to with 300,000 people living on this small island. We found two great coffee shops – yea!!! It looks like we’ll be waiting here a week or so for a good weather window to sail to New Zealand. We’ll post more soon. -Rich

November 21, 2012

Two of the standouts of Nuku’alofa (aside from the coffee drinks) were a beautiful church building and an especially beautiful tree.  They don’t have anything in common except that there wasn’t room for their pictures in the previous blog post (we try to keep it to 6 or 7 photos max); so I’m giving them their own post here.  -Cyndi

November 21 – 26, 2012

Nuku’alofa will never be one of the world’s great tourist destinations, but it’s kind of a nice city and we enjoyed our outings there.  It definitely has a unique mix of features.  As you walk down any given street, you might see buildings that range from old and historic to less old but out-of-date to new and modern.  You might see Tongan students walk by in traditional clothes or see fashionably-dressed young Tongan businesspeople.  And the town, like Pengai, manages to have sort of a dry, dusty feeling while at the same time being tropical.  It’s not beautiful, but it’s quite nice.

I will note here that Rich and I never did tour the island (Tongatapu) or do any cruising in the area.  I think most cruisers are guilty of this.  By the time we get here, all we are focusing on is making the big jump to New Zealand (or Australia).  It’s like when you plan a trip and count the day of your late-afternoon flight as part of your vacation time.  But that final day is never part of the vacation as you have to pack, check out of the hotel, have a meal, and then get to the airport extra early so you can return your car and figure out where to go.  There’s always a little extra time, but never enough to go tour anything or lie on the beach or even to feel very relaxed.  That extra time ends up going towards sitting around the airport.  Anyway, my point is that Nuku’alofa is the cruising equivalent of a final vacation day and geared towards packing, provisioning, doing boat maintenance, studying the weather, and . . . waiting.  -Cyndi

November 21, 2012

-Cyndi

November 21 – 26, 2012

The first thing we did after being dropped off in downtown Nuku’alofa was to make a beeline to the Friends Cafe (and coffee house).  It’s a local institution and famous for having great coffee drinks and internet service.  We were thrilled to find a beautiful little place that looked like a Starbucks inside, complete with baristas making coffee drinks, and yummy-looking goodies in the glass case.  We ordered cappuccinos then sat out under a flowering tree on the back patio to enjoy them.

Later that day, after exploring the town, we ended up at the other great coffee house in town: Cafe Escape.  This place also had very good coffee drinks and good food (I had beef curry and Rich had a chicken panini and both were excellent).  They were also an internet cafe with lots of computers.  Unfortunately the internet was down at Big Mama’s, and at this point, we needed internet to keep close track of a weather window for the trip to New Zealand.

On our subsequent trips to town, we would end up both Friends and Escape.  We’d start at Friends and have coffee, then head on to Escape to use one of their computers.  Then we’d have lunch at either place.  They both had great sandwiches, pasta, etc., but my favorite was the excellent ota ika, the Tongan version of poisson cru, at Friends.

There was one more little cafe we’d frequent, and that was a place where we’d stop by for an ice cream cone on our walk back to the wharf after doing our grocery shopping.  (Unfortunately, I never got the name of it, but they had pretty good ice cream).  It didn’t take us long to establish our town rituals in Nuku’alofa. -Cyndi