Author: richwest3

October 8, 2012

Neiafu, Vava’u, Tonga… We’ve been underwater for three days and my fingers and toes look like that of an 94 year old lifeguard with way too much time in the water. We get wet when we walk, we’re wet when we ride in the dingy, we’re wet when we venture out on deck or in the cockpit. My shoes are wet, my pants are wet, my shirts are wet and if I ever wore socks, they’d be wet too. It’s been raining for three days.

Actually, it’s kind of fun and different. We roasted in Apia, Samoa so this is a nice change. It will get kind of old if it doesn’t let up soon though. This isn’t just any rain. It has two speeds: constantly drizzling and raining so hard that finding air to breathe might become a challenge.

Our rain gauge is our dingy (small inflatable rubber boat). Yesterday, I dumped it out after about three hours of sitting in the rain and it had about a foot of water in it. Last night, while we were ashore for dinner, it accumulated about 10 inches. Oh, and what joy, while at dinner, the tarp over the patio opened up right over the back of my chair. Everyone in the restaurant turned to stare at the guy sitting under the waterfall. Me.

When it lets up… if it lets up, we’re going to go explore some of the more than 40 nearby anchorages. For now, we having fun in Nieafu, despite the rain. -Rich

October 07, 2012

One of the highlights of our Vava’u tour was our lunch stop at a place called the Tongan Beach Resort. It’s a beautiful little inn with guest bungalows amid the trees and a great open-air bar and restaurant right on the beach. It was Sunday and they were serving a buffet lunch, and we sat at a tree-shaded table right on the sand by the water. -Cyndi

October 7, 2012

During our time in Neiafu, we did manage to do some sightseeing with the help our friends Dean and Sabina, who arrived a week or so after we did. They wanted to see the island and found a guide who could take us around in her own car (which happened to be a nice, well-maintained SUV—very rare in these parts).

Seeing this island was amazing and confusing at the same time. It was amazing in how green and lush it turned out to be (you don’t really get a sense of that in Neiafu). It was confusing in that the shape of this island is so strange, with large inlets and peninsulas and offshore islands all over the place, that even with a map we had a heck of a time figuring out where we were at any given time.

By the end of the day, we had learned a lot about Tonga and its people and had a much better sense of this island and some nearby anchorages. We had also discovered a wonderful place on our lunch stop (the subject of the next blog post). -Cyndi 

October 6, 2012

We did manage to get off our butts and do some hiking during our “resting” phase, to a place called Mt Talau, about a mile or so out of Neiafu. Once there, you can do the steep hike to the summit in about 30 minutes. We were rewarded for our efforts with great views. (And then were further rewarded back in town with pizza and beer). -Cyndi

Early October, 2012

During our first weeks in Neiafu, we settled into a nice routine. We’d get up and have coffee in the cockpit, then listen to the morning radio net. We’d then spend time on the boat before heading into town to walk around and do any errands that needed doing (shopping, ATM, laundry pickup, etc.). Our last stop was usually the Aquarium Cafe, where we could could do our internet stuff, have lunch, and chit chat with other cruisers before heading back to the boat. Later, we might meet friends in town for dinner, but generally we stayed on the boat, having a sundowner (evening drink in the cockpit) and a light dinner before spending an hour with an old TV program (we alternated through episodes of the original Star Trek, Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock, or Northern Exposure—thank you, Herb!). Then it was time for reading and bed: Rich was generally asleep by nine, me by 10.

What was significant about this time was what it lacked. There was no planning a next destination, no planning a route to said destination, no worry about avoiding winds or bad weather, no maneuvering to fit in some spot along the way before bad weather arrived, no scheming to try to avoid the bulk of the crowd, no worry about a second choice if an anchorage was crowded, no provisioning, no worry about winds shifting and anchors holding (ours or anyone else’s), no trying to figure out where things were, no trying to make sightseeing arrangements, no worry about getting out before our visa expired, etc. We were on a mooring in very secure harbor, we knew the town well, we had our favorite eateries, we could get more time on our visa, and we had people we enjoyed hanging out with at the Aquarium. The days were comfortably warm, seldom hot, and the nights pleasantly cool. Our days had a nice rhythm, and we were in no hurry to change that. This was the time out we very much needed, and after 3 weeks we felt (almost) ready to get back to cruising. -Cyndi

Ah, another great place to put some miscellaneous photos!