Confessions of a Calendar Girl: Tonga to NZ!

Sept 23 – TONGA!
We’re here! In Niafu that is, party central of the Kingdom of Tonga.

Sept 24 – Rugby France vs. NZ
The first of many nights watching the Rugby World Cup in Niafu, at Mango Bar, I think. The All Blacks smooshed France! And I mean that NOT in a Snookie smoosh way. Gross.

Sept 25 – Hangover Day…Church Singin!
Lisa and Andy were the only heathens sleeping off a bender. Don, Carl and I went to the Catholic church to experience the famed Tongan singing! Hassle Don for the recording…he made one!

Sept 26 – Pre-B-day Beer Bingo
That’s my (Leslie's) birthday we’re talking about, and it was pretty amazing! Beer Bingo is like normal bingo, only you win beer and food, and the crazy fun people at Sunset Grill throw in other games like music trivia, darts, bottlecap toss and beer pong. We were glad to share the fun with boat peeps Tuatara, CD, Sharkita and Dolphine. High fives to 32!

Sept 27 – Leslie’s B-day, recovery!
What birthday? Can I go back to watching movies now?

Sept 28 – Anchorage 8, L&L shelling w/ Rals
We broke away from the sucking black hole of partytime in Niafu, to visit Anchorage 8, a quiet spot where we were the only boat! Lisa, Raleigh and I went for a walk along the beach, and found some lovely shells.

October 1 – Mariner’s Cave land adventure! Anchorage #15
Most people have a dinghy with a working engine, and can go anchor nearby and dinghy up next to this cave. Not us though. Along with Kevin and Evelyn of Tuatara, we tramped into a village and then followed a kid into the bush. I don’t think he knew exactly where he was going, but we finally bashed our way to the edge of the cliffs over the cave. “Ok. It’s down there” “Down there? You mean, we jump?” “Yep!” “How do we get back up?” “Um…climb up?” These are scrape-your-feet-up coral rocks we’re talking about. Andy doesn’t worry though, he just strips down and does a front flip into the water. Don and Carl join him soon after, but Lisa and I are still stuck on the, “How are we getting back up here to get our stuff?!” question. Eventually we followed Kevin and Evelyn further along the cliffs to a better launching point, where we could actually stand a chance of climbing up. Then we jumped, and took the slightly scary plunge down under and up into the amazingly beautiful sea cave, which would fill up with steamy fog as the surf rushed in and out. The kid who led us eventually asked for some obscene amount of money, but we gave him one of our extra snorkel masks, which was more than a fair trade.

Oct. 2 – Church, Anchorage 15
Ah yes. So that previous evening, we’d intended on cooking dinner for Kevin and Evelyn. But a local woman who’d met the young couple previously, rowed over and gave us heaps and heaps of leftover Tongan feast. Sweet and sour fish, breaded fish, fried kumara (like sweet potato), grilled breadfruit, watermelon, coconuts, and other unearned delicacies. Kevin arranged to return the woman’s dishes the next morning at church, and I agreed to go with him and experience yet another pious, melodious celebration. This mass was a “Free Church” gathering, which included some hellfire and brimstone sermon I couldn’t understand, but did have lovely singing. Afterwards the woman, Dominique, fed Kevin and I with more of the same food we’d gorged on the night before. She and her girls stood around the table, fanning away insects, which was kind of weird for us, then we brought back even MORE leftovers for our crews! Fat times! It was hard for me to accept that someone would want to make a meal for perfect strangers and get nothing but conversation in return, so I gave Dominique some music discs, which I hope she likes and is currently grooving to at her lovely little seaside home.

Oct 3 - #16
Anchorage 16, we moved.

Oct 4 - # 16, Bonfire and Reef Snorkels
Kevin and Evelyn (now known as Kevelyn for ease and funniness) joined us in a day of beautiful reef snorkeling (like an underwater garden), and a night of chatting around a smoky bonfire. Good fun!

Oct 5 – Tranies @ Tonga Bob’s
Tonga Bob’s  hosts a phenomenally entertaining transvestite show. Our vote goes to the bespectactled chubby guy who works at the supermarket. He didn’t even bother to shave his pits! He was hilarious, and a far more confident dancer than the “girls” who tried very hard to look like female strippers.

Oct 6 – Trivia @ Tonga Bob’s
We showed up late, midway through the quiz, but they let us play anyhow, and the old folks won and shared their prize of a flat of beer with the bar (even the table of 13 year olds got one beer to share, they went wild!), and our new friend Damo came, and we all danced , and Lisa and I won the dance competition against one other couple with our signature kid ‘n’ play and in-synch electric slide. These are the pictures from this night!

Oct 7 - #7 Pig Roast
Pics and one-liners here!

Oct 9 – Niafu Rugby
More Rugby watching, at Mango I think.

Oct 10 – Movie Night with Mel
We watched a movie with Mel, our new kiwi friend.

Oct 11-13 – Sailed to #11 – Mel left, met Britania and Pico
Britania and Pico came aboard for sundowners. Lisa whipped up mini quiches like a crazy person. Don hid down below like a criminal. We stayed here awhile because of some bad weather I think. There’s a floating art gallery here owned by a nice older couple with a mean cat who scratched Raleigh.

Oct 14 – Left 11, Swallows Cave
Cool cave with bats, not swallows. We hovered outside the cave and took turns snorkeling in. The water was kinda gross though, and I’m surprised none of us got a guano disease.

Oct 15 – Neiafu, France beat Wales @ Tonga Bobs
This was a close, good game, in a fun atmosphere packed with a good mix of Tongans and expats. Boo France!

Oct 16 – Neiafu, AB beat Oz, Marina Bar
Rugby is a crazy sport! Another fun game. Marina Bar was also packed! Yay All Blacks!

Oct 17 – Mexican night on Hokule’a
We’d met Jake and Jackie on Hokule’a, along with their cruising buddy Bill on Solstice, in Bora Bora, and mused then about Mexican food and how much we missed it. So when we met up again in Tonga, we planned a Mexican night. Aldebbie made veggie tacos and we had a feast of tacos, spicy shrimp, Spanish rice and margaritas. Things went downhill when Jake ran out of limes and tried to sub in Crystal Light lemonade. Then I severely heckled Bill’s movie about a haunted boat until I fell asleep. But we’re all still friends, thank goodness!

Oct 18 – Taco tuesday at Aquarium, cleaned Sharkita’s Hull
Sharkita hired us to scrub their boat’s bottom in exchange for lunch. It was a fair trade. Chrissy is a great cook. Don, Lisa and I weren’t through with tacos yet, and splurged on a $5 burrito-sized fish taco at Aquarium. Yum.

Oct 19 – Andy’s package arrives…grrr
Andy’s parents had sent us a care package a month before. After much checking up, calling, and $70 in mysterious taxes and fees, we got our coffee, whole leaf tea, and dark chocolate peanut slab! It seemed worth the wait to me, but then, it was Andy and Graham doing all the follow-up work. Thanks guys!

Oct 20 – Movie night at Balcony
We watched a cool documentary about a cultish/church type group that worships this mythical American guy named Joe (something) who supposedly came to Vanuatu in the 60s and told them the American army would come back again and give them more nice stuff.

Oct 21 – Provisioning begins! Oz beats Wales 2/1, Poolside
Poolside has an amazing 2 for 1 pizza deal on Friday nights. The pizza isn’t the greatest, but then, we have high standards. It was good and cheap and filling, and we could watch Rugby outdoors, so, who’s complaining? Oh and we’ve started provisioning. Noooo! I don’t want to leave!

Oct 22 – Dinner at Ovava, movie night at Aquarium (The Last Waltz)
We’d been told to go to Ovava by one of the Whale people in Nuie. She said Lawrence, the owner, was the best chef in Niafu. Lisa and Andy had already gone on a date here, and had been promised free pizzas if they came back. So we came, and it was the best pizza in the South Pacific! And, even though the waitress spilled my Sav Blanc all over our hummus and flatbread and replaced nothing, I couldn’t stay angry, because Lawrence also comped us each a “painkiller” cocktail, which is a strong tasty rum punch. So after a fine meal, we merrily we went to Aquarium for a screening of a young Scorcesse’s music doc on The Band, The Last Waltz. This is a must-see film if you like 70’s era rock music and want to see a rather square-looking Van Morrison continuously wiping cocaine off his nose.

Oct 23 – Cleaning, NZ vs. France rugby final, woohoo!
Most of us spent all day cleaning the boat for pictures for our new broker, and then had many well-deserved beers at Marina Bar, watching a very tense and close game between France and NZ. The All Blacks won by the skin of their teeth!

Oct 24 – Still in Neaifu
More provisioning! Noooo!

Oct 25 – Left Neiafu to #7

Oct 26 – Ha’apai, Ha’ano Island
Carl and I took a walk down a long, tree-lined dirt road into a pretty little gated village. Pigs and dogs and chickens and goats waddle around happily, and the spiders in the trees are huge and scary.

Oct 27 – Potluck on Far Fetched, Snorks in Crevices
The snorkling here was alright, a pretty live reef and some underwater tunnel/crevices that the daredevil twins Don and Andy swam down into and through. Scary! Then we went over to newly-met friends Far Fetched for a dinner of fish and fried rice. Good times.

Oct 28 – Sailed to Ha’afeva

Oct 29 – Beach Walks and Lobster Attempts
Carl met some guy on land who said he’d take Carl and Andy lobstering one night, but he didn’t seem to actually know anything about lobstering, and the weather was dark and windy and awful, so they came back to the boat and we all ate dinner. Good story. Oh, and that day we walked on the beach with Raleigh. This was his first daylight walk in like, a month, soon to be his last for a month!

Oct 30 – Hull Cleaning and Cook-off
Carl would have better headings and stories for these days in Ha’afeva, as he spent all day and night hanging out with locals in a hospital, and eating food at their houses. But the rest of us chilled out, and apparently we also cleaned the hull and Lisa did her usual thing of cooking 2-3 nights worth of dinner before we headed out to sea.

Nov 1 – Left Ha’afeva and Tonga

Nov 2 – Lavac Explosion
The potty wouldn’t flush and did a weird gross thing that Andy and Don, bless them, cleaned up.

Nov 3 – Motoring, no wind
Terrible

Nov 4 – Minerva
What a crazy place! It’s this big still spot in the middle of the ocean (actually it’s an underwater, circular reef), where boats come and rest. Andy and Carl go out for a snorkel, and Andy warns Carl of an “Aggressive gray”, meaning gray shark, but Carl hears “aggressive ray”, which sounds interesting to him, so he goes looking for it and get charged by a little reef shark, which makes him scream and flap around like a bloody wounded screaming fish. Don’t try this at home!!! P.S., he makes it back to the boat unharmed.

Nov 5 – STORM
There’s a storm, but we’re too busy watching movies to notice.

Nov 6 – Getting ready to go, reef walk.
I don’t know what “getting ready to go” means at this point, since we’re already “gone” from land, but Don, Carl and I dinghy over to the edge of the reef and go for a walk. It’s kind of surreal, watching waves crash on a flooded shore, with nothing but water for 360 degrees all around.

Nov 7 – Leave Minerva, big porpoise.
Is it a small whale or a big dolphin? What is that? Sea monster, probably.

Nov 8 – Ripped main sail (at first reef point)
Don feels bad about this. Now we go slower than slow.

Nov 9 – Motoring, no wind.
Slower than slower than slow.

Nov 10 – Slow going.

Nov 11 – Jack Honey (? Can’t read Andy’s writing) B-day. Wrong Way! Caught another tuna.
Jack is one of Andy’s old family friends, and Andy talks to him on the ham sometimes. Happy birthday! Wrong way means that we had to head off the rum line because of some navigational/weather reason.
Don and I wondered what that tin can was doing caught on our line, but then it turned out to be a tuna. A delicious tuna!

Nov 12 – Oatmeal, masala eggs, fried rice and tuna.
Our meals for the day. Not bad for sea-going food, eh?

Nov 13 – Lavac mutiny again.
More pooeyness for Don to clean up. You’re the best, Don!

Nov 14 – Underwater fishing lure treasure hunt.
Another terrible screw-up that leads to the boys going into the water to unwrap something from important parts of our boat! This time our trolling line wrapped around our prop. Another 2-3 hours of water drama, and we were going again. At least this happened during the day this time!

Nov 15 – Wind! Maybe we’ll be there by morning! Oh yeah and there’s a gale warning!
We were there by morning! But there was not a gale, phew!

Nov 16 – NEW ZEALAND!
Andy’s parents flash their van’s lights at us as we cruise toward Opua, all of all bundled up in our foul weather gear. Goodbye tropical weather! Once at the quarantine dock, we cook up a huge pancake breakfast and invite Hokele’a and CD. Oh, then the customs lady shows up, just as all our guests come pouring out of our boat. “Have you finished your paperwork?” “Um…paperwork? No, but we have pancakes!” Thank goodness kiwi officials have a sense of humor!


From this point Raliegh goes to jail for about 2 weeks, we hang out with friends at the All Points Rally events, we drive up north with Andy’s parents, have amazing seafood on Solstice, have an amazing Thanksgiving potluck on Hokelea, Carl falls in lurve with a Swede, Andy and Don bring the boat to Auckland, Lisa and I couch surf on boats then drive to Auckland, with a stop at Sheep World, we all get the boat clean and unpacked in Auckland, and everyone takes off for awhile in different directions to enjoy New Zealand. It’s not really “the end” yet, but it’s close.