Tonga – The friendly islands

Tonga is a country consisting of a island group in the south pacific. It’s the land where time begins. There are as many as 171 islands spread across 700,000sq km of ocean. The main island is Tongatapu with the capital Nuku’alofa. Other big islands are Vafa’u, Niua’s and Ha’apai. Tongans are a fairly homogeneous Polynesian group and they make up the vast majority of people who live in Tonga. The population is estimated to be 100.000 and the density is about 150 per sq km but varies widely throughout the kingdom. The current king Taufa’ahau Tupou IV is almost unique in the world in that he has the absolute power.

After a long flight from LA (about 12 hours, with stop in Apia, Samoa) we finally arrived in Tonga on the main island, called Tongatapu. The host from our first guesthouse Toni, asked us to bring him Tobacco from the Duty Free Shop at the Tongan Airport. So we picked-up as much Port Royal hand rolling cigarette tobacco as allowed for two persons. The customs could not believe that this is for us. Their first question was:" who asked you to bring this tobacco ?" We just smiled and they let us pass.

The airport itself is rather small and looks like an airport for really small planes and not for huge passenger planes. Outside everything looks like in Africa but in green. Tonga is a third world country and what that really means you can only realize once you are there. People are burning their garbage on the dirt roads in front of their small houses. Because of the many plastic bottles it really smells badly and is very unhealthy. But what can they do if there is no official garbage collection? I guess there are not many options.

Outside the airport Vili, a young Tongan working for Toni’s guesthouse was holding a sign for Toni’s and we were happy that someone was there to pick us up. But first we needed some cash, because it’s always a good idea to have some money. Unfortunately the ATM was broken, so we exchanged some of our money at an unfortunate rate at the airport. After a long ride into town, we finally arrived at Toni’s guesthouse. With us arrived Kim, a young US firefighter (Kim is a woman) and a Swiss family with two little kids, a girl and a boy.

Toni’s guesthouse consists of four little huts. A kitchen is separate available and a room to relax. The rooms are really small, not more then two beds fit into it. Toilets and showers are outside. Hot water is available sometimes. Sometimes the government is shutting down the electricity, or the water, or both. To us it happened only twice. Drinking water is available from huge tanks where the rainwater is collected. So you have to drink the rainwater or buy imported water from New Zealand or Australia which is relative expansive, 4 liters are about 4 US$. But that imported water is not always and everywhere available, that means sometimes there is no other choice then rainwater. The roof of our little room unfortunately had a hole, which was closed using a plastic bag filled with dirt. It’s not really closing the hole and many mosquitoes found their way into our room. I cannot remember how many times I have been bitten. Way too often. We were happy that our room had many nails in the walls and we could hung our stuff up, not only because of the many bugs but also because one night the toilet had a problem and the other morning our room was flooded with water. Only our backpacks got wet and none of our electronic equipment. I have to add that Toni’s is really a budget accommodation place for only 10T$ per night per person and that hasn’t changed in the last 16 years of operation! You can meet many friendly backpackers here from around the world. Like Saskia, a young girl from Switzerland who is on a round the world trip on her own. She said that she couldn’t find anybody to come with her. And Kim from the States who came to Tonga for diving and snorkeling. Tonga is really a good place to do so.

Unfortunately there is only one dive guide (Herbert, a German) left on Tongatapu (that's different from what is stated in the lonely planet guide) and that’s why she couldn’t do as much diving as she wanted.
Toni, a very nice elder and very typical English men who lives in Tonga for 16 years now (and the owner of Toni's guesthouse) said, that many Tongans don’t like the tourists, even so up to 35000 are coming now each year bringing $20 million US into the country. Money that Tonga really needs. Toni thinks that the Tongans are jealous about the tourists, because they are so much wealthier and more important that they can leave the country. In fact more Tongans live abroad then in Tonga. Most of them in New Zealand, Australia and the USA. And they are sending huge amounts of money back into the country. The fear here is that the second or third generation living abroad will not continue doing so and then the Tongan economy will go bankrupt. All Tongans we meet were very friendly once we started talking to them. Often they waved at us trying to get in touch with us. There is a noticeable difference between people living in the main city Nuku'alofa and people living on the islands. Outside the main town they are looking more friendly and happy then in the main city.

Dogs and pigs are running around everywhere in Tonga. It’s not clear if they belong to anybody or not. All night long the dogs are fighting and it’s hard too sleep with all that noise. In the morning at 5 am the church bells are ringing and shortly thereafter you here the Tongans singing. If you don’t try to sleep then it’s quite nice. Nuku’alofa used to be a safe place but we were told, that the criminal rate is quite high in Nuku’alofa now, the capital city of Tonga. Every week there are multiple break-ins and robbery on the street. The problem with the robbery on the street is that people always get hurt. They are not just taking your money and go but beat and hurt the people. Its better staying at home when it gets dark. This is a new problem in Tonga that started about two years ago and has worsen since. The reason is that New Zealand, Australia and mainly the USA started to deport Tongans back to Tonga that committed a crime abroad.

On our second evening we went to a typical Tongan dance. Before we started the price for pick-up, food and the dance was 25 T$. After a very long drive in a fish truck through Tonga’s night the price has changed to 30 T$. Accuracy is not one of Tongans attributes. Most of the times you’re just told what they believe you want to here. E.g. we asked if the weather will stay as hot and sunny and we were told: “yes-sure, the weather stays the next weeks like this”. On the next day the weather changed and we had rain for 3 days. Now it’s hot again, really hot. And watches are not accurate either. When we asked Vili, our driver from the guesthouse, if he can drive us to town at a certain time, the answer is always “yes”. But in fact you always have to be prepared to go. It can be earlier or later, but definitely not the time you agreed on. We are not sure if that’s on purpose, but we think it’s just their way of doing things.

On our third day we went with Toni our host on a tour to explore the whole island Tongatapu. On that day we saw almost everything in Tongatapu. Very interesting were the amazing craves. They consist of sandy mounds topped with artificial flowers beneath inverted goldfish bowls, plastic images or photos of Jesus Christ, teddy bears, ribbons, banners, shells, volcanic rock and many many beer bottles. We never saw better examples of post-mortem kitsch. There are many wonderful sand beaches that are completely empty and you can go swimming on your own. The beaches all look like postcards of paradise. They are really amazing and the main reason of coming to Tonga. Churches are everywhere looking much better then the houses. As said above, the streets are mainly sand streets and the houses are more huts and overall it looks like Africa in green. Palms are everywhere carrying huge amounts of coconuts. The Tongans only collect the coconuts from the little coconut trees and not from the higher ones. Toni says there are too lazy. Fortunately everything just grows here in Tonga and the plants don’t need a lot of attention.

On our first Sunday we went to a little island called Pangaimotu and stayed there the whole day. Pangaimotu is not huge. It takes about 30 minutes to walk around the whole island. But it has great sand beaches all around the island.
On the next day, our 5th day in Tonga we went on a little ferry, called Ikale to travel to Eua, a relative small island about 40 km away from the main island Tongatapu. On that day 2 of the 3 ferries were cancelled because of the bad weather and many Tongans didn’t show up that day to take the ferry. Once on the open ocean we knew why. It was the most horrible ride in a boat in our whole life! On the open ocean the waves were really high and sometimes the little ferry was many seconds flying in the air before crashing back into the sea. We really hoped not to die that day and obviously it didn’t happen. But we got really sick like all the Tongans. At least we had a bag … Once arrived in ‘Eua Toni from The Hideaway Resort picked us up and drove us there.

The Hideaway is really a good place to stay in ‘Eua. It’s located at the beach and has only 6 rooms that are really nice. The rooms cannot get locked (before arrival Taki, the manager told us by email that they can…) but it’s really safe here. Someone from the Hideaway is always around. Like everywhere you can find many bugs and mosquitoes. It’s a great place to see the sunset and you can do whale watching from June to November. We saw some whales, but they were pretty far away. We were much more lucky with a dolphin family that came really close, about 20m. In the evening Siale and Toni are cooking very nice food for their guests. There are two choices, grilled (fish or chicken) or stir-fry.

After our long trip through the United Stated we were relaxing for a week at the Hideaway preparing the route in our next country New Zealand. Not a lot happened during that week. Once we had no water because a bull came into the resort destroying the water pump. And we met nice people here as we did at Toni’s. There was a family from Ventura, California traveling on a boat around the earth. They had two little kids about 7 and 10 years old. The boys name is Max and the girls Gina. The mother is educating them during the trip. They are already traveling for 3 years now and believe that it will take another 7 years (or “maybe forever” as the father said) to complete their trip. And we met Brian, a Englishmen with a New Zealand passport living in Australia near Brisbane working for an independent oil company checking the oil tanks with ultra sonic test heads. He worked many years for Merrill & Lynch as an investment banker in London before he decided that there could be a better life. Now he lives at the gold coast in Australia where some of the best waves for surfers can be found and we are looking forward meeting him again once we are there. We already enjoyed many Ikale together in 'Eua and will have something similar then. Ikale is the name of the Tongan beer. Established 1987 and brewed by a Swedish company (it is not even close to German beer :-). Thanks to Siale, Toni and Taki we had a great time in 'Eua. The ferry back from ‘Eua starts always very early in the morning at 5.30am so we had to get up at 4am to return to Nuku’alofa. This time the ride was really smooth but still Bettina got a little sick. After another two days at Toni’s we were lucky leaving this beautiful island.

So if you think about coming here, its definitly a great place to be, but can be quite challenging sometimes. Tonga is a developing country and tourism is not one of its priorities. There is not a lot of infrastructure for tourists which makes traveling in Tonga not very easy. The great thing about Tonga is that you can see a country that has not changed through tourism and is therefore very original.

We are heading for New Zealand now and we are looking forward to the things to come.

Thanks for reading. Have a great day.