PART 11
Aug. 12, 2011
After the kids flew out to go back home on the 10th of August, we got some food supplies and left Rarotonga on 8/12/11 planning on heading to a little Island out in the middle of no -where called Neiu. It's a beautiful place, from what we had been hearing from the other cruisers and also read about in our cruising guides. But it only has one place to go into and tie up to a mooring ball. When the winds come out of the North or NorthWest, it gets way lumpy and un-comfortable to be in there. As it happened, that was exactly the way the winds were blowing when we got there. So we decided to bypass Nuie and just go on to Vava'u, Tonga. It took us 5 1/2 days to get to Vava'u and we got there right at dark in rainy, stormy weather. Because we had never gone into Vava'u, and because we never go into a new place, especially with all the reefs that are around Tonga, at dusk or nighttime, we cruised up and down outside Vava'u all night. It's a cruiser thing and most all the cruisers say the same thing. If you've been into a new place and have a known route with waypoints it's an entirely different story, although even then in the dark it's spooky not to be able to see. Radar is great and shows the land masses even in the dark. But the reefs sometimes only have water splashing over them and don't always show up on the radar. If you hit one of those reefs --- bad news for boats!!! So we tracked back & forth in deep waters all night again until daylight. Boy, that makes a long night. When you're crossing deep waters, it's not so bad as you know you're not going to hit anything that's not charted. The course has been tested by previous passagemakers and so you know you can relax. But being closer to a land mass is a different situation and you have to be on the alert at all times for not only un-suspected rocks & reefs, but also for any other traffic either coming out of the Harbor or cruising just as we were doing. So we were pretty glad to get into the Harbor finally the next morning. The International time line actually doesn't start until Fiji. But Tonga goes by Fiji Time and so we are now 21 hours ahead of our Arizona time. A full day, almost! That kind of threw us off as Don said "we cruised all night and lost a whole day"!!
The Tonga Customs officers, the immigration folks and the Port health guy all came to us on the local Wharf where we tied up to (big black tires to fend the big boats off again -- Black marks on Storm Haven;>( ) So that was nice as we didn't have to chase all over to find them. They were all so nice and we enjoyed meeting them all. One of them, the Port Health guy named "Pino" ask us along with several other cruisers that came in around that time, to come to a HIVA (a singing event) at the Big Catholic Church that following Sunday evening. We went and it was beautiful! about 15 groups or more each sang different songs in Maori. Though none of us could understand what they were singing, the harmony was fantastic. They use absolutely no instruments and just their natural voices were awsome! It was so nice of him to ask us and we all really enjoyed it.
Tonga, or at least Neifu, Vava'u, is a really poor town. The streets need a lot of repair and a lot of the buildings are pretty run down. But each person has an allotment for 8 acres of land which has been handed down to the first born son or daughter (her husband) for generations and generations. They grow Taro, bananas, tapioca, papayas, pineapples and fresh vegetables. There's a fruit and vegetable market at the wharf where everyday except Sunday they sell their fruits, vegetables and handicraft items. Although Tonga is advertised in all of our cruising guides as being a lot less expensive that the French Polynesians, again as in Rartonga, we haven't found it to be that much less. It's approximately $1.65 to our US $1. and everything is way up in price. A very small pineapple is $10 each and goes to $8, $6 and $4 Tongan Pa'anga as they get smaller. But they're very sweet and tasty. So we have bought several during our stay so far! But, again the government taxes the heck out of the people and they have to pay as much for their foods and products as we "tourist" or cruisers do. They depend on the local tourist season to subsidize their income and it's only about 2 months out of the year as far as the cruisers are concerned, at least. But we've come to really like it here the longer we stay.
We decided to find a tour guide and so asked a local Taxi Driver if he knew of a tour guide. What a perfect person to ask! His name is Matthew and he told us he would love to take us on a tour! He has a Toyota Van which is kind of "used" but runs. You kind of have to KNOW he's a taxi driver although after looking close he has a sign in the window saying "Taxi" and, if we'd known" the license plates for a taxi all start with a "T". Anyway, he gave us a great tour of Vava'u, or at least as much as you can see from a car. The Islands that surround here can only be reached by boat. After the tour he invited us to his home the next Sunday to have dinner with his family. They have a "Umu" cookout every Sunday for their family and they cook Taro, Packages of 3 different kinds of meats (beef, chicken and pork) each individually wrapped in taro leaves which tasted like spinach and wrapped in tin foil. Then bread fruits and tapioca and taro root which were also all cooked in the Umu. Also a wonderful potatoe salad with shredded chicken meat. It was all wonderful! It's a tradition the Tongan people and they do it every Sunday and it cooks until they get home from Church. Matthew has 6 children, 2 of which are grown and gone. The other four are still at home, although his oldest daughter still does live with them. She went to school to be a chef but the local economy is so bad she hasn't had luck getting a permanent job. But she put a very nice presentation on our table and we really enjoyed our visit. Don and I were given a package of each type of meat just for us. The rest of the family ate from another package. Then at the end of the meal, they insisted we take the leftovers home with us!! We couldn't have asked for a more gracious people or home to be invited to.
Just by luck we happened to come to Vava'u in time for the Sailing Regatta and Fiesta they held September 7th through September 13th. The first day was what they called the "Port Opua's(a sponser from one of the Marinas in New Zealand) Trillion Dollar Pub Crawl". We were all to dress in costumes and start at one end of the little town at the Vava'u club pub and work our way through town. Some of the folks were dressed hilariously! A bunch of the men were dressed as women or fairies which worked out perfectly as we ended up at a bar that has Transvestite dancing every Wednesday night, which was the night we were there. It was a riot -- although some of those transvestite Dressers were wild and some were so --- convincing? ! They go all out, boy! Anyway, it was all in fun and we had a wonderful time. The next day was the "TRIDEGAGON-ATHLON" which, though hard to pronounce, was just 13 or 14 different silly games we all participated in. We were all broken up into 6 groups of 8 each with spouses and partners all in different groups. Each team had to make up a silly name for their team and some of them were a riot! Not a good place to mention some of the names ;) and a pie eating contest to name a few. We all had a ball! Paulie's team won the contest as her team mate was the champion of the pie eating contest which gave the most total points overall. Friday was a sailing race to another anchorage. Since not many Motor Boats cross the ocean, (although we know of 6 or 7 this year alone -- all Nordhavns:>) they didn't have a catagory for us. Anyway, they had a BBQ and dance out on the beach where they sailed to the next evening calling it "The Full Moon Party". It was raining really hard and though we didn't have Storm Haven out there, we got a taxi (our friend, Matthew) to take us over there. Adam & Eve from "Eden" went with us in the Taxi as they didn't want to take Eden over either. Although the anchorage is large, it has a big drop off from the shore and we thought since we weren't racing in the event anyway, we might as well stay tied up to the Mooring ball we were at. It was fun and even though it rained most all of the time we were at the beach party, they had a DJ and a firedancer (we missed the main dancer:>() We wound up the Regatta Tuesday evening with a Buffet at the local Mango Restaurant or also known as the Port of Refuge yacht Club.
There is also a Nordhavn 47' who came in (Tues. the 8th) here (we're a 46') with a young couple aboard named Adam & Eve and the boats' name is "Eden". Isn't that too cute?! We loved them as they were about our kids ages and, although it made us miss our family at home, they are a lot of fun to be with and talk to.
It rained like crazy Saturday all day and night and we caught water in our water tanks enough to fill them up completely! As good as the watermaker water is, rain water is so much fresher and taste so good! Although it's rained or rather spit since then, we haven't had a good rain again. So, since we won't make water in this Harbor as it doesn't have an outlet to the open water, we are in dire need of water and I need to do laundry. It's very expensive to take laundry here for someone to do it or to even use their washers and dryers! So we are heading out to some other anchorages around Vava'u tomorrow to make water and do our laundry We want to go out on a whale watch where you snorkel with the whales and their calves. We talked to Adam & Eve from Eden who did that for their 2nd anniversary last Thursday (so young!!!) and showed us great closeup pictures of the whales. Also, last night we went to the Aquarium restaurant for dinner and they happened to be showing pictures of the whales presented by a group studying them here at Tonga. It was facinating. If we go, I'll update with pictures, I hope.
We'll stay around Vava'u for another 1-2 weeks and then head on to Fiji where our friends from S/V "MutineerV" are flying into meet us and, after playing around Fiji a while, going with us to New Zealand probably leaving the end of October to the Middle of November. We keep hearing what a hard trip that usually is, weather wise. Usually they say there are about 5 days of good weather and then 2 or more pretty rough weather. So for that portion of our travels, we will be getting a local "Weather Guru" named Bob McDavitt. We've already contacted him and when we get a good weather window we'll start across to New Zealand. It will take us about 7 to 8 days to cross from Fiji to New Zealand. We'll stay in New Zealand for as long as we can, although they usually only give you a 6 month Visa. We can extend that if we need boat work(always) done and if it expires during the cyclone season. We'd like to tour New Zealand, maybe even purchasing a used motorhome. They have them from a dealer that specializes in selling and buying back cars and motorhomes from cruisers. They have a good reputation with the other cruisers that have done this as being fair on prices for those of us in this situation. We'll see. New Zealand is very strict on their pet importation. So, even before we left the US, Paulie has been working getting Bootsie ready to enter their country. When we first looked into getting a cat into New Zealand, the minimum quarantine period was 31 days. Now it's been reduced to 10 days. But they have to come to the boat before we even get into a Marina and check not only our boat, but have the Quarantine folks come out to Storm Haven with a cage they lock before taking her to their Quarantine place. We've already made arrangements for her to go to a Pet Service that is approved by the MAF (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry) of NZ. It's a very expensive process and Don keeps saying we should just throw her overboard! Right! And he wouldn't do it even though he talks big. He's as attached to Ms Bootsie as much as Paulie. But that's another blog story and we'll get into that later.
Thanks for reading our blog! Sorry that this is so long. I've broken it up into 2 parts, hopefully to make it easier to read. The details won't be of much interest to some of you, I know. But this blog will be good for Don & I and our family to read some year when we are all done with this trip and can't remember what we did where. Even though all the details, I'm still not putting all of our adventures in. So much is still left to be just memories we hope we don't forget.

Photos will come soon