Every little remote island sailors stopover seems to have one. That cafe/bar/laundry/workshop/sailors port services establishment, usually run by a former bluewater sailor from some western country that landed on the island and never left. Speaks the language of the locals and the sailors, and can answer questions and arrange to fix stuff.

Here in Tonga, it's Gregg Just, who runs the Tropicana Cafe. The “Cafe” is just a hair closer to the workshop side of the equation - with piles of diving gear, tools, boat parts, and a utilitarian multi screen computer station sitting very close to the dining tables. National flags adorn the walls, and theres a map to stick a pin in your home port.

Gregg is a kiwi transplant from New Zealand, and he has been helpful to us since long before we even set sail for Tonga. Gregg runs a great Facebook resource page called Tonga Expats and Locals. Back when we were trying to figure out how to receive our absentee ballots, I reached out to Greggto confirm that Tropicana Cafe would receive packages for sailors. He also gave the best answers he could to our questions about whether Tonga would open to sailors. A sign in the cafe offers various services to cruising sailors, including rainwater to refill fresh water tanks, refilling LPG tanks, laundry, provisioning, tour booking, book exchange, and, of course, breakfast, lunch, and kiwi beer. And Gregg is full of advice and stories (there were some sailors came here and asked me if I could keep a 10 kilo wheel of cheese for them,, while they sailed to New Zealand …).

So we have been pumping Gregg with questions about Tonga, and New Zealand (there were some sailors sailed from here direct to Nelson, so it's possible, but that was a ninety foot boat though ..). He coughs frequently, and when I asked if he was ok, he said, no, and that was the end of the conversation. Almost no-one here wears masks.

Tropicana Cafe looks a little sleepy, like it has just woken up from a long nap, like all the tourist-oriented business here on Vava'u. We are among the first foreign sailors to arrive in nearly three years. Schoolboys and schoolgirls, both dressed in calf length skirts, point at us oddly dressed westerners on bicycles, say hello, and then laugh. Tomorrow the first cruise ship arrives. Gregg rolls his eyes and advises us to get out of town for the day.

As it turns out, we are signed up to go swimming with humpbacks tomorrow. Or try, anyway. Gregg told us to call Beluga Diving on channel 9 to arrange the tour. They also rent moorings. But yesterday when we called them on ch. 9, there was no response. So we biked up the road to find them, and eventually found Hap, his wife Estima, and their crews (possibly their children). I told him we had tried to call but didn't get an answer. “That is because the radio is in the shop, and we are here,” Hap said. “I was worried our radio wasn't working,” I said. “well ours isn't,” Hap said, “the battery is in the house.”

Hap took our names for the whale swim tour. “Karâ€�"-el” he said, that is a German or a Dutch name, sprichen deutsch ? I said no, no, my family was German, but I don't speak any, Hap is Dutch. I told him that our new friends on Windsong were Dutch, and would also be taking a mooring.

That was yesterday.Today, I slept quite late, and wasted most of the day catching up on deleting emails. And printing our absentee ballots (we had figured out how to get an absentee ballot by email, which requires that a request be sent by physical mail, which made it from Bora Bora just in time). But the ballots still have to be returned physically. So first thing ashore was to go to the FedEx agent in town, who told us that FedEx only picks up once a week from Nuku'alofa, which was yesterday, so anything we send would not leave Tonga before next Thursday (today, for the record, is a Friday here).

Still, that was a better deal than Tonga Post, the clerk the said a letter would take four weeks to reach the US. So we paid the $94 Paang to FedEx and sent our ballots on their way to NukuAlofa and onwards.