Our giant pack of palangi (what Tongans call the foreigners) went for a daytrip to the extinct volcano of Tafahi, where Nico has a kava and fruit plantation that has been in his family for generations.
Eighteen palangi piled into two small local boats driven by Nico and his cousin and took a very wet ride to Tafahi, five miles north, through seas that seemed a lot bigger from the 18-foot open boat than they do from the deck of Picara! The island has a dicey anchorage and tricky little small-boat pass so this was a much easier way for us to visit than using our own boats. Plus, we might have had a hard time finding the route to the top through the dense brush.
Nico ran the boat through the surf into the pass and the men helped roll the boats up the beach using rounds of wood. Then we walked up through the tiny village of eight houses and two churches, and through the plantations of coconuts, taro, bananas, tangerines and papayas. Next came the kava plantations (apparently the best kava grows higher up and Tafahi kava is the good stuff). Past the plantations we got into what I would call a cloud forest – jungly thick vegetation, with mosses and ferns growing on the ground and in the crooks of trees, and all kinds of vines, including vanilla, dangling from the tree branches. Everything was green, green, green, except the view from the top which was completely gray – hardly a glimpse of the sea or Niuatoputapu to the south but I guess that should be no surprise when you are in a cloud forest!
One of the most spectacular parts of the hike was the crater at the top, which had even huger and greener foliage than the trail we had ascended.