Not only is Vava’u a cruiser’s paradise, the islands and barrier reef of this group make for some fantastic diving. One does feed into the other. In order to get to the dives sites you have to be able to traverse the water between the islands, which means hiring a dive boat or bringing your own. This keeps a limitation on how many people actually get to the sites which in turn keeps the dive areas in pristine condition.
Underwater Tonga was unique in that among all the islands we’ve seen, in Tonga the coral really steals the show. With colors including lime green, purple, red and every hue in between not to mention varying in size from the size of a hand to well larger than a human, the coral in Vava’u was a sight to behold. Most of it was close enough to the surface and received enough sunlight to really bring out the beauty lying just below the surface. The crystal clear water everywhere you went didn’t hurt either.
We arrived in Toau to find two really nice guys in an outboard who guided us into the 10 boat anchorage they had set up near the “village.”
Why is “village” in quotations?
Just wait for it.
After helping us get anchored the nice guys invited us over for dinner that evening. It’s a pretty common practice for the locals to prepare dinner for cruisers for a price and then “invite” you to dinner. Remember in Fatu Hiva where the terms “restaurant” and “living room” were synonymous? Yeah, pretty normal and to be fair, they take good care of you:
Those would be fresh lobsters. Paired with baguette and fresh fried parrot fish and by “fresh” I mean the two guys who guided us in? They are also the fishermen; brought the fish in that afternoon and cooked them up alongside one of their wives. Same with the lobsters.
Also, they have a dog
Cute little guy, kinda scraggly. Not really worth noting until…hey wait a second…how the heck did a dog get way out here?! It’s not like he evolved from the freaking fish! Did you ship him in? How much would that cost? Is he some sorta descendent from dogs brought over by Capt. Cook? Seriously, where did you get a dog!? (see, like I said, sometimes it’s the little things that make you remember where you are).
We had a great time at dinner and then the 2 nice guys and the lady invited us to come to church tomorrow. Well, we’ve all heard legends of the Polynesian church singing and it’s also when the whole “village” would typically turn out, what a great opportunity to meet people! …and truthfully, it’s been a while since we were able to get to an actual church, so heck why not?
Here’s the church:
And here’s what the service was like:
Not exactly what we were expecting. Ok, so all the white people? Sailors. That leaves the lady at the front and the two men in the seats…
…noticing a trend here?
You know that joke where the town’s so small that the mayor is the sectary while moonlighting as the pastor and city garbage collector?
Yeah, that’s here.
Greg played bocce ball with the two guys on the beach with their bocce set. Won one game, lost the other. In other words, he beat half the bocce ball playing population of this island in one go.
…Hey wait, where the heck did they get a bocce ball set?!
When we look at those words up there and realize that we could be putting those letters together at random for all the good it does describing our location to you. We can tell you exactly where we are and at the same time tell you nothing at all. We’re working on getting a map up. Here, we’ll give you a little orientation. How about a satellite photograph of the atoll:
That help? Still no, huh? Let’s zoom out a bit:
Just in case you didn’t know, the blue stuff is water. We would like to point out that if you put the entire landmass of our planet into this one ocean, there would be STILL be room for a second Africa, give or take. Like we said, the scale of things out here is massive. “Needle in a haystack”? From now on we’ll be saying “it’s like trying to find an island in the Pacific.” People live on them. Granted, not a lot of people, but still.
And yet, here we are. It’s amazing that these places are REAL. There are places on the map that almost no one has ever heard of and these places are actually a lot closer than most of us realize… yet drastically separated by water, language, culture and a lack of regular air transport (you saw the major / only airport of the area). Coming from the States, it’s actually easier, cheaper and WAY faster to get to Sydney, which is still several thousand miles from us, than to get to this little atoll. The Pacific islands are weird that way.
The fact that you are way off in the middle of nowhere is always right there, right in your face. You get used to over time and you stop thinking about it. It’s amusing to think back on how we called Nuku Hiva “the big city” but it is the largest settlement we’ve encountered since leaving Mexico a few months ago. It wouldn’t even count as a village in the San Francisco Bay.
Greg has long been a proponent of the philosophy that humans can normalize just about anything, along as they are exposed to it enough. Isolation is the status quo out here, after all. Polynesians don’t wander around in a state of shock at their removal from the regular world; to them, this is the regular world. Over time, it becomes regular to us as well and we stop thinking about the fact that there are places in the world where it takes more than 20 minutes to walk from one coast to another. Then something little makes you think of it, like zooming out on the navigation computer while planning a route. Then it all comes rushing back, “Holy heck we’re over 1000 miles from the nearest continent!” It actually scares you a little bit as you think to yourself “how the heck did we get here on a sailboat!?”
Did you know that when Sharks get into large groups (say like 50 plus) they school, like fish?
So we learned something new today.
More of that in a minute, let’s get down to brass taxes: Brad Kellogg owes us $67.25.
For those of you who are not friends with us on Facebook, you should be. Mainly because that’s where most of the commentary for the blog happens each week. Why is this? Probably because thanks to the miracle of the friend finder, all our old smart aleck friends from our previous lives have connected with us and form some form of hybrid “metamind / advice giving / peanut gallery” thing.
So enters Brad, good friend from high school and expert at egging Greg on. Actually, good at egging anyone on. The guy’s got a gift. If he ends up a senator, I called it.
After my last post about the sharks, Brad comments to Greg: “5 bucks float with the sharks for 5 minutes, and I’ll toss in an extra quarter for each shark ya can count, double dog dare ya!”
Ok, I’m a worshipper of A Christmas story. I’ll even spot you the Triple Dog Dare.
(If you don’t understand the Christmas story reference, you OBVIOUSLY don’t watch TBS on Christmas…and your life is poorer for it 😉
Now, you may be saying to yourself, “Wait Greg, there was a MAX of 7 sharks in that video, assuming every new cut was with new sharks.” So that’s $6.50.
Yes, that. Here’s the rest of the 250 sharks we went swimming with (dive masters best estimate, not mine.) Oh, and the highly lethal stonefish which doesn’t count for an extra quarter but could kill you just as dead.
Now we were in the water for about 45 minutes but since there was no repeating stipulation on the bet, I won’t advocate for the $605.25 I could potentially claim. 😉
The South Pass was not all just highly lethal sea creatures. I mean really, 250 sharks aren’t just going to hang around unless there’s food nearby and wow, was there. A smorgasbord of every color and type of tropical reef fish, coral, you name it. Amazing does not describe what we saw: this video hardly gives you a taste of the varied and beautiful sea life that surrounded us every time we got in the water.
(PS – thanks to Serge & the guys from Fatu Hiva for the awesome music!)
(Continued from previous post… Tahuata, French Polynesia)
As we continued to travel north along the island to our next anchorage, Hanatefau, reportedly the 3rd prettiest in Polynesia, we saw some spectacular waterspouts along the shoreline.
Upon arriving we found that the anchorage was indeed gorgeous. Beautiful living reefs no more than 10 feet below the surface on each side of the anchorage, a pristine white sandy beach, crystal clear water with 30-50 feet of visibility, and gorgeous sunshine. A Manta Ray swam right past our stern. It was amazing. Tiff started off the day helping out a fellow cruiser by free diving 30 feet straight down to get a dropped piece of equipment, which is a rather impressive feat. (Actually, I started it by swimming some banana bread over to Rod and Elisabeth on Proximity, and when I swam back, I saw the Manta Ray fly past our boat! ~Tiff)
As thanks for helping them out, Michael and Gloria of Paikea Mist, a beautiful Beneteau Custom 50, (www.PaikeaMist.com) invited us out to go snorkeling with them. Now, again, I am still learning how to use this camera well underwater. That being said, there are some absolutely amazing parts of sea life just wandering around a few feet below the surface. This is a taste of what I saw:
Unfortunately for us with this much unrestrained beauty below us, perfect warm, clear water all around us and a baking sun above us, it is quite easy to lose track of time. We did just that, much to both of our extreme regret.
Let me tell you, it hurts. It hurts a lot. A LOT! I took a shower, used a wash rag and some warm water by accident two days later and was laid out on the bed for a good hour writhing in pain as it felt like someone was jamming broken glass into my spine. It took two ice packs and not moving much for the rest of the day to bring me back to a degree of normalcy. Needless to say, a bottle of waterproof sunscreen has been permanently added to my ashore backpack. But such are the risks for living in paradise.
Needless to say the tiny island of Tahuata was supremely amazing, well beyond any of our expectations or even our imaginations.
