Tonga - Part 2

 After all of the back and forth about when the ferry would arrive in Ha’apai and take off for Vava’u, it ended up coming on Wednesday night, the original prediction.  We boarded around 10pm and got comfortable in between rows of chairs for the 8 hour ferry ride north to the island group of Vava’u, where Sean and a few other peace corps volunteers live.  Chaos greeted us in the morning as we de-boarded in Neiafu, the main city on Vava’u, but Sean navigated through it and found the truck belonging to the school where he works, and we climbed in the long bed of it along with some sort of band and all of their instruments and other equipment, which took too long according to I think all of us since the bathrooms on the boat were gross and we all had to pee.  We got a ride up the hill and dropped off the band (and helped unload all of their items), then continued on to Sean’s school and his adorable house:

It has two rooms, each about 10 square feet, and a little shelter out back where there’s a shower and toilet (picture above).  We had to keep the curtains in the bedroom closed because otherwise you could look out and see directly to the toilet, which is about 3 feet from the window and doesn’t have a door to complete its enclosure.  We drank rain water from the tank next door, which collects from what runs off of the roof, and were actually mostly happy with the cold showers since it was so hot during the day.  The locals apparently disagreed with our assessment of the weather, as we frequently saw them huddling in sweatshirts and jackets while we were sweating in shorts and t-shirts – they were fully convinced it was winter.  For us it took wondering out loud whether Sean’s tree in the front of his house was dead since it had no leaves on it, but he informed us he had worried the same thing last year and asked his neighbors, who reminded him that July is the heart of winter and therefore it made sense that his tree had lost its leaves in the chilly 85 degree weather.

The first weekend on Vava’u we were invited to a party on another island, on which an American couple lives and are building a house and restaurant.  We had the option of taking a 20 min ride on a little boat for $20 or sailing with “Captain Radical” on his catamaran for a leisurely 5 hour trip over beautiful blue water through so many lush green islands for free… guess which one we chose:

The 2.5 acre destination island has a pretty amazing set up, with hammocks scattered here and there, a fale where they sleep on one side, the skeleton of a tree house with a spiral staircase on another, a kitchen structure at another, and a restaurant roof on another (everything is still in progress).  The American couple that leases the island (bottom picture below) are building the restaurant and house parts to have planted concrete roofs so that from afar you can’t tell that there is anything but nature on the island.  The party included a pot luck dinner, a DJ and lots of dancing, sleeping in tents, then making a big breakfast for everyone who stayed long enough the next day and drinking the contents of whatever coconuts we could find opened by the guys playing with machetes, all with intermittent games such as corn hole, darts, water games, and a battle hip tournament (a last-man-standing game played by standing in a big circle and hitting a rubber ball-type thing hanging from a tree with only your hips, eliminating people as they get hit with the ball unintentionally), of which I somehow became the international champion.

The remaining 3 or so weeks of our stay in Tonga were less eventful as we really got down to the nature of our trip and reeeeelaxed… but there were still some highlights.  We played trivia at Tonga Bob’s, a local pub, each Thursday and were determined to win.  Sometimes we would have too many people show up for our team, since there were a bunch of Americans, a few Australians, and eventually some British people we were friends with, and then a couple of us would have to join another team.  We never came very close to our goal of ultimate victory (we suspect cheating was involved by at least one other table), except for Sean, who on last Thursday we were there joined a team of other expats and his team won.  I’m sure we still haven’t heard the end of that.  Another weekly occurrence at Tonga Bob’s is a Fakaleti show, which we attended once.  Fakaletis are Tongan men who dress as girls, so it was similar to many shows in San Francisco.  It is fun to take male friends there and watch the pretty men make eyes at them.  Apparently in Tongan families if there are too many boys and not enough girls to do the traditional female work, the youngest son will be dressed and treated like a girl, including being taught to perform cooking and cleaning and other tasks generally done by women.  Sometimes these boys change after they move out of their parents’ house and end up like traditional men with wives and fulfilling the male roles, but sometimes they continue to dress like women and maintain feminine qualities, both of which are perfectly acceptable.  We also went sailing again, this time with an old guy who later earned the nickname “Hammer Roy,” after we heard a story of him smashing a loud boat generator with a hammer.  We decided not to sail with Roy anymore, but it was a good day out in the sun on the water.  Other than that, we hung out at Sean’s, checked out a few of the local beaches and camped at one for a couple nights, hung out at the peace corps office, hiked up Mt. Talau (great views), and various other activities around Neiafu. 

At the end of the trip Tres and I returned to Nuku Alofa for our flight back to New Zealand.  We went a day early in case flight schedules were changed as they tend to do in Tonga (there are so few planes that Sean asked us which one we took, we said a little blue one, and he said “oh, the one you have to duck down in to get to your seats?” – yep, that was the one.  Luckily it wasn’t the one built during WW2 that is still in regular use today).  We encountered a typical end-of-trip conundrum in which you want to use as much of your currency you already have to not have to exchange it back, but you don’t want to have too little and have to pay to take more out (exchange and ATM fees are ridiculous).  We had about 90 Tongan dollars between the two of us, which we decided would cover the night at the guesthouse, rides to and from the airport, and meals for the last day.  We stopped at the store on the way to the guesthouse to get a few small items for dinner and breakfast and figured we could eat lunch in town the next day (Tongan BBQ meals are only $5).  When we went to pay for the night at the guesthouse, we realized we hadn’t factored into our budget the 15% sales tax they add on to your bill, so we ended up with only about $3.50 and 1/3 of a loaf of bread left for lunch/dinner the next day.  That meant our options were buying a cheap can of sauce and eating the noodles in the community food bin at the guesthouse (a typical thing at hostels and places like this), or buying eggs (60 cents each) and having eggs and toast.  However, as we were walking around in town, we came across a little Tongan flag exactly as Tres’ grandmother had requested, so we had to get it.  We were left with $2.50, ruling out the sauce for pasta.  I realized I wanted a souvenir as well and hadn’t bought any so far, so I decided on the cheapest one I could think of, a Tongan coin.  This reduced our potential egg purchases to 3.  We were about to go for it, but at the last second we saw samosas on the counter at the fale kaloa (little store) for $1 each so we got 2 of them instead.  We shared a half of one of them while we were playing scrabble waiting for the bus to take us back to the guesthouse, and rationed the remaining one and a half throughout the rest of the day.  Of course when we got back to New Zealand Tres realized he had another dollar in the pocket of a pair of pants – we could have had the pasta sauce!  That caused quite a laugh as we remembered how “faka ofa” we had been, if you know what I mean...

Tonga - Part 1

People were skeptical about my decision to spend an entire month (actually slightly longer – 5 weeks) in Tonga, thinking we would get bored and not have enough to do to occupy that long in such a small country.  They clearly did not know about my uncanny abilities to sleep in and to be happy doing nothing for long periods of time.  Unfortunately I didn’t get to do nothing on a beautiful beach the entire time, but for the first week this was our paradise:

The forecast Sean (friend and peace corps volunteer in Vava’u) gave us was “beautiful with a chance of rain,” which was entirely accurate.  It rained a few days in the first week, then was mostly clear, sunny, and hot for the next 3 weeks, then we got a bit more rain.  Matafanua resort on the island group called Ha’apai was beautiful, set on the north peninsula of an island creating two different beaches.  This was great because when it was super hot, I could sit on the side with the breeze and still be comfortable, but when it was a bit too windy and chilly over there, the other side of the island was blocked from the wind by trees and a hill, making it significantly warmer than the other side.  The boys did a scuba course while the girls relaxed on the beach for two days, then we went out with them on the boat on the third day and saw whales!  They are so huge and graceful it was amazing to experience (unfortunately they are not so photogenic).  We also did a bit of snorkeling off the side of the boat but mostly just enjoyed being out on the beautiful ocean on a lovely day.

The food was good, there was a great little day bed to hang out at, and a few nights we had campfires on the beach.  We also started picking up on some of the Tongan language.  Although I have no idea how to spell any of the words we learned, I’m going to write them as if it’s similar to Spanish, in which you pronounce each letter like it sounds.  The first and easiest word is malo, which I take it means hi and/or thank you, and is used in pretty much every conversation along with io, which means yes and is the appropriate response to malo used as thank you.  I learned ofa, which means love, and faka, which means like or in the way of, and is used in conjunction with other words to create greater meanings, such as “faka Tonga,” which means Tongan.  For some reason “faka ofa” means pitiful, and “faka ofa ofa” means beautiful (as in setting or an object, not people).  Some little Tongan boys taught me “faka la a” which means sunbathe.

It wasn’t a resort like you would find in the states with en suite bathrooms, room service, and bathrobes in the closet.  You had to walk down the path to the camp-style bathrooms and ask the kitchen for drinking water, but it was still very nice and a perfectly relaxing spot.

To get to the island on which Sean lives we decided to take the ferry, which is significantly cheaper than flying.  Apparently the ferry goes about once per week and usually around Wednesday evening, but you have to keep a look out and your ears open to make sure you don’t miss it and also that you don’t get there 2 days early, because the schedule is more like an estimate, and it really could come any time within about 3 days of the expected time.  We heard it was coming Wed and we checked out of the resort Tues, so we stayed with Sean’s host family from when he first arrived in Tonga.  They were very nice and welcoming and I even got my own bedroom while the boys slept in the living room, one on a couch and one on a mattress on the floor (I will point out though that even this seemed more luxurious than what the host family females did, which was sleep on the floor in the kitchen – apparently a very Tongan thing to do).  Sean’s host dad decided to make us a Lu, a traditional Tongan dish (we later found out that he has to make this every time Sean comes to visit because he loves it so much).  A Lu is a little packet of goodness made up of meat, onions, and coconut juice wrapped in taro leaves and cooked in an umu – an oven dug in the ground and covered with rocks.  The boys got to help harvest the coconut juice by husking, cracking, draining, and scraping coconuts:

Then we had a nice picnic down by the water:

We heard rumors that the boat wasn’t going to leave Nuku Alofa (the main island) until the next day and so might not arrive to pick us up until Thursday instead of Wednesday.  We heard about 4 different times throughout the day that the ferry would arrive, but no definite answers, so we just bided our time and let the day go by.  Sean suggested we go to a kava circle with his host dad, who is the town officer of the little village where he lives and therefore is very respected by everyone who attends the kava circles (which I gather happen nearly every night with more or less the same people since the villages are so tiny).  Kava is a drink made from a powder that comes from a plant and is mixed with water.  It apparently has an effect on the drinker that makes them sleepy and sometimes makes their tongue or mouth go slightly numb, but this only happens after many times of drinking lots of kava as it builds up in your body and creates a cumulative effect.  Generally only men go to kava circles, but a female is allowed to attend if she is the do’a, who serves the kava.  Traditionally when women are being courted, the man who might marry her sits to her left and they chat all night and get to know one another.  Otherwise, sometimes the do’a gets paid or offered other items (food, not sure what else).  In my case they didn’t have enough notice to bring money for me, but I was given 4 bananas, all of which I ended up giving away before the end of the night because kava leaves a weird taste in your mouth and the men like to eat or drink little snacks in between rounds of the muddy watery stuff.  The younger attendees sit to the left and right of the do’a, and the older and/or more respected men sit towards the top of the circle, and kava is passed around in little coconut half shell cups in both directions.  However much kava is poured for you, you must drink the whole cup in one go.  Part of the do’a’s job generally is to know more or less how full to fill up the coconut cups for each person.  Luckily this responsibility was not mine, as even though I was the one filling the cups, Sean to my left and another young guy to my right were holding the cups and would take them away when they thought they were full to the right amount.  Throughout the night, the men and boys joke around, and this night was a treat because they had two palangi’s (literally people who come from the sun, but it generally means white people) to joke with/about.  Occasionally Sean would explain the jokes being told, but sometimes he would just laugh along with the Tongans and Tres and I would be left in the dark as to what was so amusing.  One of the ongoing jokes was how much to fill Tres’ cup, since the guy to my right was passing his cup around to him and didn’t want to give him too much, but Sean to my left kept telling me to fill Tres’ cup more and more full.  A little later in the night guys started bringing out guitars to play music and sing.  Sometimes everyone in the circle would join in for a song, with different harmonized parts and everything, which was really cool to hear.  It was great to see Sean in this environment, completely comfortable joking around in Tongan with all the local guys.  Working on part 2....

Maraekakaho

After harvest finished up I decided to take a quick trip down to Wellington, where I went to the Alice in Wonderland bar.  It was pretty cool, with the bar really low and the bartenders seeming small due to a lowered floor behind the bar.  They had cool cocktail names like “down the rabbit hole,” and “drink me,” and served some in tea pots with little tea cups so you could have a cocktail tea party.  It was fun and really well done.  

After Wellington I went wine tasting in Martinborough for a day.  Martinborough is tiny, with tiny little wineries, but is possibly better known than Hawke’s Bay internationally.  It was fun to explore, but there wasn't much going on... Then I came back to Hawke’s Bay, back out to Maraekakaho where I decided to stay a while longer with the same couple I lived with during vintage, since they needed some help around the property, and offered to put me up and feed me in exchange for a few hours of work each day.  This sounded like a great deal to me and it has turned out amazingly.  Work has included weeding, digging holes for trees, planting trees and vegetables, moving enormous sheds (took 4 people, a forklift, logs to use as rollers like they used for the pyramids, and 4 hours), cleaning a grill (mostly so that we could have burgers for dinner upon my request), cleaning the garage and the house, feeding the big pigs, the baby pigs and the baby cows (so cute!), baking banana bread and carrot cakes, other cooking for lunch/dinner, and various other things around the house and property.  I visited Corner 50 one day to pick up my vintage t-shirt and was offered a few more weeks of work for them since one of their permanent staff had just left, so I’m back at the winery!  For another 3 days now before heading to Tonga for a month!  It is cold and wintery here now so a tropical island is sounding better by the minute.  I can’t wait!  A few pictures from around the farm / of the cats on my bed:

Havelock North

This post is not in chronological order… since it was so long in between them I forgot about this cool part of my NZ travel but it was fun so I thought I’d mention it.  When I first got to Hawke’s Bay I stayed with Kate and Anna’s parents in their amazing house with a beautiful huge garden and awesome view of the hills.  Jane and Brian let me relax at their house and on their back porch in the sun with the great view while they were out playing golf, bridge, and other various activities people do once retired.  I also spent some time exploring the surrounding area, including the Havelock North Village, Hastings, Napier, and Waimarama beach, half touring and half searching for places to live during vintage.  I may have been influenced by their opinions on different parts of the area, as I was warned to not live in the Maori areas, or too far away from the winery.  In the evenings after a home-cooked dinner we usually watched tv and they would serve a “cuppa” (cup of tea) and an Afghan (a delicious chocolatey “biscuit” (cookie) that I’m pretty sure was also home made).  They gave me tea with milk and said they would Anglicize me while I was staying there.  It was great fun.  They also had a little high-energy little dog, Susie, that made friends easily and loved to go for walks, so that was one of my daily activities.  She also liked to sprint around the yard with limited provocation, and then to sit in your lap on the couch or outside on the porch.  Although if it was too hot she would lie in the shade with legs stretched out in all directions.  She followed me around the house when no lap was available, and even seemed to remember me when I came back to visit a couple months later.  Unfortunately I don’t seem to have any pictures of this time.  I’ll have to visit again and snatch a couple. 

My parents even liked Susie, and they usually don’t like small dogs.  My parents visited New Zealand, supposedly to see me and what I was up to, but they mostly toured around in other areas, and visited Hawke’s Bay at the end of their trip for a few days.  The James’s had them over for dinner one night, and I started work a day late so I could hang out with them during their first day here.  Unfortunately it rained during most of their stay so my dad didn’t get to golf at Cape Kidnappers, but it was good because as I mentioned before they were able to fix my busted tires while they were here.   Mom and Dad stayed in Ahuriri, north of Napier, and somehow got lost each time going back to the hotel until the very last day.  Their hotel was cute, very close to the water, and apparently near some of the best restaurants.  We went up Te Mata peak, which has great views of the whole Bay, and I took a couple pictures:

Taradale

My car Tina is still doing well, especially after having 3 tires replaced.  This was necessary after one dark, raining night while I was driving home and I got lost, because as I was turning around to go back to where I somewhat knew where I was, I got a flat.  Foreign country; dark; raining; lost; flat tire - what else could go wrong?  Well I’ll tell you – my cell phone ran out of batteries.  So I ventured across the street where I had seen a car pull in to a driveway a minute or so after I pulled my car off the road, and explained my situation to the lovely old couple, who let me borrow their phone.  Luckily I sprang for the roadside service with AA (affiliate of AAA in the states, not Alcoholics Anonymous), so I could just call and have someone come out to where I was and fix my flat.  On the phone with them I explained that I had a flat, the lady asked if I had a spare and I said yes, asked if I had tools and I said no.  She said someone would be there within the hour so I was invited inside the old people’s house while I waited.  I asked them if they knew the best way to get back to Maraekakaho since I was lost, and they contemplated this for a while, eventually pulled out a huge map, and we figured out a good route (guess I was more lost than I thought).  They also let me keep the map, which was very handy and which I have used many times since.  People are so friendly here.  So anyway, finally the AA guy comes in his huge tow truck, and I explain the flat and show him my spare tire he says, “ok so do you have a tire iron and a jack?” and starts rummaging around in the back of my car where the spare tire was.  I said no, that’s why I called you, they asked me that on the phone too so I already told you I don’t have tools.  …Don’t you have that kind of thing?  He started to get defensive, said he didn’t have any tools, and proceeded to criticize me for purchasing a car that didn’t come with a jack!  I told him again that the lady on the phone specifically asked me if I had tools and I had clearly told her that I don’t, all the while trying to figure out how and why a roadside assistance service person would not have any of the basic tools necessary for roadside assistance (I started thinking maybe he was from the other AA?)!

So back to the old people to see if they had a car jack, which luckily they did.  Then just one more thing, my wheels had a special plate on them that required an allen tool (which of course the roadside assistance dude did not have) which the old people also luckily had in their garage.  So after the ordeal my tire was finally replaced and I made it home.  And luckily my amazing parents were still in town visiting and since it was raining had no plans for the next morning so they replaced my tire (and two others which were apparently the wrong size) while I was at work J