DAY SEVEN - NUKUALOFA

Monday October 27th at Nukualofa the capital of Tonga on the island of Tongatapu the largest of the Tonga islands. Today we toured the island with Toni Mathias. Toni is a Brit’ who came to Tonga 16 years ago, has married a Tonga lady and is now a naturalized Tongan. He and his wife run a B&B in Nukualofa and he also conducts tours of the island. I made contact with Toni via the internet and arranged for him to conduct an all day tour of the island. Originally there were only 8 of us but as our roll call on Cruise critics grew so did the interest in this and other tours. Today we had 18 on tour and Toni had arranged for two buses. Toni was waiting for us at the port gate at 9am when the ship docked. A word to any-one thinking of booking Toni for a future tour - try to keep your numbers down to about 8 per bus and if you only have a group of eight and have no need for the second bus ask Toni to PLEASE bring the bus with the opening windows. His other bus has all sealed windows except for the driver and passenger and the air flow is just not good enough for the conditions.
We all took some time to organize money exchange as Princess had no Tonga money on board and didn’t get underway until about 9.40. We left the port area a little ahead of all the Princess Cruises tour groups and drove through the town of Nukualofa. This does not take very long. The town itself appears to be no more than 0.5 of a kilometer square and we were soon on our way for what turned out to be great day. Our first stop was the furthest point westward on the island where Abel Tasman was reported to have landed. I should point out that Toni is an incredibly cynical gentleman and questions every purported historical date or event including this one. It was a great photo opportunity none the less. We also had a brief stop in this leg of our tour to view the flying foxes. Most of our group were from Queensland and didn’t really need to see another flying fox. We have plenty at home.
From the Tasman landing site we backtracked a few kilometers and turned off on to a bush track that took us to a beach side resort. Here we managed to arrive just after a couple of the Princess Cruises tour groups who had got ahead of us by not doing the Tasman landing site. These people on this tour were being fed what looked to be salad and fruit while our group who had our meals ordered in advance by Toni dined in the top deck dining area of the resort on things like Caesar salad, Fish and Chips and Chicken Kebabs .Part of the Princess Cruises tour included a dance and song performance by a group of local men and women in traditional clothes We were there at the right time and were also able to see and hear this performance free of charge. Very moving and very entertaining..
From here we headed along the coast to the blowholes. Another great photo opportunity and on such a warm humid day we were all grateful to Toni to plan things so that we were able to beat the cruise tour buses and park very close to the action without too much walking.
Further along the coast we turned off on to a very narrow track that took us to a natural bridge at the bottom of a valley worn through by the crashing ocean waves. Yet another great photo opportunity.
We then continued through the center of the island to the Trilithon. This is an amazing structure that is made up of two upright stone pillars about 4meters high and about 6 meters apart with a slab of coral spanning the gap. It is thought to have been built in about 1400AD and is known as the “place where time begins” It is, according to Toni, the spot on earth that sees the first rays of the rising sun.
From here we headed back towards the town stopping from time to time to allow for more photographs until we were back in town center and our final stop at the Royal Tombs and the Royal Palace. You can’t actually get very close to either but still close enough to photograph.
We had a great day with Toni and found him a very knowledgeable and entertaining tour guide.
Nukualofa is an interesting mix of living standards from the obviously well off to the very down at heal. The greatest influence on peoples lives is religion. We passed, according to Toni, 36 Mormon churches on the day. A lesser number of Catholic and other denominations.. The people themselves are very friendly, especially the children in their neat school uniforms.
Anyone heading this way and wanting a very entertaining and inexpensive day tour I highly recommend Toni Mathias. You can contact him on tonigh2@yahoo.co.uk