Day 5 and then some

Neighborhood shots in Nuku’Alofa:

The Storm.

Cyclone Tomas looks to give us a pass and the locals are relieved, though I was hoping for a show. Not that the near miss isn’t great, this morning the wind woke me at 5 AM and I realized that for the first time since my arrival there were no damned roosters or dogs sounding off at the hour. I am not too worried; these buildings are built out of rebar and blocks. Horrible in earthquakes but well suited for hurricanes. The sign for my accommodations blew down, and I saw a young couple whapped on the heads by a falling palm frond. So I suppose my bloodlust has been temporarily quenched.

Remember my comment about the virility of this place, its overwhelming sense of life and growth? As I type this my laptop is seemingly full of nearly microscopic ants. Why they are here, I haven’t a clue. I don’t tend to eat when I work, and the keyboard does not seem particularly filthy. Nonetheless, they are here as they are everywhere else. The long-term impact of ants nestling in your laptop is not clear, but I doubt it is good.

I spend my days wandering Nuku’Alofa looking for materials to use. Very little luck so far, the records from before 1920 have simply vanished, and no clue remains. I am thus seeing little of the rest of Tongatapu, but I am getting a feel for Tonga itself. There is nothing like wandering a town for days to really absorb the vibe. I justify my trip by claiming that this should help my writing about Tonga as a whole.

Nights are spent wandering as well, at least until 10 or so. Once the sun goes down I can actually tolerate the climate, and I try to get out to walk. The locals are not there, mostly inside---either at home watching TV or at church singing (which they do with an ethereal beauty), drinking kava, or playing basketball dependent upon the congregation and the gender.

The evenings have an other-wordly air to them. Trash is burnt in most yards once a week, or more frequently, usually at dusk. Most of this is agricultural waste of one type or another, so the smoke is not particularly acrid but it does permeate the neighborhoods outside of the miniscule town center. Walking through areas with no other palagi (foreigners) in sight, passing yards full of rubble from the 2006 riots and subsequent natural disasters, the place has a bit of the Kurtzian horror to it. Locals sit listlessly in the waning heat of the day watching the smouldering piles fill the still air with haze, while the children run up to the fence line to say goodbye at your approach. It is poverty voyeurism, but dear god it is compelling.

There are many places where I would not feel comfortable wandering alone in a strange town after dark. Tonga is not one of them. I have yet to feel any menace or resentment from the locals, aside from that consistently expressed by young men globally. Those I have passed always offer a greeting, and generally a smile. I have had a few more welcoming comments from some of the residents as well, especially the fakaleiti (third gender), best acknowledged with a grin and a steady gait.

Since I spend my time alone I am violating a couple of local traditions. One of the most important is that Tongans generally do not eat alone. A truly severe insult in Tongan involves suggesting that you hide food and eat alone. This is not a culture of food shortages where the insult is placed on the concept of not sharing. Instead, the animus is placed upon those that would perform something as social as eating alone and away from others. When I sit alone in a restaurant the looks vary from curiosity to pity.

My God. I sweat in cheap hotel rooms. I wish for devastating storms. I wander around sleepy foreign capitals looking for justification for my presence. I spend too much in bad bars at night. I can describe the traditions around transvestism in multiple cultures. I think I may be becoming an expat.

Rather than spending my weekends in Nuku’Alofa I head for ‘Eua. ‘Eua is to the west of Tongatapu, making it the last piece of land the sun sets on in a given day. It is of a completely different heritage than the rest of Tonga. Even by Tongan standards life here is slow, with the big excitement every week being the Mormon-sponsored disco on Friday and Saturday nights. No alcohol but plenty of ice cream. It also has the interesting distinction of having more Peace Corps/local weddings than anywhere else in the Pacific.

Having survived the storms and the heat, Karsten and I wait for the flight to ‘Eua at the domestic airport. Karsten is a tall, friendly Bavarian gent I have met at our lodgings. An engineer, photographer, and a bit of a rake he is a great traveling companion. I was fortunate enough to spend several days with him.

Waiting for our domestic flight to ‘Eua, we were seated in a rudimentary terminal reminiscent of a bus stop. The shaking started suddenly, and the locals all stood up and quickly moved away from the building. Remember the early comment about local construction not being suited to earthquakes? As Karsten and I realized what was happening the cracking of cinderblock walls popped like rounds from a .22. Before we could do the rational thing and flee, it was over, and life resettled into the tropical pace. No one seemed interested in checking where the cracking might have occurred. We moved outside.

The flight was unremarkable, at 7 minutes it is the shortest regularly scheduled flight in the world. Plus, I am pretty sure Simon Pegg was putting on an Aussie accent and piloting the thing. Nice touch.

‘Eua was an incredible surprise. Much older than Tonga it is one of the oldest islands in the Pacific, and one of the highest. Riddled with limestone caves (one walk passes through eleven of them in three hours) and covered with unique local plants and birds, this place is almost unknown and untouched.

We stayed at The Hideaway, being picked up at the grass strip which passes for a runway here by Taki, the proprietor. In Tonga it is still the norm to ride in the back of pick-up trucks, which I did at every opportunity. I forgot how much damn fun that is; how much I loved the feeling as a kid before it was legislated out of possibility. Also, Tongans frequently do not shut off their engines while fueling so I judged that the bed was the safer place to be. I also discovered that attaching a seat belt is considered by Tongans to be a negative comment on their driving skill. So if you are going to be loose, might as well be free.

The Hideaway is very cool. Very basic, hosting a max of about 12 folks, it is situated right on the beach with nothing about. Silent, beautiful, and of a scale which encourages socialization amongst its guests, it is my favorite spot in Polynesia thus far. Highly, highly recommended.

Karsten and I headed for the south end of the island on bikes that would have made Mad Max giggle. That said, it was well worth it. Rock gardens with wild horses, sea cliffs and arches, ‘Eua is simply gorgeous. The fresh guava hanging from bushes along the route helped temper the oven we rode through.

Returning to the Hideaway we met the rest of our crew. Erin, a climber lass and geologist from B.C.; Ronnie, an old Swedish hippie from the northwest who had been Willie Nelson’s double in a truly horrible canuxploitation film, “Starlight”; Katherine, an Aussie nurse and festival fiend; Michael, her brother, an Australian volunteer in Tonga, and their mother, Diane. We lucked out. Every one of these folks are of the highest quality. A damned good time was had by all. They made the days on the trail pleasant and the nights at the Hideaway a blast. We clicked immediately.

The next morning we set off on an unguided walk into the eastern part of the island, which allowed us to get lost multiple times. The cyclone damage to the trails, such as they were, and the loss of ‘two beers, please’ Ronnie lent drama to what would have been simply beautiful on its own. There are much worse ways to spend your days than lost in paradise with good people.

First stop was the banyan tree. This was the single most impressive thing seen on this trip thus far, and possibly in any of the islands. She is an 800 year-old tree growing out of a limestone cavern/sinkhole which we did not have the gear to adequately explore. You can clamber down into the cave and climb out up the tree, assuming you don’t mind the spiders. It was too cool to pass up.

Lots of spiders. After the tree and a series of wrong turns we headed for the sea cliffs. Luckily, when the entire Eastern side of the island is a sea cliff finding such is not difficult.

The Rat’s cave is a small tube you can scurry down, followed by a two meter drop into a cave in the side of one of these cliffs. It is stunning. It is also on the edge of definitively lethal drop, so if you take a couple of steps back when entering or leaving the hole they will be your last. Worth it.

Eventually we gathered for a shot off of one of the overlooks. As I said, truly excellent people. I could not have asked for any better. This, right here, this is the best part of travel. Bugger the concierge.

Then we lost Ronnie again.

We were headed back towards camp when Michael suggested rumconuts. I was intrigued. A green coconut is the creator’s way of apologizing for the climate of the tropics. Fresh from a tree you lop the top off, stick in a straw, and drink. It is fresh water, slightly carbonated and with a hint of sugar to it. It is the single most refreshing thing I have ever tasted, and I don’t particularly care for coconut. Michael’s suggestion was to have a whole bunch of these, but with rum. Simplicity and elegance are combined in one deeply dangerous package. Asking Taki what he thought, he drove to some random house, collected our cash, and went inside, emerging with two bottles of potent local dark nectar. The night turned out well, though we did completely clean out Taki’s coolers. He did not seem to mind.

The rest of my time in ‘Eua was dominated by rain and tales more suited for a novel than a blog. Ronnie alone could occupy a cycle of sagas. This place was the highlight of my time in Tonga and I liked it well enough to return the following weekend to meet yet more good people (thanks Kathy, Harek, and Mari!). I will be back.

The remainder of my stay Tonga was work related, though I did rent a car for a day of touring. Doing so requires a Tongan driver’s license, which requires a trip to the DMV. I entered and there was nothing to suggest how to get in line, so after a few minutes of blankly wandering a well-dressed man came up and pointed out that I needed to take a number. Following his hand I noticed a pile of slips of paper with numbers scrawled on them, apparently in no particular order. When I started looking through them for the lowest one my guide interrupted and told me to just take one, it didn’t matter. He was proved right as the clerks seemed to yell random numbers, each of which set off a scurry of petitioners attempting to figure out who got there first. After holding on to #38 through a range of called number stretching into the high fifties I gave up and left. I simply told the rental counter that I had a license and no one seemed to care.

My rental car turned out to be a beater Toyota that was a woman’s personal car and full of her personal garbage. After informing me that she needed a ride home, she told me I was beautiful and asked how many children I had produced, and with how many mothers. Feigning ignorance of the language, I got her home and hit the road.

The trip produced the best example of Engrish I have seen in years (look at bottom):

The ornate gravesites decorated with upturned beer bottles in concrete were another revelation:

This billboard to the King was also high irony, given how the people see him and apparently how little he wanted to be a Tongan (as evidenced by his London cab for an official car, spending most of his year in Britain, and his refusal to cut short a Scottish hunting vacation when the local ferry sank):

Gotta love monarchy.

After a final farewell to Ronnie in Nuku’ it was time to move to the Samoas.

Tonga is poor and has its share of social problems, but the people are great, the place is of a mellow pace, and it is strikingly beautiful. I am strongly considering returning here to do some of my writing. Compared to Fiji, or my experiences so far in Samoa, Tonga is much more welcoming, tolerant, and ungentrified. You are not separated from the people, you do not have liveried hosts, and you cannot get a massage around the corner. You can find your inner islander. You can find corners to be left unmolested for as long as you wish. You can truly relax.

Yep.