Anyone who’s spoken to me any time in the last 3 months or so will know I booked a trip to Tonga – I was almost as excited about this trip as I was about my entire trip – but again anyone who knows me knows I always counts down to holidays in a consistent and annoying way!!!
Tonga certainly never appeared on my initial itinerary, although I was always a bit vague on the bit after New Zealand! If you’re wondering how I ended up going to Tonga – it went like this – Roisin suggested going to Queenstown – I realised I have no desire to do winter sports and didn’t need to see more winter and decided I would go to Fiji! Flights to Tonga were cheaper – I googled Tonga – realised it would be an incredible place to visit (based mainly on the fact that they have humpback whales there and there is potential to swim with them) and the rest as they say is history. So after boring and annoying everyone I know in NZ (and back home) with my countdown the 18th of August finally rolled around and I was off to Tonga!
Tonga is a group of 176 islands (a lot of these islands are mounds of sand – actually they are little mounds of paradise with white sands and palm trees surrounded by beautiful coral and clear/blue/turquoise water – can water be clear, blue and turquoise – yes it can!), these islands are divided into 4 different groups and as I only had 12 days I would visit two of these groups (tongat’apu and Ha’apai).
I arrived on the main island of Tongatapu early on the Thursday morning – and it was raining – but it was warm so I didn’t really care and there were palm trees and and I was on holidays so life was pretty much all good. I just spent the day looking around the capital of nuku’alofa, not a very nice town but I picked up a few provisions and spent the evening chatting to some nice people Paulo (an Italian) and matthew and kate (a couple from France/England). I was surprised by how few Kiwi’s I met – almost all the backpacker type people I met were in a similar circumstance to me – on a working holiday visa in NZ, or some people were on longer trips in the South Pacific – I actually only met one young Kiwi couple in my whole time there!