Cave Exploring

My family is Ba’hai, and since there is only a handful in the Village they don’t attend church, which for me meant I got to sleep in and then hang out all Sunday after the Saturday night Kava circle. This particular Sunday my elder host brother Koni wanted to take me cave exploring, or really he wanted me to take pictures of him in the caves…

This is Koni Leka (Leka is the word for Jr.) in front of the entrance to the caves.

Me, Koni Leka, my younger host brother Vita and Tonga (my host sisters husband who happens to only be 21...I feel so like a baby in this house) went through the bush into these amazing giant caves! They took me deep into the caves but before we got to the good parts we had to walk through a pitch black section, which would have been fine (I mean I can handle the dark) except that all I could hear was the sound of hundreds of bats hanging above me. I was thinking that if I fell I would get eaten and then I would be the example Peace Corps gives to its new recruits about wondering around in unfamiliar places. The caves opened up shortly and it was just purely phenomenal after that. The rock was all crystallized from the minerals in the water and there were stalactites everywhere!

Me and Koni Leka

This is Vita (David)

This is an opening at the top of one of the caverns. It reminded me of the cave in the first Batman movie.

Tonga, Koni Leka and me

These were deep in one of the caverns. I wish the picture showed just how sparkly everything was, it was like someone went in the caves and throw-up glitter all over the place!

Tonga is being ver Tongan in this picture- they normally never smile. How sad is my life that I am the oldest one out of all three of us?

After wondering around the caves and crawling into dark caverns, we made our way out of the caves. As we exited back through the bat-infested entrance my host brother decided to show me how if you hit the hanging rock it rings like a gong (this was to accompany his story about how the caves were used by old Tongan Armies for battle)…. As soon as the rock rang all the bats took flight and I was covered in thousands of bat bites!.... Okay so that was only in my head but wouldn't that have been crazy?! Luckily bats must be timid creatures because they only chattered at the sound…

We continued our adventure through the bush on our way to the ocean. About halfway to the ocean they made Vita climb a palm tree and get us down coconuts. Vita obliged by scurrying up the tree and knocked down 4 coconuts. They skinned the coconuts and the poked a hole in the top so we could drink from them all in a mater of 2 minutes- a skill I hope to obtain before my end of service.

This is Vita climbing the coconut tree

As we got within 50 yards of the ocean Koni started telling me that in Tonga when you swim in the ocean you have to take off all your clothes so the witch doesn’t get you…. Now I am not one to just fall for anything but I thought I would play into this a little bit, also I didn’t want to go completely refuse and look like a prissy white boy, so I striped down to my underwear and was waiting until they made the final move to go full monte. Of course they didn’t, and we all ran like crazy people to the ocean in just our underwear. The ocean here is incredible! It is not too cold and it is so clear you can see your feet!  It was so nice I forgot about all of the deadly animals that live in it and can kill you if you step on them (I guess water safety training was as detrimental as I thought).

This is the view from our way back from the ocean through the bush