July 31, 2013
Here’s the thing about Tonga, it is made up of over 177 different islands. There is a lot of islands with in a short distance from the main island in the Vava’u group- so basically if you have access to a boat you can have a lot of adventures; I was invited on one such adventure yesterday by a few Australians and one of their Tongan boyfriends (the one with the boat). I got the day of from school (a request that was sadly all to easy) and we took Po’uli’s boat to the outer island of ‘Eua Kafa.
We had such an amazing time snorkeling, fishing, hiking and generally just hanging out on an unpopulated island. The snorkeling was pretty awesome, I thought anyway, and fishing was rad (by fishing I mean I used a net once and caught some small sardine looking fish while Po’uli caught some puffer fish and needle fish with nylon attached to bamboo and a speargun). We made ‘ota ika (my favorite Tongan dish) from scratch with the fish we had caught and some onions and limes that we had brought. We even got our own coconut milk from gathering coconuts, breaking them open, grating them on a stick and squeezing the milk with the coconut husk. We also built a fire and cooked some of the fish and toasted the coconut. The food came out awesome and plentiful.
After eating we took this crazy long hike through the bush up the mountain to get to this old burial ground and lookout point. We tried to find the supposed path but we kept getting lost so instead we took the bush knife (machete) and made our own path. It was actually really fun just trying to find a way to the top all the while walking through spider webs and over fallen trees (all barefoot by the way), I felt like Indiana Jones. We finally made it to the look out and it was beautiful. The hike down however, was a bit more precarious than the hike up and we ended up having to use a lot of hanging tree branches and vines to propel down the sides in some places. We rewarded our efforts with another short snorkel and some cookies. As far as Tuesdays go I would say it was pretty solid, above average even…
a squid that Po'uli ha d got on our way to the island
'Eua Kafa
Po'uli and I at the ancient grave
chillin' in the old grave
the view from the look out
the crew
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