Tapana

[Kyle]From Nuku we continued our tour of Tonga's Vava'u group by heading east to the south side of Tapana Island. More scenery. This time, the trip was short and upwind, so we motored. As we were doing so, we overtook a big monohull that seemed to be going in the same general direction. That was strange, we never pass anyone under power. They were taking a shorter route by cutting closer to the reefs than we were comfortable trying, so we kept getting just past them and then having to turn toward them. We attempted to call them on the radio just to let them know our intentions (no reply!). I was doing my best to put on a “We're not trying to hit you” face, but they seemed to either not notice or not care. I was worried they would end up following us into the anchorage, but they kept going straight ahead after we made our last turn. We ended up anchoring in a spot where the only other boats we could see were through the gap on the other side of Mala.

We had an afternoon snorkel and walk on the beach and had a repeat of our lovely experience at Nuku. Our big find was a large and very nervous looking lobster. We left him on his own to get larger and more nervous.

The little rock of coral and bushes at the end of the island we took to calling Chicken Rock

We took a swim ashore, and Kyle climbs a tree! Yikes!

More snorkelling, and more star fish