Reacquainting ourselves with lovely Neiafu
”Just Later.”
Okay. So every couple of hours, we would walk over there with the same result. Even though it was on the other side of town, Neiafu is pretty small, so it wasn’t that far out of our way from whatever else we were doing. Still, the midday tropical sun can be brutal and any unnecessary walking can seem three times as far as it actually is. Added to this was that there was a tropical depression stalled nearby that was pumping even more moisture into the already humid air. The main thing was that we were in a kind of limbo until we got the all clear, so we had to keep forgoing one thing or another for yet another trip to see the Health Inspector.
In the meantime, we went to the market for some nice, fresh veggies and various hardware and auto parts stores looking for replacements or at least their closest approximations to various things that broke or wore out on the passage. We also squeezed in time for a snack at the Tropicana Café and a long chat with Greg, the owner. Our best errand, if you could call it that, was getting sim cards at the Digicel store. This was mainly because they have really good air conditioning, but also because the nice lady behind the counter could not be stumped by technical issues, no matter how obscure. She was actually a little too good because we could have used another ten minutes in that glorious air conditioning.
By the end of the day, we showed up yet again to the Customs dock with bags laden heavy with booty from our other errands. This time, our “Come back later” was upgraded to “Come back tomorrow”.
Ugh! We pressed him for a specific time and he grudgingly agreed to 10:00am. He seemed to not understand that we were planning on going anywhere other than Neiafu for our month in Tonga.
Since we had spent our first day on “jobs”, we had been hoping the second could be at least primarily “fun”. We just had to pass the health inspection first.
We showed up at 10:00am and of course the guy wasn’t there. Most of the officials we ran into seemed not to know of our agreement and they were too busy with a newly arrived cargo ship to have time to worry about us. We understand that island time is not necessarily like the German railroads, so we made ourselves comfortable. That turned out to be a good move because the woman at the quarantine office seemed loathe to leave us at her unattended office while she went to the ship. She got the ball rolling and made sure it kept rolling. She had nothing to worry about. I actually chased out a curious chicken that had wandered in and was pecking at some guy’s backpack, trying to get to his lunch.
The Health Inspector arrived and was very apologetic about how busy he had been. The health inspection consists of taking a general history (“How are you doing?”) and watching to see if you freak out at exchanging a perfectly good 100 Pa’anga note, which is the King’s legal tender in Tonga, for a faded carbon copy of a receipt, which is not. Well, at least we could exchange our Q flag for a Tongan courtesy flag, which meant we could also leave town whenever we liked.
On to the “fun”. We decided that our first order of business was to climb Mt. Matau, Vava’u’s highest point. Of course, by then it was approaching noon again and there we were trudging up a hill in the sun. We have got to start getting up earlier.
Exploring Mt. Talau - the highest peak in the Vava'u group.
Once we were out of Neiafu, the route was in the woods, so we had plenty of shade. The flat topped Matau had a few different viewpoints looking in different directions. Getting up there ended up being worth the walk.
We had also been hoping to enjoy a nice pizza at The Refuge, but were distressed to find it was no longer there. It wasn’t just that they had moved out. The building had been flattened to make room for something else. That was a bummer. We really liked that place.
Undaunted, we headed off in search of a new pizza place just out of town, based on one brief mention of it on the morning radio net the day before. We walked and walked until we were sure we had gone too far, when suddenly we spotted a sandwich board in the distance. It might have said something about pizza, but we would have to get closer to find out.
Kyle checks in with the local parrot before finally returning to the boat to hoist our Tonga Flag
It turned out it did. And, according to the sign anyway, they were open. They didn’t look open. In fact, it didn’t even look like a business, just someone’s house. We cautiously poked our heads in and saw several tables set up on the front lawn. Then a guy popped out, introduced himself as Charles and welcomed us warmly and insisted he was indeed open. He fired up the oven and brought us menus. While we waited for our pizza to cook, Charles filled us in on his whole story.
He used to be the owner of The Refuge. According to him, his landlord got a much better offer for the prime space from a developer who wanted to build a charter base/hotel there. When The Refuge couldn’t match the rent, they were summarily booted out to make room for the new guy. He seemed happy with his new location, though. Even though it is a bit out of the way, he’s got an even better view of the harbor now, without the previous parking lot in the way. He says he’s got a good reputation and gets plenty of business from not just visitors like us, but locals as well. He credits his partner Happy as being the pizza genius. She didn’t appear until after ours was already made, but it still tasted pretty good to us.
Charles arrived by sailboat in 2004 and decided he was going to stay. In addition to the restaurant, he also wrote the first comprehensive cruising guide for Tonga. We flipped through it while we ate and he gave us lots of good advice on places to go. We thanked him and promised we would return again before we left Vava’u.
We walked off our meal getting back to the boat. We could finally switch flags and go find a quiet place to anchor.
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