Fakatonga

One of the motivating factors for embarking on my New Zealand adventure this year was the Peace Corps placement of my friend Alicia in the tiny Pacific Island chain of Tonga. Only three hours from New Zealand, but isolated and tourist-free enough that I probably wouldn't have ever heard of it, much less visited, if not for Alicia. We had talked about crossing paths in the Pacific for at least a year, and then a few weeks ago I found a magically cheap flight and booked myself a ten-day holiday from my holiday.

The trip was incredibly rich and packed with new impressions and thoughts. I spent time with Peace Corps volunteers, crazy expats, Tongan families, as well as beautiful beaches and palm trees. Because Tonga receives few tourists, and because I was blessed by a friend who's now pretty much fluent in Tongan, I got to see a very varied slice of Pacific Island life and get some insight into the Peace Corps experience. I'll try to show you a bit of it via a (perhaps overly long) photo tour.

The domestic flight from the island of Tongatapu to the Ha'apai island chain. I flew over on a tiny six-seater plane, sitting next to the luggage, and gaping shamelessly at the islands and reefs and little waves that I pretended were dolphins. Those are colors I don't think I had ever seen before in nature.

I arrived in Ha'apai to a greeting party of Alicia, several curious Tongan children, and Mui Mui, Alicia's singularly adorable adopted dog. The pampered "palangi" (or white people's) dogs are a source of endless amusement to the Tongans, whose dogs - like the pigs and chickens - generally roam at will, feed where they can, and eventually are eaten by the family for a special treat. But don't worry...Mui Mui is off the menu now.

Most Tongans work at subsistence farming, and Alicia's neighbors kept us well provided with food from their bush plot. Like these "hopa" bananas, which we later fried for breakfast or made into countless loves of banana bread.

Sunsets in the Pacific seem invariably beautiful and are the Tongans' favorite time for a warm evening swim. Here's Alicia with the neighbor kids and Mui Mui, followed by the spectacular sunset on our night at Uoleva.

And here's Uoleva during the day. Thanks to Alicia's friendships with the residents of Ha'apai, we got to spend two gorgeous, practically free days on this uninhabited resort island, swimming and snorkeling on the reefs: a nice look at how the slightly less poverty-line tourists might see the Pacific.

We even got a free snorkeling trip on the way back.

We also got to spend a lot of time with Alicia's incredibly hospitable and generous neighbors. They invited me to spend a traditional Sunday with them, making lu in the umu (coconut oven, pictured above) and then dressing us up in Tongan mats to go to church (below...Alicia and Tupou) while our big meal cooked. The afternoon is then spent in a colossal nap.

And when I left, the family even presented me with some traditional Tongan gifts, including this gorgeous sea turtle shell, which the Tongans are allowed to harvest, but which U.S. Customs prohibits me from taking home. We called to ask and they basically laughed in our faces. Would you like some ivory and gorilla hands with that? Maybe a nice tiger-skin rug? O.K...point taken.

All in all, I had a wonderful stay, experienced incredible hospitality, and also got eaten alive by mosquitos, sunburnt, and stung by a tiny jellyfish. I grew quite attached, actually. I hope I get to cross paths with some of those beautiful people again soon.