The best meal we had in Tonga was served in a palm leaf hut. We were the only guests, well, except for the goat. We disembarked on a deserted beach, followed a hand made sign up uneven stairs, past sheep, goats, chickens, and pigs. The structure at the top of the hill was primitively made out of particleboard on three sides and palm leaves on the veranda facing the bay. We would have turned around at this point had the…
The boys are so happy on the boat, even the 78-year-old boy. Everyone has a job sailing a 39 ft catamaran: setting the course, hoisting the sails, lowering the anchor, even driving the dingy. Everyone likes the vantage point of sitting in the captain’s perch. There are many mechanical components on the boat that attract a boy’s attention too: there is a control panel with lots of switches for the generator, batteries, lights and pumps; the captain’s chair has instruments for…
It’s hard to capture the beauty of a thousand islands in the Kingdom of Tonga. Small, perfect islands dot the horizon everywhere you look, overlapping in shades of green. Each one ringed by halos of sand, turquoise, then indigo. It really is a little slice of heaven. The islands sprout palm trees on top, against the sky’s own pantone shades of blue. Warm winds blow from the East. The air is humid, the water warm. The islands are sparsely populated…
We lost Thursday somewhere over the Pacific. We left San Francisco Wednesday night and arrived in New Zealand Friday morning, passing the International Date Line in between. I told the boys we experienced a blip in the space-time continuum, but they didn’t get the reference. It’s hard to wrap your head around the idea of time. We seemed to have travelled back in time as well. The taxis in Tonga are from a previous decade with seat belts optional, roll…