Mele Tonga

So we found a new place to stay at called Mele Tonga guesthouse and checked in that Friday. This was a lady's house (not so nice) with her young daughter Ana, her 11 or 12 year old nephew Nae Ata (the man about the place -- who was either living with her for 4 months, or had been living for her since he was 4 months old, couldnt tell which: Gen thought the former, I heard the latter.). She seemed to be a widow, because in the Lonely Planet the place was run by a Mr. and Mrs. however, she had the nephew who would do the manly things, like hauling water out of the cistern when the city line broke (which it did virtually every ten minutes during our three night stay).

So our bungalow was a blue shack by the sea. Compared to Lifita's (i spelled it wrong in the last blog post, but you can see pictures now!) the place was heaven! It was quiet, it was private (being us and the family.) We had a private beach, ah.... On day two (saturday 1 November -- I am back to knowing the dates!), the others went again to get their flights from Ha'apai to Tonga tapu on monday so that we can all make the flight from Tonga to Aukland Monday night arriving Tuesday 4 november in Aukland at 1:20 AM; I dont know why there was a problem the day before, but there was, so I decide to hang out and relax, seeing as I am on vacation.

So i am reading my book in the AM shade and cool for Tonga (seems cool to me compared to Indonesia), and a local fellow comes up to me named Stanley, and offers me a young coconut. Now, for those of you that don't know young cocunut juice is delicious, and very good for you, a factoid I informed the Antaricans too many times until it became one of our inside jokes. Plus, the deal with our hostess was room and board. She made us breakfast and dinner, but we were on our own for lunch, which since we were now out of town meant no lunch. That was fine as dinner was enormous every night (breakfast consitsted of fried doughy biscuits with jam).

Anyway, when stanley offered me young coconut, i thought "hurray, lunch!" He chops it open for me (if anyone has seen Cast Away with Tom Hanks, those are young coconuts, so they ARE very hard to get into). And I ask him "how do i get the fleshy coconut out of the hole he gave me without a spoon?" No problem, Stanley makes me a Tongan spoon, which involves him hacking off a tree branch and whittling it down with his machete so that one end has a curved side and a flat side sort of "spoon" shaped. He shows me how you use the spoon edge to cut one side of a slice of cocunut flesh and then the other side, then use the spoon to peel the flesh off of the hard shell and into the coconut center. Fishing out the slice of coconut from the juice inside and voila, tasty snack!

So i am sitting there enjoying my snack and beverage in one, when the others return ... with bad news. The plane is sold out, no tickets available. This is a near disaster as it is the only way to make the return plane to Aukland. But our hostess calls the airline people and begs and begs on our behalf. She returns with news that on Monday there may be a chance that they will bring in the "big plane" in the morning, and we can all get on it. Why do we have to wait until monday when it is saturday you may ask? Arent there flights on sunday, too? No, because the Tongans, by law, cannot do any work on Sunday, and i do mean ANY work, no labor, no service, no restaurants, no taxis, no airplanes, no NOTHING. They are not even allowed to swim in the sea, or fish, or farm, or anything. They can only go to church (which seems to have services about five times a day every day -- 4 AM, 6 AM, 12 noon, 6 PM and 10 PM -- judging by the bells and the singing , as previously described). So there is nothing to it but to wait and relax as best we can on sunday and pray that we get out on Monday and all make it safe and sound to Aukland!

Until next time, Newo out