The Kingdom of Tonga

Hello everyone! Sorry it has been so long since I've posted. I've only been back from mid-semester break in Tonga for a few days and I've actually been a little bit busy. But I have to fill you all in on Tonga.

So Claire, Sarah, and I took a bus to Christchurch (a city about 5 hours north of Dunedin) on the morning of Good Friday. We decided to spend a couple days in Christchurch since we weren't leaving for Tonga until Monday and it is cheaper to fly to Auckland from Christchurch than from Dunedin. So on Friday we were tourists in Christchurch. We got starbucks and sat on a tram that took us on a tour around town. There are lots of nice parks in Christchurch that we got to see. There is also a cathedral in the square in the middle of the city which we looked around. On Saturday we rented a car for the day and drove to Akaroa, which is a french settlement about an hour and a half from Christchurch. It isn't really french anymore but they preserve some of it by calling things "le restaurant" and "le mini put". We bought a tour book and took ourselves on a walking tour around town, which was very cute. On our way back to Christchurch we stopped at a cheese factory where we bought a sample of cheese and crackers and then we stopped and did some wine tasting at a winery - very mature of us! Later that night we ended up at a random Indian restaurant for no reason other than that they offered a free glass of wine with dinner. BUT it was the most amazing Indian food any of us have ever had! We raved about it and licked are plates clean! It was so satisfying that we literally talked about it for a week afterwards. It was sligtly sad though because we loved it so much that we planned to go back when we were going to be in Christchurch for a couple hours on the Sunday we flew back. We were literally excited about it all week, got to Christchurch and lugged hour heavy bags around town only to find out that is was closed!!!! We were actually so upset. We decided that even though it wouldn't be the same we had to find an Indian restaurant because we had been craving Indian food for so long. So we literally ran around town with our heavy bags trying to find another Indian place to go to.......but they were all closed (it was 3 p.m). It was VERY upsetting. We had some good asian food instead but it just wasn't the same.

On Sunday we went to mass at the Christchurch Cathedral (a pretty big service) and then we flew to Auckland where we flew out of to Tonga early the next morning.

So Tonga...
We had tried to book accomodation in Tonga beforehand but we hadn't received confirmation from the hotel we were trying to book. We tried booking over the internet and when they hadn't confirmed we called and found out their internet had been down because there had been a hurricane. So we faxed our booking, but again no confirmation. So when we got to the airport we took a taxi to the hotel anyway because we didn't know of any other place. However, when we got there it wasn't exactly what we were expecting. It was alright, not the nicest place, but our biggest concern was that "waterfront" meant the hotel was across the road from a harbour area and a 30 minute drive from the nearest beach....not exactly what we were hoping for. And because they didn't have a cot like we had planned on using to save money it was going to cost us more than we hoped. But we didn't know of any other places to stay. Sarah and Claire walked down the road to the tourism bureau but it was closed since it was Easter Monday. By some stroke of luck on their way back some tourist drove by in a van and asked if they needed a brochure.....so they took it. We tried phoning some of the hotels in the brochure but none of the numbers worked so we had to ask reception to phone another hotel to see if they had space for us and we were in luck! So we took a taxi out to a small resort of lots of huts on the beach. We were pretty much just relieved to be by a beach. We were really lucky the people were so nice to us and offered us 2 rooms with a double bed in each at $100 less than the regular price because they knew we were on a budget! It was a pretty crazy day and to be honest we were slightly worried that the trip was going to be a bit of a failure/ waste of money. Then they gave us a huge plate of free, fresh fruit - bananas, papaya, coconut - and our spirits were forever lifted!

So Tonga in general:
Tonga, as we found out, is not actually that much of a tourist destination (which probably explains why it had the cheapest flights). There aren't that many places to stay and it is a very uncommercial place. It is cool though because it is actually very safe as well. It is perfectly safe to walk around outside the resort and in town and all the people are so nice. There are a lot of delicious bananas. There are dogs, pigs, and chickens everywhere. On the roads, in the water, everywhere. It was very nice and hot and sunny most of the time and we came back with some nice colour. We did A LOT of reading. We tried buying most of our food at the market and making our own meals rather than buying all our food at the resort. The food at the resort was very expensive and not all that tasty - so we opted for saving money and living off of bananas, bread, crackers, and tuna.

On the second day we were in Tonga we went on a day driving tour of the island. We saw the places where Abel Tasman and Captain Cook landed, some cool blowholes, a branched coconut tree, the market in town, the Queen's palace (it's more of a house but they do have royalty), "The Old Tonga" - a little replica village of what Tonga used to be like, and a couple nice beaches with caves by them. One of the caves normally charges people to go in and there are lights in there and water you can swim in, but when we got there no one was there and the lights weren't working...for some reason we decided to venture in anyway in the dark, only lit slightly by a small light on Sarah's phone. It really seemed quite crazy at the time.

That is all I can really think of about Tonga. It was sad to leave but then we realized we were coming back to New Zealand...which is amazing so who can complain? Just a little chillier! Although my flat has decided to turn our heat pump on so it's actually warm inside!!! Exciting!