Clearing In to Tongatapu

October 31, 2014

Our first morning there, all four of us dinghied the 1.5 miles from the Big Mama anchorage over to Nuku’alofa. It was difficult to find a good place to park the dinghy as the little dock was a bit rickety with rusty bolts and other protruding sharp objects that don’t exactly agree with an inflatable RIB. Finally, we found a spot we were comfortable with, and we started walking in the direction of where we thought the customs office was. After asking for directions once, we found it, about a 10-minute walk in the opposite direction as town from the wharf. Walking back, we were getting a bit hungry, but we didn’t really see anywhere we wanted to eat, so we decided to walk all the way to town. But first, we made a stop at the liquor store near the wharf to take stock of what they had available and what the prices were. From the wharf to town was a little over a mile, and we had lunch at a tourist friendly cafe called “Friends.” It was OK, even if a bit pricey. After that we explored the fresh market and several grocery stores in preparation for the provisioning we would need to do before departing for New Zealand. We took a taxi back to the wharf and then had a very wet, bouncy, upwind dinghy ride back to Big Mama’s. Our taxi driver, like pretty much every Tongan we met in Tongatapu, has been to the U.S. before, and they all like to tell you about what they experienced, what they liked and didn’t like. But mostly it was all positive.