24 May - Noodle and Rocky's Excellent Adventure

0600 position 15-57S 173-46W. At anchor in 32 feet, sand bottom,
Niuatoputapu.

After a pancake and Canadian bacon breakfast we cleaned up the boat, and
I dinghied ashore to await the officials. At nine o'clock they arrived
and I brought them, a gal from customs/immigration and a guy from
agriculture, back to the boat. These officials are not boat people and it
seems that they are all quite large. Getting them into the dinghy, onto
Moku pe'a, and then back to shore without dropping any of them into the
water is a success all in itself. I was also concerned that we might have
a paperwork problem because our customs clearance papers from Christmas
Island listed "Cook Islands" as our next port of call. We went to the
Cook Islands, but as you recall, there were no officials on Suwarrow like
we expected, so we couldn't check in and out there. We didn't want to
tell the Tongan officials the truth for fear of being caught in the
bureaucratic version of the "Twilight Zone". I can just picture it, "But
sir, you went to the Cook Islands. You must produce a clearance document
from that country." So instead, we told them that the wind was too
strong from the wrong direction and we couldn't get to the Cook Islands so
came here instead. That satisfied them, and our official entrance into
Tonga went without a hitch.

This island was badly damaged by the tsunami resulting from the earthquake
off of American Samoa in 2009. Many homes and buildings have been built
since then replacing the ones destroyed during the tsunami. The island
has no power distribution system, so the island is dark after the sun
sets. Most of the roofs have catchment systems for collecting fresh
water. The government compound, which houses the bank, post office,
customs, immigration, and high school, has a generator that powers
computers, printers, and cell phone chargers during working hours. There
must be a cell phone tower with its own generator on the peak of the
island's mountain. The locals (government officials anyway) use cell
phones for communication. We biked to the bank after our clearance
officials departed because we needed local currency to pay our clearance
fees. I noted that the bank teller called someone, probably the bank's
office in Nukualofa, to get the current exchange rate. So they also
apparently have a microwave or submarine cable connection with the other
island groups in Tonga to facilitate communications. After changing money
and paying our clearance fees we got on our bikes and went on "Noodle and
Rocky's excellent adventure", a bike tour around the island.

We didn't have a map, but figured the island isn't that big. How lost
can we get? We did find the island's "supermarket" on the corner of
"Main" and "Broadway" down town. We entered in search of fresh fruit. Of
course, without electricity there is no refrigeration, which limits the
supermarket's inventory options. Canned and packaged foods, much like you
would find at the bottom of Moku pe'a's storage lockers, lined the
shelves. The only fresh fruit they had was watermelon, and I couldn't fit
one of those in my backpack. Rocky bought a warm soda, and we continued
on our adventure.

Main Street also housed the only gas station on the island where fuel is
dispensed from 55 gallon drums with a hand pump. The two attendants gave
us a cheerful hello as we passed on our clown bikes.

The long and winding road led us to the extreme end of the island where we
found the "international airport", a grass strip complete with grazing
horses. I'm not sure you really want to fly into Niuatoputapu if you
don't have to. I don't think you have many options for air travel here
anyway. It didn't look like the strip is used very much. The stacked
empty 55 gallon drums indicate that the same system used to fill vehicles
in town is used to refuel planes at the airport. Your other commercial
option for travel here is the monthly inter-island cargo ship. It is due
in just over a week which helps explain the empty shelves in the
supermarket. In the airport "terminal" we found an island map posted on a
wall that showed a "major road" leading the rest of the way around the
island, so we decided to take it.

The major road turned out to be an overgrown four wheel drive track,
similar to what you would expect to see in an episode of "Lost". After an
hour or so of kidney jarring, back straining, butt aching pedalling, we
arrived back at the village where we started the day's adventure.

It's not fair for me to bring up cribbage only during the good times, but
I have now won three in a row. From a dismal 8-3 tally a few days ago the
score is now 8-6, almost respectable. Rocky has mixed feelings. He is
pleased that his tutoring is showing some results, but is upset that his
tutoring is showing these results.