Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
lush grass. I never did figure out why they didn't eat the palm ropes. Dogs too were every-
where, skinny, mangy, and always pregnant with the next litter. Need I mention the chick-
ens? Somehow they all were fed.
There was a lot of contentment in these sleepy, little villages. The Tongans were extremely
poor in the Western sense, but they had strong family and social ties, never needing any-
thing more than the simple things in life. The children were raised by the village. If one
of the men was a bricklayer, he would lay bricks for the whole village and would never
go hungry. Another might be good with a hammer and saw; he too was useful around the
island. As such they were able, as a community, to live in enviable harmony. Very seldom
did we ever see any drunkenness or fighting or signs of bad Western habits.
They loved to dance, and the womenfolk would come down to the Paradise hotel dressed in
their best peasant gear, long swinging skirts hiding their usually heavy legs and large bare
feet. They had long, thick, blue-black hair which they tied up, though one or two would
have a curtain of hair flowing about. They mostly all had lovely facial features and gor-
geous white smiles, and I fell in love with more than just a handful. They thought Gavin
and I were pretty cool too; we could tell. They called us “mahanga palangi,” which means
white twins, and flirted endlessly with us. Twins were special in Polynesian culture, and
they always treated us with reverence. We didn't mind a bit. Penny kept a sharp lookout.
Our first exploratory jog took us out into the wild, green parts of the island. A dirt road
had been cut through the thick tropical growth, accessing scattered clusters of ramshackle
huts. Happy raggedy children raced after us, yelling unintelligibly. One even threw a stone
at us. We skidded to a halt and ran back after him. The mother of the child came swiftly
out the hut and yelled at him. We were never bothered by him again. A few of the skinny
island dogs were a nuisance. In the beginning, they came snarling up to us and chased us
as we ran nimbly by. One was given a good kick as he was about to sink his teeth into my
ankle. He fled yelping. After a couple of times of our six mile jog, the kids and the dogs be-
came used to the sight of the bandana'd mahanga palanges puffing silently past, and merely
waved at us. We ran this course almost the entire time we were there, every other day, ex-
cept weekends. We would end the run by having a cold shower in the little ablution block
on the wharf at the base of the hotel where we all tied our dinghies when ashore.
Our first few days at Vava'u we walked about town with Penny and her brother. He showed
us where the radio-telephone room was located in case we needed to phone off island. He
pointed out the post office, and Gavin and I discovered months worth of poste restante
mail, mostly from mom and dad at Applecross farm. Sheila had recovered from her bad
horse fall where she had been knocked unconscious for at least ten days; she had made a
full recovery. She and Elias, her Greek husband, were doing very well at their restaurant in
Springs. They had sold their sailboat, a Dutch Boeier on the Vaal Dam, and had bought a
