Niuatoputapu, Tonga

Our 24 hour, overnight trip from Samoa to the first tiny island in the country of Tonga, Niuatoputapu, went relatively smoothly under the light of a full moon. We arrived in the anchorage at 9:30 am. But the tricky part is that Tonga is the first country of the world to begin a new day, so we left Samoa on Tues and traveled our 24 hours and arrived in Tonga on Thursday. We lost the whole of Wed. Sept 22! But the good thing is that when we come home we will get another day back, so our lives aren't shorter by a day, whew! There is a wonderful "yachtmen's" ambassador on shore, named Sia. She saw us entering the area, contacted us on the VHF radio in perfect English and asked if we would like her to contact the customs officials to come down to our boat. Well that certainly beats the 2 km walk into the village to find the appropriate building for customs, health, etc. (no buildings have signs yet due to fresh re-builds from the tsunami) and then walk back to the dock and dingy back to the boat. We told her "Yes, Thank you." About 12:30 we hear the van honking on the dock and set out to pick up the 5 officials. We are beginning to understand how this part of the world operates and after sandwiches and cold soft drinks and lots of chatter, we have all of our paper work done and have delivered everybody back to the dock, with the promise that when the bank opens tomorrow, we will get the correct amount of "pa'anga" (Tonga dollars, approx $1.00 CDN to $1.80 Tonga). The balance of the day is spent cleaning the boat up and catching an early night to make up for lost sleep in our travels.

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