Did you hear about the Tongan living in California who wanted to buy a nice little pony for his 9 year old daughters birthday party ;
Well it is a bit of a long story but as my friend in Samoa said, if you are going to Vava'u you should stick to eating the fish.
The flight to Tonga turned out uneventful but a little slow with the gear still stuck in the down position. So slow in fact I left Niue on Tuesday morning and did not arrive in Vava'u until Wednesday (crossing the date line for the third and last time between Vancouver and Australia) The officials at the airport tell me that JDY is the smallest plane that they have seen in Vava'u for a very long time. The last one being a Cessna 206 which turned into a dive site for awhile.
Vava'u turned out to be a little different than Samoa or Niue. It is a big yachty place being one of the most protected natural harbours in the South Pacific. However this is still the cyclone season so there are not to many people around.
On New Years Day in 2001 a very large cyclone hit Vava'u and wiped out most of the island. Since then the people of Vava'u seem to have decided that the tourists will be glad to pay extra to rebuild the town and prices for everything have gone up 200% to 300%, however the service around town seems to have remained the same - bad. Of course the Australian banks Commonwealth and ANZ have come to the rescue offering to loan people money at the meagre interest rates of about 20 -25% per annum (there does not seem to be any controls on what the banks can charge offshore from Australia). So basically Vava'u seems to be in a downward spiral with prices rising to the point where tourists are not coming (the main revenue earner for the area). The people haven't quite made the connection between revenue and happy tourists and continue to provide bad service at high prices.
But it is not all bad. The area is very beautiful with many islands set in turquoise waters. While here in Vava'u I spent three days diving which was fantastic.
Off to Fiji on Monday. Closely watching the progress of the evil sister cyclones Eseta and Erica. Eseta hit Nukalofa (about 300 km south of here) on Thursday night and Erica is a little nastier but appears to be moving south towards New Caledonia. So depending on how it looks on Monday I could end up hanging around Vava'u for a few extra days.
My good mates at LASAR in California and Blue Demon in Melbourne are coming to the rescue and getting me the required parts to make the landing gear go up and down again which I will tackle when I get to Fiji.
So until then.
JB
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