The end of the kingdom... or something like that

Already in Samoa have we have heard that a lot of patience and time is necessary for travelling in Tonga. We should make our own experience very soon. Early in the morning we arrive in the southern island group of Tonga. Since we want to fly to the northern islands called Vava'u we check right at the airport whether we can catch a flight on the very same day. The lady at the information desk tells us, that there are no seats available on the next flight but on the flight in the afternoon. She recommends to go to the national airport. We drive around the runway to get there ;-) After looking for quite a while for a person in charge I finally find an airline-representative. She quickly checks her papers to tell us that there were no seats on any flight available today. However, we could stay and try to get on stand-by. Initially we agree, but after a while we change our minds and try to find her again. Again it takes quite a while to find her. I ask her about seats for tomorrow's flight. She tells me she has to check with the main office and disappears again. After about half an hour I start searching for her again. I find her hiding behind a truck. As soon as she sees me approaching she calls the town office to find out that the flights are book as well and she tells me we should see an agent in town. But how do we get out of this place? After asking several people a "taxi-driver" appears out of nowhere. As soon as we tell him where we want to go he gives us a thousand reasons why we shouldn't stay there and where we should go instead. Afterwards we find out that the place he recommended is famous for renting out the rooms more than once. During the day the hotel staff removes all the luggage from the room to rent it out by the hour to other customers. Welcome to Tonga ;-) But coming back to our flight to Vava'u. In the town office we ask again whether the next flight to Vava'u has seats available. The agent tells us that we could fly at 2 PM if we'd like. Hello? After having explained to her that the lady at the airport told us that no seats will be available all of a sudden she agreed on that. And further more she explained that there will be no seats available for next couple of days. Great! Luckily, Ben our host from the Alibaba guesthouse, was so kind to drive us. We move to the second airline (yes, yes, Tonga has even 2 airlines), Ben goes into the office and says "We're here to pick up the tickets for tomorrow. Are they ready?" And who would have believed that, they were ready. Uhhhmmmm.... That's how Tonga works.

The aircraft is a beautiful antique DC 3. We're excited. A real nostalgic flight across the islands of Tonga. Beautiful. And from far away we can't even see the trash and litter all over Tonga

We stay in the best hotel in Vava'u after bargaining for the best room for the price of a backpacker's accommodation. You only have to be persistent enough or be called Chris ;-)

In contrast (and there are several of them) to Samoa, there are no beautiful beaches on the main island of Vava'u. Which means a lot of money has to be spent to go on island tours, etc. We enjoy some diving and sailing trips. But we don't feel really safe in the water, since an American has been chewed up by a tiger shark earlier this year. Vava'u is famous for it's big game fishing and whale watching because the pacific around the islands is very deep and the perfect place for big fishes. The whale seasons is just about to start and the only big animals we see are some harmless black tip sharks.

Forever on Tonga?

We thought, that we were done with our flight schedule chaos. But we weren't. Two days before our scheduled return flight to the southern islands we hear that there are no flights or boats leaving the island. The DC 3 needs special fuel which they ran out of because the container with the new load hasn't arrived yet from New Zealand. The other airline has only 1 aircraft which got stuck in Fidji because the mechanic for the weekly maintenance somehow didn't show up. We couldn't find out what happened to the ferry. We try to find available flights, but nobody knows anything. The pilot is supposed to be the best informed person and he is expected to stay for the night at our hotel. Unfortunately, the flight has been cancelled as well. Just by coincidence we meet the manager of the Vava'u airline office. But unfortunately she doesn't know more than we do, but she ensures us, that we will fly tomorrow in any case at some point. We hope she's right. The next morning we find out that we will fly at 4PM instead of 3PM No problem, since we can stay in our room. Reto is taking a nap (as always) and I try to prep my shell-treasures for Australian customs when the phone rings at 12PM. The receptionist says we should be ready in 5 minutes because our flight will leave at 1PM. Perfect! We pack our stuff and jump in the bus. At the airport we're the only people there and no aircraft is in sights. Finally, a plane shows up and we take off at 3PM. Only 2 more passengers seem to have managed to get on the plane with us. We are looking forward to leave with Air New Zealand.