Commodore
October 16, 2023

Tuesday 17 October – everybody is heading south

It definitely feels like the end of the season, there are only 3 boats left here tonight. There is a big wind blowing, and for the next few days. We may head south tomorrow too, if it is not too windy.

The resort organised a taxi for us, to take us into Pangai, the main town in the Ha’apai islands. It is about 15 miles away, a slow road with loads of potholes. I think the suspension had gone in the taxi as each pothole sounded like the car was on it’s last legs. Interesting drive through little villages, appearing quite poor except for the immaculate schools and churches. We had to cross a big causeway to the next island where Pangai is, It must be pretty tricky crossing this in big storms. The road also crossed the runway of the airport, a bit like entering Gibraltar, big gates to stop you if a plane is coming.

We were meant to have checked into these islands when we first arrived, so we are rather late, and made some feeble excuses about weather to Customs. They were very sweet ladies and checked all our paperwork and passports, they filled out more forms which we have to bring back when we sign out. A bit of a pain as we were planning to head south, but will have to come back to check out, otherwise we will get into trouble when we finally go to the capital of Tonga in Tongatapu.

A few boats are currently leaving from here for NZ, but judging from the quality of stuff to buy in the shops, it will be worth provisioning in Tonga’s capital. Our first attempt to get petrol for the dinghy was abortive as they have run out of fuel and the supplies come by boat tomorrow. We headed to the market for fresh produce, it was pretty empty, but we did find some tomatoes and bananas. We then hit the supermarket with all our shopping bags anticipating a big shop! You would not know it was a super market as there is no signage, the place is run by some very friendly Chinese people, but it made the trading store I grew up with on the farm in S Africa look like Harrods! Everything here was covered in inches of dust, it is so dark, you can hardly see at the back of the shop and not a lot I wanted to buy. We finally got some frozen chicken and lamb that did not look too bad, a few tins of mushrooms and a couple of bags of crisps. As we checked out we were delighted to find some eggs that looked good. Rowan found a hacksaw which he has been looking for ever since we arrived in Tonga, he could only find blades in Neiafu. The hacksaw is because of our friend Patrice who got de-masted, you have to hacksaw through a lot of things to get the mast off the boat!

We got a lift back with a staff vehicle who had been dropping staff off at the airport, including our guide from yesterday. They are all finished for the season and heading home. We stopped at the petrol station out of town, and were lucky enough to get their last 10 litres.

We were pretty happy with our shop and headed back to PolePole. It was a lovely sunny day, which seems sad we had our whale trip in cloudy weather, but I think we should be grateful as 6 hours in the blazing sun would have been way too much. Rowan did some much needed bottom scrubbing of PolePole, NZ are very strict about the condition of the hulls of boats arriving, just like entering the Galapagos. I’m afraid it was too cold for me to help scrub and I had a very tricky sudoko to complete!