Hog heaven

If you’re looking for the perfect Pacific bar, you would not be too far off course if you set sail for W174.98 S18.65.This will take you to within swimming distance of the Aquarium Café, proprietors Mike and Lori Smith, whose claims to fame are increasing daily but include the fact that they are the only Smiths in the Tongan telephone book.

There is no aquarium at the Aquarian Café but there is a free internet connection. Any internet connection is rare in this part of the world and the handful of places that boast a service charge anything from 6 Pa’anga to 10 Pa’anga an hour. The $A is worth around 1.7 Pa’anga. A local Matamaka beer costs from 5 to 7 Pa’anga. As the internet is very, very slow, the Aquarium probably comes out ahead after paying for its internet service as customers have plenty of time to enjoy their cold Matamakas and watch the harbour traffic while they wait for their e-mails to upload and download. Holiday snaps? Might as well settle in for the day. Across the road at the back of the Aquarium is the Roman Catholic Church Sangato Sosefo koe tangata ngaue – St Joseph the Worker. We had spent Saturday doing some maintenance on the refrigeration system and cruising to an outer island where we anchored, swam, had a dinner of fish which we had bought from a passing fisherman in a dugout catamaran, and listened to the manta ray splashing around us. After a dawn swim, the water temperature is a steady 28C, followed by breakfast, we made it back to our mooring in Vava’u harbour and across in the dinghy to St Joseph’s for a 10am service. Well four of Van Diemen III’s crew did. Ross, the doc, decided to check his e-mails. Robbie Vaughan, Bob Story, Wizza Wise and me, walked in just as the first hymn was beginning and the parishioners were joined in some of the most amazing harmony to be heard outside the US gospel circuit. And the service, conducted by Father Chris Toulai, a mountain of a man, sounded as if it was not too distant from the traditional mass, though I am no expert in the Tongan tongue. It was a privilege to be present. Fresh from church we joined a former director of agriculture, forestry, fisheries and food, Haniteli Fa’anunu, and his wife Lucy, at their beachside botanical garden where Haniteli had agreed to provide a roast piglet, fish cooked in coconut milk, spicy chicken curry, corned beef wrapped in taro leaves, a salad and cooked kumera. Pigs (and piglets) are everywhere. Captain Cook introduced them here (and dogs) and the locals are most pleased. Mike Russell, a US navy photographer took this photo - the US has an Operation Pacific Partnership - beginning here in a fortnight and he and his advance party have been great company. The garden is an Eden and it has been a life work for the easy going Haniteli, who relishes the opportunity to show its treasures to interested visitors. He is a man with a searching intellect and great sense of humour, as is his delightful second wife, a Tongan beauty. With a population of just 200,000 or so, half of whom live abroad, most in the US, and the bulk of the remainder in New Zealand and Australia, Tonga is not a wealthy nation. Almost every crop produced here can be grown more cheaply in Thailand, India, Malaysia, Indonesia or the Philippines. Haniteli is hoping to find niche products that can be manufactured from the traditional medicinal plants used by Tongans over the past millennia. The satellite communications I hoped to use has effectively died. Consultations are ongoing but it would seem that updates will be restricted to shore trips to islands en route to the US. Maybe not, but I am not hopeful. We should sail for Samoa, weather permitting, tomorrow.