“The Forgotten Island”

With little happening at the school (note: “Tonga Time”) resulting in me being given Friday off to “conserve my energy,” I decided to take a holiday from my holiday and visit the southern island of ‘Eua (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27Eua, when I get back to Canada, ask me to tell you about that Soldier's Grave wiki mentions). I’d always been planning to go, but I didn’t think the opportunity would come so quickly.

‘Eua is an increasingly popular eco-tourism destination (so I was told), and this being the off-season I managed to visit it on the cheap. The island is rumoured to have some pretty spectacular caves, as well as Tonga’s greatest extent of dense rainforest including a few enormous banyan trees. Chiefly, though, I was looking forward to finally getting some swimming in, feeling that a week on a tropical island without swimming in the ocean was just inexcusable (note my excuse: the beaches are on the southern side of the island, about 10km from where I’m staying, and I haven’t gotten a bike yet).

I’d been told it was “rough,” but the ferry trip actually proved to be intense. About half of the two hour trip is protected by reefs, but then it gets pretty crazy. We pass over the Tonga Trench on the way, the second-deepest trench in the world, 10.8 km deep. I managed fine, but a kid sitting behind was crying…and then puking…and then crying because he was puking…for an hour.

I stayed at The Hideaway (http://www.kalianet.to/hideawayeua/index.html) which reminded me of the hostel I stayed at in Seattle – nothing extravagant, and really relaxed. Fortunately clean, too, another guy there told me about a stay at a Good Samaritan in the northern island where he found cockroaches, and then a giant spider, and THEN a huge (as in thick) millipede with pinchers. He didn’t make them fight, as was the practice in Afghanistan if anyone ever found more than one freaky thing. I went to the rainforest on Saturday, which was nice but not nearly as tree-full as I expected (i.e. not the Amazon). It rained hard all day Sunday, so I didn’t get to the really good caves. I’ll definitely go back; I’m thinking when the whales are in the area (note the activities section on Hideaway’s site). There are more self-guided tours, too (I took tour two). And I did take lots of pictures,

A sample of the rainforest we hiked through. Not all of it was this dense, though, this was probably the best part. The guy is Alex, a Czech I met at the Hideaway.

Here is the view from one of the lookouts, spectacular. The higest point on the island is about 300m, so you can hike down to the beaches below.

Me enjoying the view at the other lookout, and getting a little more tanned since the last picture :)

This is one of the massive banyan trees along the hike. Unfortunately you can't grasp the scale of it in theis picture, but just behind me the ground drops off and the tree is actually rooted about 5m below. It then extends very high above me. I thought about climbing it, but someone else who did reported that it was full of spiders, so I stayed on the ground.

Pine tree and palm tree. Impossible love? Perhaps not...