Tonga: A Tropical Paradise Complete with Pigs Roaming the Streets

Nice clean sand
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Tonga, for those of you that do not know it is a country in the South Pacific  between the countries of Fiji and Cook Islands (go look it up on your map - because basically it is in the middle of nowhere).  Anyway, it is plenty hot here and we are having a really great time. 

I would like to start by doing my best to describe Tonga - specifially Nuku'alofa - the capital city.  On first impression you would think that it is like any other developing country - you know, dirty.  Well it pretty much is unfortunately.  The beaches are all littered with garbage, the cars look like they have all been put through the ringer or left in the sea to rust for a while and then pulled back out ready for business, there are few shoes for a lot of feet, houses that we would consider condemned and the list goes on. 

they are probably the tackiest things I have ever seen next to our idea of decorating in the 70's

Our beach even had it's own blowholes
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The real treat about Tonga however is that it is not about first impressions - it's the beautiful surprises found around every corner and the quirky unique things to experience as tourists that make it amazing.  Keleti beach with it's blow holes literally "blows" your mind!  Michael and I spent a whole day just sitting on a beach watching them.  The powerful sounds and sights of the water hitting the reefs was unlike anything either of us had ever experienced before.  It was great - especially since we had the whole beach to ourselves for the entire day.  Tonga is relatively untouched by tourism - although it is growing - but it means that for the moment tourists can literally have an entire cove to themselves for the whole of their stay - it's great.  There are many more beautiful things as well, you will have to check our website for those, but I want to get to the quirky, because in my opinion they have been the best part of our trip so far.

Heather being a beach bookworm
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To start with you have to see the grave sites here in Tonga.  Now I don't mean to be disrespectful - I know it's just a different way of doing things, but they are probably the tackiest things I have ever seen next to our idea of decorating in the 70's.  Really they are unlike anything you can imagine. 

The next kind of bizarre thing is that their political system is quite "wonky" for lack of a better word.  I am not even sure the locals themselves fully understand it - or at least nobody describes it to us in the same way!  Go ahead and ask them, everybody has their own opinion and they will spend the whole cab ride telling you about it.  Quite hilarious really.  Michael and I also find it funny that we went to church with the King and Queen last Sunday.  We went to the King and Queen's Free Methodist church and sure enough they were there with the rest of us commoners - well the Queen was anyway the King was in the U.S.! 

Mike checking out the blowholes...
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The other item of interest is, like many other countries, the traffic.  Now I am not sure quite how they manage this with the few amount of people that they have, but every day there is a traffic jam.  There is really only one main road in town and every day it is plugged!  It's a problem when driving, but it is actually more of a problem when walking!  With everyone in such a mad panic to get in and around others it is difficult to know when to cross the street - so basically we have taken to following the dogs.  They are really smart here (and numerous) and they have saved our butts on a number of occasions!  We were commenting on the sheer number of them yesterday afternoon and lamenting on why they do not do anything to control the pet population when to our right one dog hopped on another and went to town so to speak.  It provided us with an endless afternoon of entertainment - so we figured maybe it's a tourist attraction??

And liking what he sees
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Heather and Michael