I’ve been doing my best to behave since the debauchery that was last Friday night and obeying the finger wagging via email of my mom who didn’t like it to much when she read that her daughter didn’t remember what she had for dinner. I’m sure she wasn’t surprised as I’ve always been a bit of a party girl but even from thousands of miles away, my mom can still get onto me and put me in my place. That’s some pretty powerful parenting, huh?! Okay, okay…we over indulged one night. Shame, shame but it sure did make for some awesome sudo memories for me. All I’ve been able to say in emails to folks back home about this place is that it is Tonga ‘tastic and I’ll tell ya, it’s making it hard to act right! Let’s see…for the first time in months we’ve got more than enough restaurants and bars to entertain us about 30 yards from the boat and getting two for every dollar in the exchange rate has allowed us to partake in those. Getting there was a bit of a challenge seeing how we still have no dinghy and we had pretty much resorted to sticking our thumbs out and hitching rides to and from shore. But our good friends Christa and Richard from s/v Karma had a spare dinghy and 4 hp engine on board and have been gracious enough to let us borrow it for the time being. So as far as the dinghy search goes, here’s a quick, hopefully brief, update—-
We thought this place would be a gold mine for a new dinghy with the moorings fleet here. Oh it is…just none of them are for sale. For days Drew and I were teased by a stack of about 15 dinghys, one on top of the other on shore, but they all belong to the private yachts in the harbor and are spoken for. Well crap…there goes that idea. We have worked daily to find something to replace our poor dinghy but let’s face it, we aren’t settling for anything less than we wanted and don’t feel like we should have to, even if it means leaving here without one and moving onto Fiji and searching there. That being said, a restaurant owner here heard Drew was looking and he may or may not be interested in selling. So we’ve resorted to going to his restaurant for the past two days and we’re hoping to eventually wear him down and that we might be able to persuade him. If not, we’ll enjoy Karma’s spare for as long as they’ll allow us and we’ll move on and search in Fiji—-
To top off the bars and restaurants there are birthday parties everywhere! Today we celebrate Allan’s 50th from s/v Lovesong and last Saturday Seth & Elizabeth of Honeymoon threw a joint birthday bash, which I made a cake for that turned out super yummy. Check out their website to read all about that as it was definitely a b-day extravaganza ! Yesterday Drew and I wandered over to Tonga Bob’s to work on the fellow with the dinghy only to find out that night the restaurant hosts a drag queen show for the Faka ladies of the island. Well we weren’t missing out on that and our bartender at the moment was going to be in the show. Drew went to the restroom and he proceeded to tell me that the two young gentlemen, roundabout 13 years old, in school uniforms who had been playing pool when we arrived told him to put something in Drew’s drink to make him woozy so that they could take me with them. I told Drew as soon as he came back and he brought to my attention that their name tags on their uniforms said prefects, meaning they were school leaders. Rather scary….goes to show that the strict religious foundation here in Tonga might be wavering a bit. We did in fact gather a group of other cruisers and ventured off to check out the show last night and our shy little bartender who’d served us up a couple of beers that afternoon was long gone and in his place was THE entertainer of the evening swinging from the rafters and lip synching to Celine Dion in panty hose, angel wings, and a diaper. HILARIOUS! We were all in tears from laughing so hard and it was a great night. There is little room for close minded people in the cruising world, trust me.
We’re off to cruise the island with Lovesong, Karma, Zen, & Flashback today in 4 wheel drive buggies for Allan’s birthday. Tonight a birthday dinner of fresh mahi auctioned off on the local VHF net this morning to raise money for the hospital. I cannot tell you how awesome it is to finally be reunited with folks we hadn’t seen in several months. It’s like seeing family again, in a sense, as you can develop such close relationships with other cruisers. No doubt, there will be plenty of memories taken away from this place and mom, I’ll do better so that I can remember them all : )
