Tonga Holiday Part 2!

Hello everyone. After spending most of the day at the beach, we decided to go check out the famous Tongan blowholes!

We left the beach and took a scenic route to get to the blowholes. On the way we stopped at this spot with these funky trees.

Got out of the car and looked over the edge. The drop off was basically straight down and looked scary. This spot is famous because of huge amounts of sharks. When a container comes to Tonga with perishable foods that spoiled during the trip (chicken and meats), it is brought here and dumped over this cliff. Monster sized sharks in huge numbers then come and becomes a feeding frenzy. The biggest sharks in Tonga are the tiger sharks!

Tau, one of my divers is really a small Tongan. We were joking around that he might get blown over the cliff from the wind -ha! ha!

With a heavy duty surf pole, this would be a great fishing spot. Probably would have to use a rope gaff to haul the bigger fish in though.

One side of the island looks mostly like this. This side gets punished from the heavy waves. The other side of the island is much calmer and not so deep.

Coconut trees are everywhere. A long time ago, coconuts were the biggest export in Tonga. But now the plantations have been abandoned and anyone can go and pick them. If we get thirsty we can always find coconuts on the ground that have fallen.

A view of a lovely beach. It is a 20 minute hike down from the cliff where I am standing. Note the little barrier reef, all kinds of cool stuff can be found in the lagoon side.

Once again a little road that takes us to paradise!

To my surprise an observation platform had been built to view the blowholes. I had not been here in years and this was something new.

What is a blowhole? Basically there are holes in the rocks that come up to the top from the sides where the waves crash in. The waves come in and force the water into these little tunnels. The water then becomes a jetting force out the holes on top. When a big wave comes, the jets of water can reach really high into the sky. They have these in Hawaii as well.

It was pretty windy and the sky had become overcast.

Pretty cool to see white jets of water blowing into the sky all along the coast!

It was starting to get dark so time to go home. On the way we stopped at a flying fox sanctuary.

These large fruit bats are protected and only the king is allowed to eat them. Speaking of eating, we were eager to get back home to make one of our favorite island foods - pizza!

The above picture and the following are from another day but we prepared all the ingredients to make the pizza before heading out earlier in the day. Capping the holiday with a great pizza is all it takes to make it a perfect day!

We buy the dough from a bread shop that bakes fresh bread everyday. We roll it and place it in this pizza pan. The yellowish liquid you see on the dough is olive oil!

Great cheese is what is all about! Due to close proximity to New Zealand, Tonga has great imported dairy products. You heard of Hawaiian style pizza? Well we are making a Tongan version with ham, bacon, onion, tomato, and fresh chopped pineapple - wow!

It is a real treat when we have "pizza night"!

On other nights, I make my own famous spaghetti!

Conclusion

Ok guys and girls that is it for today. It was an exciting and relaxing day in South Pacific paradise island of Tonga. Really what Tonga is, is Hawaii before it got developed.

You wanna get a laugh, go check out these videos below. It is me and my two divers having fun making pizza and eating it. Please forgive the language used, my divers are from a ghetto neighborhood in East Palo Alto which is really a bad area in the Northern California. These two guys got in trouble with the law over 10 years ago and got deported back to their native island. I always make fun of them over the way they talk, but hanging around them too long, I end up talking like them - ha! ha!

Pizza video1

Pizza video2

Spaghetti video

Cheers,

Eddie