Tapana

July 10 - 14, 2010
A day in the life of Tapana; Spanish night in Tonga; Herman the hermit crab.

A day in the life of Tapana: Lat 18 degrees.43 S, Long 173 degrees, 59 W

The winds will change to the NW. We must leave Nuku for a better anchorage. We go to Nuapapu to the west, but it shoals far out and the beach is uninviting. We investigate an area inside and to the left of the coral gardens, but there are reefs and coral heads all around. Reverse. Turn around.

We put Zulu in full throttle once out of the area, pass Sisia to our starboard, thread our way between the southern reefs of Kapa and the northern reefs of Taunga—Russ has the sail covers off and lines ready to hoist sails should the engine quit--watch for the shallow spot. Go eight notches to port. We are here. We drop anchor off the southern end of Tapana. Zulu rests in picturesque.

Morning comes with a breakfast fit for the King: tropical fruit salad, crepes with lemon-honey-cinnamon sauce, and hot coffee in the cockpit. Delicious! Tidy Zulu, put clean sheets on the bunk, wash dishes. Cabins are spic and span.

We take the dinghy to an islet under noon sunny skies. A ketch is motoring eastward toward the Fanua Tapu passage. This is the passage we must navigate through to get to our next destination—Kenutu, the most eastern of Vava’u islands. This passage intimidates us for not knowing. We do know we have to wait for perfect weather to get through and wind from the SE for safe anchorage at Kenutu. A northwest wind will put us on the shore.

We hurry to anchor the dinghy off the small islet, and see which direction the ketch goes to get through the passage. I walk around the flat slab low tide reef to get to the eastern side of the islet for a clearer view. Russ clambers up the craggy limestone and slippery pine needles to get atop the mound—the highest point on the islet. Next he climbs a pine tree to see how the ketch navigates through. Russ sees the eastern most buoy—the rest are awash. We get the picture. Now we know the way to go to a degree. But how to actually get through? This will be our reality. We will try to get some way points to be certain and go another day.


Russ climbs a tree to get a better view of the ketch going through Fanua Tapu passage.


My view through the pine tree from ground level atop the mound.

Russ helps me up atop the mound so I can see from his perspective. We sit on the pine needles and look out to the beautiful waters beyond, with underlying treachery. We can see Kenutu in the distance and even see the pounding of the waves on its southern shore—faintly. Spray. It calls us from afar.


Russ sits atop the mound of the tiny islet, taking in the waters beyond.


Kenutu is the faint island to the far far right, the eastern most island of the Vava’u group.

We take the dinghy to Tapana’s southern shore. Anchor it in the shallows. Try to catch the huge starfish images, but the moving water from the dinghy distorts their shape. So I slide down the dinghy side knee deep in the water and gingerly step in between the coral to the beach.

The tide is still low and I walk the length of the shore to see: broken shells; sea nuts; crabs with green backs hurrying sideways—crablike; creatures hidden under slabs of reef with writhing tentacles of gold and black—eerie; giant gnarled intertwined root systems of trees with low lying branches that curve like the arms of dancers, reaching out toward the water. A bird calls.


Starfish on the reefs of Tapana.


Coral on the reefs of Tapana islets.

Russ has disappeared. I assume he is bush whacking to the other side, where the Spanish ‘restaurant’ is. He’s looking for a path through that we can walk tomorrow night. He’s made a booking for dinner.

I carry some red sea nuts and some shells toward the beach at the southern end. I want to swim. I see a pinnacle of limestone, like a craggy finger sticking up out of the sands. I’ll put my shells there I think and walk toward it. But someone else has had the same idea. Beautiful shells rest in small crevices here and there. I’ll leave this treasure trove be and tuck my shells in my cossi top.

It is getting late. I walk back toward the dinghy and tip toe up to it. The tide is coming in and I don’t want to stand on any of those eerie tentacled creatures. I am hip deep and haul myself up and seat myself on the floor with legs slung over the side. I rock with gentle motion.

Russ emerges. He found a way through to the other side, but lost the path a few times and says it won’t do for a night walk. So we will have to take the boat or dinghy around to the other side when the time comes.

We go to deeper water where the bottom is sandy. And I slide back down in. I gasp at the chill freshness and swim my heart out. This is my tonic--my medicine for feeling good. Russ sits in the dinghy eating sour orange-limes he has picked from a tree. Our day is nearly over. Zulu awaits us.

A short rinse off the transom step with warm water from the solar shower. Dinner in the cockpit: the last of my friend Isabella’s gift of corn tortillas fried in olive oil—double layered with cheese and cumin to melt down in between. Cover them with hot, spicy refried vegetarian beans, add shredded cabbage with tomatoes in an orange-lime-olive oil dressing. Add hot sauce. Enjoy under cool gray skies with a cold Maka—Tongan beer.

Darkness comes. Thunder booms. The longest we have ever heard it boom--dull echoing booms. Lightening comes in sheets. Torrential rain follows. Now all is still and our first day in the life of Tapana comes to an end.

Spanish night in Tonga

I’m ready for our Spanish night ashore. Russ has clarified one only for dinner as I am vegetarian. I won’t even take a camera, just enjoy the moment relaxing. My imagination takes flight away from Tonga and I think: crispy vegetarian tapas, chicken and seafood paella for Russ, cold drinks, sunset, Spanish guitar music--a touch of the romantic.

Russ fires up the dinghy—rather than take Zulu—and we head into the sunset to round the points for the north side. We pass a simple bungalow high up overlooking the water with two women enjoying an aperitif on the deck.

Where to tie up so that we can reenter the dinghy in the dark of night without breaking our necks? There’s a concrete step and an overhanging tree. We’ll go there. Russ throws the anchor out to the stern to prevent the dinghy from banging up against the sharp limestone overhang. Crawl up a thread of a ‘path’ gingerly. There is a surfboard marking the spot.

We definitely are not in Barcelona. There are numerous little shacks scattered here and there--a cross between a run-down restaurant and way budget accommodation. Chickens, a goat and dog roam free. Five orange trees are laden with ripe fruit, many fallen to the ground with chickens pecking away at them for their vitamin C. Getting ready for that paella pan!

There is an attempt at landscaping with flower bushes pruned in a hacked way and a little sand path leads up to the restaurant. The outside of the restaurant looks like it met up with Isaac the hurricane. Weathered and worn palm frond branches hang off the face of it helter skelter.

The goat is trying to ram me and the dog is nosing in places not to be nosed in. Bloody hell I’m not in the mood for animal husbandry. Up the stairs we go into the beyond ‘rustic’ shady restaurant overlooking the anchorage, open on three sides with shutters propped up. We are early. Dinner starts at 7:00 or 7:30 PM.

I sit down with a tonic water and fresh lime and look at the last of the afternoon light bursting over the water and boats at anchor below. A slight breeze is cooling and I feel the after effects of a long, long afternoon swim followed by a shower and some solo yoga on deck. Inner peace is at hand now that the animals have given up on me. Short lived though since the sand fleas are now attacking my legs.

Russ small talks with two yachtsmen. One—a single hander—from Florida speculates he’ll spend the next hurricane season in Savu Savu, Fiji.

“I’ll always keep the boat provisioned enough so that if a hurricane strikes, I’ll just go to sea.”

Ja! Good thinking. Not! I tune out of this conversation.

I hear live Spanish guitar music coming from behind a make-shift curtain. It is beautiful and I walk over to watch the magnificent sunset. William, the Tongan kitchen assistant, is sitting on a bench smoking a cigarette at a table set for guests alongside my sunset viewing position. He is tall and handsome, dressed in a short-sleeve shirt and long gray pants. He points to Pangaimotu across the way.

“That is where I live with my wife and two little children.” His smile is warm and the one missing tooth lends character. He knows our friend Katalina’s family. And we talk of Vava’u resources: fish, coconuts, bananas etc. These get sent to Nuku’alofa in the southern group for export.

It is time for dinner and William makes his way to the narrow back section that runs the length of the restaurant, which is the kitchen behind a long bar. Maria, Eduardo, and William are preparing food. Maria has typical Spanish features: a pronounced profile with roman nose and brown, not black, hair pulled back tightly in a bun. Her expression reflects hard work, skin weathered, and a tooth is missing. She is slender of medium height dressed in a simple maroon top and navy long pants with a matching blue apron around her waist.

Eduardo is spindly, with beady chocolate eyes and wild looking unkempt hair with full flying salt and pepper beard. He cuts an image as potential pirate with cotton shirt and baggy shorts. Three tables have colonial-type guests at them—they are neatly dressed, sit up straight, reserved, have pale skins, naïve tourists, like us.

The tapas arrive on a long narrow platter: breaded croquettes with Béchamel filling (a basic white sauce), two of which have toothpicks topped with a spiral of bacon; cold tortillas, which are essentially small egg omelets with a potato filling and garnished with grated raw carrot. In addition, there are two miniscule cups of gazpacho, cold pureed fresh tomato soup with garlic and olive oil. It all looks appetizing and piped music now plays. A gentle rain begins to fall and the rustic element fades as night sets in. Maria closes the shutters.

Russ says he will eat anything I don’t. You’re in luck Russ, most of it is coming your way. The omelet is cold and beyond bland and my imagination starts running amuck on how the gazpacho was prepared. Both of these go to Russ. His expression is blank as he eats away, no sign of satisfaction. He has a hang dog expression.

I order another tonic water with lime to help down the croquettes, the Béchamel filling of which is the essence of a lump of flour and butter and tasteless beyond help. These are heading straight for my ankles.

William brings Russ a little extra delight. One shrimp in a Chinese-shaped spoon with a tot of sauce and slice of lime on the side. The sauce, Russ exclaims is oh so Spanish and the one thing that hits the spot.

Ahhhh Maria brings the Paella, the signature dish after which the restaurant is named. A medium-to-large pan full of saffron rice with chicken and shell fish, enough for four people who know how to curb appetite. Did I not say no dinner for me?

Russ loads his first fork full anticipating a Spanish piece de la resistance. He had been going on about his Spanish travels with little-to-no money in his pocket when he was in his early twenties. And how mouth-watering the tapas were in Barcelona, and how they satisfied his hunger pangs at the time. He held his thumb and index finger together and brought them up to his lips for a kiss--soo good they were. His expectations of this paella are high.

The look on his face as the fork full of paella registers through his taste buds is shatteringly disappointing. It is funny to behold. I have to laugh. Not good. The muscles taste like they are on the verge of being off--with a very ‘ripe’ taste and the rice is somewhat bitter and overcooked, not to mention the sparse amount of chicken barely distinguishable from the rice. So says Russ.

He orders a small glass of wine at TOP12 (US$6) a glass—after he has had three beers already. He is getting desperate. I’ll have a glass of wine too. I need help drowning out all trace of the croquettes and the tonic water and lime did not completely do the job. I need liquid reinforcement.

Bouncing torch lights appear in the dark outside. People are coming up the path toward the restaurant. Lots of them. More guests? Late comers? Heaven preserve them. There are eight people—canoe-campers—who have bush wacked their way in the dark along the path from the other side in the rain. They look wet. Maria and William arrange a table for them--Kiwis, by the sound of it. They order two bottles of wine at TOP40 each, and soft drinks.

A handsome young Tongan dressed in blue and white surfer shorts to his knees and a white singlet sits separately to the side. His hair is tied up in a fashionable Rasta knot. He has milky-brown skin of satin, an impeccably carved and curved physique, and a unique narrow neat plait of beard hanging from his chin. His eyes are like dark grapes emanating calm and intelligence. To say he is a beautiful human speciman is an understatement. He is the guide of the canoe tour.

He turns to us and we strike up a conversation. He rolls a cigarette, lights it, and takes a long pull on it.

“My name is Ofa.” He says and gives us a high five greeting. The name Ofa means love in Tongan. William is his uncle, the ever extended family on hand. Ofa responds to our questions with a wide and winning smile and tells us about the canoe tours he’s been guiding through Tongan waters for 7 years. Sharon, the Canadian owner of the outfit sits across from Ofa. She is petite, pretty, with a mischievous air.

Russ keeps sipping wine after each mouthful of paella. That and good conversation helped the meal go down. However, he still looks like he is trying to swallow raw fish heads and is not making a significant dent in the pan of paella. It is a struggle. No more wine for you Russ! Cool it!

Maria suddenly appears out the blue with a long narrow platter of ‘dinner’ for me. Hello! I did not order any dinner. I thought perhaps this was an on-the-house gesture. Not! There are two Mexican-style flour tortillas folded over with a small slice of zucchini as a decorative topping. Inside is raw cold mushy tomato slices and copious amounts of soft goat cheese that taste very goatish. The goat is back in my life with all four hoofs.

I can barely get one tortilla down, even though I have scooped out the slimy goat cheese. What remains is dry tortilla and tomatoes. My glass of wine hits the quarter mark remaining, holding little promise of completely eradicating bad taste. I honestly want to be sick.

Detraction! Just in time the live music begins. William, Maria, and Eduardo sit on a bench at side center floor, backs to the kitchen. Maria solemnly shakes seed instruments, William deftly beats out good rhythm on some kind of drum, and Eduardo vigorously strums the guitar singing like a besotted romantic as only the Latins can do.

The ‘floor show’ is a mixture of Spanish music with Maria and Eduardo doing intermittent weak Spanish foot shuffles, emulating courtship. William moseys between the kitchen, dragging on his cigarette, and his place on the bench with drums as needed. Suddenly Eduardo moves into a manic American rock solo lifting his spindly bare feet and legs up to startling heights and back down for a few taps on the floor. His head spins atop his neck and his hair takes on various shapes of dishevelment as the musical spirit moves. A cross between Jimmy Hendricks and Houdini in action.

Maria and William escape to the kitchen for this piece of manic expression.
Ofa is laughing out loud as is Sharon. I start roaring too. The pale tourists, wet canoeists, and scruffy Zulu cruisers all brake out in wild applause after this rendition. It is all so out of character for Tonga that comic relief wells up and we laugh hilariously.

Then, as suddenly as it all began the music ends with a last Spanish piece and William, Maria, and Eduardo shuffle dance and sing their way back behind the bar into the kitchen to take up duty again. Quite touching.

Ice cream and a mini shot of Tia Maria liqueur is served. Between the floor show and desert our taste buds are now at bay and stomachs have found equilibrium.

It is time to pay the bill. Maria is in no hurry to give us the tally. She is out of sight having sought refuge at the computer in the kitchen corner. I walk up to the bar and break into her cover. Her manner indicates she has had enough of us tourists. She is void of expression—poker face, not a breath of freshness about her. There is little grace as she presents the bill. It is as if she has done us the greatest favour and now charges accordingly. The bill comes to TOP214 (US$107)! Extremely high for Tongan standard and sub-standard food.

When I give Russ the bottom line his Paella face turns saffron yellow with a tinge of dead shell-fish gray. The cherry on the top! We cannot wait to get out of there. I give my other disaster tortilla to Ofa, who bravely says he’ll try it and we stumble down the ‘path’ to the craggy limestone overhang and somehow manage to get into the dinghy without shredding ourselves into carrot salad in the act.

Russ rips the Mercury starter chord with a vengeance, twists the throttle to full on, and the dinghy planes through the pitch black night waters around to the south side where we make for Zulu’s masthead light, our haven in this night.
It is time to drown this bad experience out with a tot of NZ port and a cube of bitter-sweet raspberry chocolate. The rain begins to fall and wash away our Spanish night in Tonga. Esta la vida!

Hermi the hermit crab

I hear something falling in the middle of the night. Clomp. It is something hard. Hmmmm? Did Russ drop something? I ignore it and go back to sleep.

Then walking into the main cabin in the morning, I catch a glimpse of something in the corner on the floor below the fridge. It is my top shell I picked up off the reef the day before and carried back to Zulu in my cossi top. How strange? I had placed it on the main salon table.

Not thinking anything of it, I pick it up and put it back on the table where it was before. I put on some music—believe it or not Spanish music—to make breakfast. Then when I am ready to serve the meal, I notice again my top shell is not on the table where I put it. It is on the floor of the main cabin by the port bunk. Wuzzup with Russ knocking my shell of the table? Or did it get inspired by latin rhythm?

I pick it up again and whistle into it for a check of life. Voila! A little hairy leg appears. It is Hermi the hermit crab hiding in there! His poor little crab head must be spinning from the falls.

“Hey Russ we’ve got to save Hermi. Will he die after a night off the reefs?” Russ says no.

So I put him up on a coilled line, on the cockpit combing until my morning chores are complete. Ready to go ashore I look at where I put Hermi and his top shell house, and see not to my surprise he has moved again!

“Russ, Hermi missing again!” I search and search. I don’t want him to die. Fall overboard to a watery death. And I don’t want him to die a death from heat while traveling to Fiji on Zulu.

At last I find him, his top house hanging tight against the cabin top side. He is hanging on for dear life with his hairy little legs, perpendicular.

“Put him in a tin can and I will take him ashore.” Russ calls. This time I take no chances. I put him in a tin can in the dinghy and swim ashore sans Hermi in my cossi top. Don’t want to get a surprise tickle.

Russ putters out in half an hour with Hermi and puts his sweet little hairy hermit crab legs back on the reef where he can move his top shell house around in a cooler environment without dropping from great heights that provide him with dizzying experiences.

Malo e Lelei—go well—Hermi. Long may you live on the reefs of Tapana.