Day 7 – Vava’u



View from lookout


Thursday, April 14^th – Tender Day today, so we needed to get up and meet our fellow tourists for tender ticket allocation at 845am. No one was late so we had the first 7 tickets getting us on land by 9am. We found our driver Semsei and off we went in a very comfortable 4WD Van. We Saw Kava being processed, which is laid out to dry so it could be ground to a powder. Kava is a plant that has narcotic effects apparently; the local men drink it a lot. We also watched some women preparing and weaving mats. The 4WD was needed to get us to a remote lookout on the North side, the view was spectacular. Our angels were watching us as soon after hitting open road we discovered the van had a flat tire. Easy to change on this road but had it happened on our inland jaunt I can not imagine how it would have been done.
Our lunch was waiting for us on a beach under the very cool shade of a Banyan tree. Plenty of seafood, Lobster in abundance and other fish and salads as well. I do not care for seafood but the rest of our group ate their fill and there was still some over. All this was washed down by the milk of a freshly opened coconut.
We all swam and snorkelled after lunch til it was time to return to the ship.
Dinner menu was a little poor when comparing to the luncheon feast, but we still ate. The evening's entertainment was made up of a show with the Mexican and the Magician, Adam James and finished at Jammers Disco. Made it to bed soon after 1am, Thursday Morning.
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Tongan Feast