Nuku’alofa, Tongatapu, Kingdom of Tonga
Today was our last day in the Kingdom of Tonga, the last Kingdom in the Pacific. We spent the day in the capital, Nuku’alofa, and made a visit to the Royal Palace. Some of us took a tour around the island of Tongatapu and others had a chance to walk through the city of 115,000 people, representing 70% of the population of the country. The rich and colorful personality of the Tongan people was evident everywhere. Many people dress in the traditional tupenu or long skirt decorated with woven overskirt, or ta’ovala woven from a plant called lou’akau. Tongans are often people of significant biomass, as large size has long been considered attractive in this and other parts of Polynesia. It is one place where we increasingly large Americans can feel relatively svelte.
Tonga experienced a relatively strong, magnitude 7.9, earthquake on May 3rd of this year, but it did little damage other than some broken glass and scattered cans and bottles in stores. As we saw yesterday on our visit to the active volcano of Tofua, the Tongan chain is one of the most seismically active areas in the world, but rarely experiences an earthquake the size of that of the May 3rd event. One effect that the quake did have was to damage the old pier where the ship would have normally berthed, so we used the commercial dock a bit north of town. This was fortuitous, because next to this dock area we found a replica of one of the voyaging canoes which the early explorers sailed from Tonga across the great Pacific, which we have just crossed, to colonize islands as far distant as Hawai’i, New Zealand and Rapa Nui (Eastern Island). This migration is certainly a testament to the noble character of these people of Tonga.
Today was our last day in the Kingdom of Tonga, the last Kingdom in the Pacific. We spent the day in the capital, Nuku’alofa, and made a visit to the Royal Palace. Some of us took a tour around the island of Tongatapu and others had a chance to walk through the city of 115,000 people, representing 70% of the population of the country. The rich and colorful personality of the Tongan people was evident everywhere. Many people dress in the traditional tupenu or long skirt decorated with woven overskirt, or ta’ovala woven from a plant called lou’akau. Tongans are often people of significant biomass, as large size has long been considered attractive in this and other parts of Polynesia. It is one place where we increasingly large Americans can feel relatively svelte.
Tonga experienced a relatively strong, magnitude 7.9, earthquake on May 3rd of this year, but it did little damage other than some broken glass and scattered cans and bottles in stores. As we saw yesterday on our visit to the active volcano of Tofua, the Tongan chain is one of the most seismically active areas in the world, but rarely experiences an earthquake the size of that of the May 3rd event. One effect that the quake did have was to damage the old pier where the ship would have normally berthed, so we used the commercial dock a bit north of town. This was fortuitous, because next to this dock area we found a replica of one of the voyaging canoes which the early explorers sailed from Tonga across the great Pacific, which we have just crossed, to colonize islands as far distant as Hawai’i, New Zealand and Rapa Nui (Eastern Island). This migration is certainly a testament to the noble character of these people of Tonga.
