Tales of the South Pacific - Nuku’alofa, Tongatapu, Tonga

Cruise Day 28

Monday, October 27, 2025

Today we are docked in Nuku’alofa on the island of Tongatapu, the largest of Tonga’s 171 islands and is in the southernmost island group.  Tonga is the only country in the South Pacific that’s never been colonized.  Although Tonga is a democratic country that elects a parliament, it still has a king and queen here in Nuku’alofa, the capital and largest city of Tonga.

Tonga is the southernmost point of our cruise.

This is the kingdom of Tonga.  Today we are on the island of Tongatapu in the southern most group of Tonga islands.

The island of Tongatapu, the largest and most populous of the Togan islands.  We are docked in Nuku’alofa, the capital and largest city of Tonga

We have another early tour schedule today, so we were up early.  As is the case with Samoa and Fiji, there was entertainment on the pier as we docked.  Unfortunately, they weren’t able to get very near the ship, so they were quite a distance away, but still enjoyable.  As we looked out at the area from our balcony one thing really struck us; unlike the other islands we have visited on the cruise, Tongatapu is very flat and I mean very flat.  They had a devastating tsunami here a few years ago and with the island being so flat it is easy to see why. 

We arrive in Nuku’alofa.  That is the Parliament building at the end of the pier.  

The Royal Palace is just to the right of the Parliament building as viewed from the ship.

You can see how flat the island is.

 

There was a group preforming traditional songs and dances for us, but unfortunately they weren't allowed out on the pier area by the ship so we had to view them from a distances.

After getting ready and having our breakfast in the Neptune Lounge, we headed to the World Stage to check in.  There were only four tours offered today, but the World Stage was pretty full as there were multiple buses going on the same tour.  We are on a ship excursion called Island Encounter and Ancient Tonga that we discovered would have four buses.  The buses would be the basic open-air island buses we have used before, and even though they only hold about 24 people, with four buses we’ll have around 90 people on this tour.

Thankfully, we are docked today, so when we got our bus number assigned, we were able to quickly get ashore, but it was quite a long walk to where the buses were parked.  Our guide was only 24 and a college student, but she was very nice and introduced herself and told us a little bit about herself as we got underway.

Our first stop was Ancient Tonga.  We didn’t know what this meant when we looked at the title of the tour, but it turns out that Ancient Tonga is a show with dancing, demonstrations and information about the Tongan culture and history.  As is the custom, the first thing they did was a Kava Ceremony welcoming us to their village and then dancing and singing.  It was very good, and we really enjoyed it.  After that was over, they had some demonstrations on how they used all of the natural resources of the island in their everyday life.

We were welcomed to Ancient Tonga.

After an introduction and some Tongan history, the show got underway.

Before the traditional dancing and singing began, there was a Kava Ceremony.

 

The most amazing thing to me was they take the bark of a Paper Mulberry tree, soak it and then pound it into a tapa cloth, you would never believe that you could pound that bark out enough to make some very large pieces of the cloth.  We also learned about how they use the natural plants around them for medicinal purposes.  That was also quite interesting.

A painting on the tapa cloth.

This was a huge piece of tapa cloth that took many hours to finish.

After that there were refreshments of local juices and fruits to refresh us, and we needed it as although it was only around 80 today, the humidity was stifling.  They also had tables set up displaying the local crafts that were for sale.  Val found herself a very nice necklace.

From there it was back on the bus as we headed to the coast to view the Mapu a Vaea blowholes.  A blowhole is usually a rock formation on the shoreline where the waves rush in under the eroded shoreline and shoot up through holes in the rocks.  It was a bit of a drive, but interesting as we drove through many villages and through the countryside.  It looks like Tonga is not as developed as Fiji and probably much poorer.

There were many buses and cars at the blowhole, so it was a bit of a walk to get there, but it turned out to be pretty interesting.  We have seen a lot of blowholes, including recently in Hawaii, and they are usually a bit underwhelming, but this was pretty impressive.  There was more than three miles of coastline with many blowholes ranging from small ones that made it look like geysers shooting up from them to very large ones where there were large waves of water shooting up.

Val is in the red blouse and white pants on the edge of the platform taking pictures.

There were of course vendors there selling the wares.

Time to get back on the bus and head back to the ship.

Our next stop was to view the flying foxes of Tonga; this was the main reason Val wanted to take this tour, but it turned out to be a disappointment.  Here is a description of them from Google: "Tonga's flying foxes, called peka, are large, important fruit bats (Pacific flying fox, Pteropus tonganus) that are the official property of the King, making them a protected, sacred species only royalty can hunt. Found across the islands, they are crucial for seed dispersal, maintaining forests, and feature in Tongan legends, with notable roosts in Kolovai where they can be seen in large numbers".

We stopped beside the road where there was a line of trees with the flying foxes up in them, but they are nocturnal animals so they appeared to be just dark blobs up in the branches.  We took a few pictures, but I don’t think they show much.

The flying foxes, it was very hard to really see them in any detail.

From there it was back to the ship.  We drove by the tomb where all of the kings and queens are buried and by the Royal Palace for a photo opportunity, but the humidity was getting to all of us, so we opted to just keep going and returned to the ship.

Although the flying foxes were a disappointment, this was actually a pretty good tour, Ancient Tonga made it worth going, and the blowhole turned out to be pretty interesting too.  After getting off the bus, we had a long walk back to the ship, but there was a line of vendor booths waiting to sell us their wares.  I found a t-shirt for Tonga and Val found some paintings on tapa cloth she like.

There were a lot of booths with local handicrafts being sold.

After looking at all the booths and buying a few things, it was time to head back to the ship.

Getting back on the ship and the wonderful air conditioning felt very good.  It was already past 1:30 and after a short rest we headed off to get something to eat.  Today we opted to get hot dogs from the Dive In.  The Dive In is a place where you can get hamburgers, hot dogs, fries and some other things.  It opens at lunchtime and stays open until after five, so you can get something to eat after the Lido lunch buffet closes.  The Dive In usually has a taco bar where you can make your own tacos, but the Zaandam didn’t.  I don’t know whether it’s just the Zaandam or if they aren’t doing it any longer on other ships too, but we are disappointed that it’s gone.

After eating, we spent the rest of the afternoon resting until it was time for trivia.  We had our usual enjoyable time talking to Donna and Arthur, and as usual, we ended up in the middle of the pack again.  After trivia it was back to our room for more rest.  If it sounds like we are doing a lot of resting lately, we are.  Both Val and I are both coughing during the night and it’s interrupting our sleep.  Neither of us feels very sick, just kind of tired.

It was dinner as usual and another short night in the casino and then it was off to our room for another early night.  Tomorrow is our last day in Tonga and this area of the South Pacific.