It will be twenty years ago on the 25th of April 2015 that my friend Horst first set foot in the Kingdom of Tonga which is as good an excuse as any to visit him again and help him celebrate!
Unlike my last visit when I "raced" from island to island in a battered old DC3, I shall this time "go native" and sail aboard the almost new MV 'Otuanga'ofa (what an improvement on the MV 'Olovaha, a.k.a. 'Orange Vomit'!) which, at a leisurely 12 knots (22km/hour), will get me from Tonga's capital Nuku'alofa to Pangai on Lifuka Island in twelve hours - give or take a day! ☺
If Horst then still lives on Uiha Island, I'll practically sail past his beach shack although I have heard rumours that he's thinking of returning to the "fleshpots" of Pangai - well, more like one store, one bank, one snooker hall, and the Mariner's Café, run by Magdalena Malanowska, the only Polish lady in the whole of Tonga and quite possibly the whole of the South Pacific.
Should Magda have run out of golabki, bigos and pierogi, I can always book myself into the Ha'apai Beach Resort which was the Niua'Kalo Beach Hotel but which had a change of name as well as owners.
