A young couple from Germany who want to remain nameless spent almost a year 'house-sitting' the breathtakingly beautiful boutique hotel VILLA MAMANA on the tiny island of Telekivava'u in the Kingdom of Tonga.
From there they filed articles with some small-town German papers in which they described how they 'lived like Robinson Crusoe for a whole year', tried their hand at 'generating their own solar power' - instead of using the island's two generators - and sweated it out 'growing their own food'.
It makes for great copy but couldn't be further from the truth. The truth is they lived in the lap of luxury in a white villa facing a white sandy beach ...
... spent their days reclining on a shady verandah ...
... gazing out to the blue South Pacific ...
... and their evenings curled up on a soft lounge watching DVDs ...
... or surrounded by imported marble during their quiet moments ...
... before retiring to their four-poster bed.
Needless to say, none of these photos appear in their newspaper reports nor on their blog. Perhaps they realised, having read Daniel Defoe's famous book, that the original Robinson Crusoe did without marble bathrooms and four-poster beds ☺
So were they Robinson Crusoes or Baron Münchhausens?
You decide!
P.S. The island's owners are again looking for a 'house-sitter' - click here. Wannabe Robinson Crusoes need not apply!
