Chilling out in Vava'u

Chilling out in Vava'u

Diving ala Steve Ziszou

We've been in Neiafu, Vava'u for about 2 weeks and have had a great time. We met up with some local ex-pats who run a dive shop and went on a group dive with the guys from Bingo (DeMeritt, BW and Claire) and Sohcahtoa (Jeff, Matt and Casey) (2 boats we partied with in Rarotonga) and 5 med students from the UK (Steve, Anna, Jaye, Katie and Jess) who were doing 4 weeks work in the hospital on Vava'u - not bad for some! We all had a great dive (altogether about 20 of us) in amazingly good visibility (30m +) and saw some beautiful coral and caves, as well as a white tip reef shark. I've not seen any whales yet but dad saw a humpback breech yesterday so as we have another 6 weeks in the Vava'u group, I'm sure we'll be able to snorkel with them (an experience out of this world apparently).

Power kiting on the beach

We also got to know the American owners of a Mexican cantina called Tonga Bob's, which serves outstanding Mexican food and where we seemed to spend almost every night until the wee hours of the morning.

We are on our way to the middle group of islands in the Tonga chain - Ha'apai group - for a day and then on to the southern group - Tongatapu - and will be dropping George, John and Nikki off at the airport next Saturday for the end of their trip with us and their flight to Auckland.

The boat will then be in Tongatapu until the 26th when Grace, Jack, Sophie and Joe will have arrived (Claire is staying at home to continue on with her teaching for at least another 6 months, which she has really got into and enjoying enormously). We then plan to head straight back up to the Vava'u group, where the sailing is superb and the diving fantastic, probably until the end of August when Jack and Grace fly back to the UK.

Missing you all and I'll keep you up to date with the Tongan fun.

Don't forget to check out the recent pics!

Lots of love,