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Let me tell you a little tale of a
fateful pair of adventurers. While I was teaching at Taufaahau Pilolevu
in Ha'apai, I happened to meet a French backpacker named Michele. We
decided to plan a trip to Tofua. After deciding to make the plan, well
it was only to do it without any doubts. I had spoken to one
visitor a few years earlier who went to Tofua alone without any
camping equipment or anything, and he made it there and back. I knew
some people who had been there several times, and yes I heard several
stories that were pretty bad. The Peace Corps volunteers went one time
and got stuck there, so they are not allowed to go anymore. It's an
alluring place and if you search online you can find quite a few stories.
We found a New Zealand yachtie who offered to take us over and pick us
up a few days later. He gave us a portable VHS radio that we could use
to contact him when he was nearby for the return rendezvous, and it worked
out well too. He went on to visit Ha'afeva for a few days and came to
pick us up as planned. I had heard such bad stories about jumping off the
boat and onto a particular rock that I decided to get an inner tube
and float our provisions on that and swim from the boat instead. That
worked out just fine for us. We had heard that there might be some
people living on Tofua, but it was quite unlikely that we would see them
and in fact we saw no one. The landing place is right at the top of the
aerial view where the surf is visable, but the kava farmers are down
along the bottom part of the island. As we approached I noticed a fire
on the east side of the island, but it didn't mean anything to us.
Our first campsite was a precarious spot along the edge of the island.
All night long you could feel the shaking of the waves onto the rocks,
like the whole tent might shake loose and tumble into the surf. In the
picture you might just notice some bandages in the lower left. I took
a bad fall shortly after we started climbing up from the shore. I tried
not to let this ruin my adventure, but when we got back to Ha'apai it
was clear enough that I would have to return to the USA for medical
attention. It turned out that I had badly injured my shoulder and had
also broken all of the fingers on one hand. It took one year but everything
did heal properly without surgery. The real issue was the not knowing and
since there are screws in my shoulder from a previous injury, the doctors
in Nuku'alofa really didn't know what a Bancart repair was and couldn't
advise properly. Michele may have been shocked at my injury but he held up
pretty good. Here he is that first morning with Kao in the background.
After we
found a suitable place we clambered up the hillside and made our campsite.
We really were not prepared to make trails and had not appreciated how
tough it was to make our way in the jungle without a machete. I had heard
stories of the ferns but didn't think they were so widespread. You simply
couldn't make your way through them, it was like a six foot thick carpet
of velcro. But someone else had been making trails. We found many signs
that there had been a machete in use, and were thankful to be able use
those jungle trails that we found. We got a nice campfire going. There is
something about having a fire that makes anyplace you are staying into
a sort of home. We hadn't brought that much water with us, but there was
an abundance of coconuts and Michele really got into harvesting them. I
did a fair bit of walking around along the trails, and at some distance
towards the east I happened to find an orange tree. I brought some back
to camp and Michele was thrilled. We made a trip to harvest all we could
find and picked the ones that were the most orange in color. That was a
mistake perhaps. They tasted like battery acid, and it hurt your mouth and
lips when you ate them. But we mixed them with coconut juice and ate them
anyway.
Here's a few different trees I liked on Tofua. There's the coconuts of course,
which kept us from dying of thirst. There were many of these Australian pines
I think they are called. They gently sweep back and forth in the breeze and
make every view a 3D experience. I remember looking up at the night sky through
these and saw what I am pretty sure was the space station as it went by. One
day I took a hike alone and ran into this group of carved trees. I wondered
what the meaning was. My friend Folau told me sometimes they carve these little
bowls into the tree to collect rainwater. I had gotten somewhat disoriented in
hiking back from the 'Tiki Trees' and for a while it seemed every time I left
this place I would end up coming right back to them. It was like I had fallen
into some kind of spell. I tried the water and it seemed to taste OK. Finally
I started crashing into the bush and found my way back to camp. Michele was
really glad to see me return. It would have been nice to be able to hike up
into the volcano and see the lake but maybe it was best that we did not since
we really didn't have enough preparation and something worse could have happened.
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