TONGAN VOLCANOES
If your mountain is ever stolen by neighboring islands’ deities, your best recourse is to moon them. At least, that’s what Tongan lore teaches us about Kao and Tofua islands.
According to legend, deities from the neighboring islands, including Samoa, conspired to steal the top of Tofua Island from the Tongans. They tore the top of Tofua off, leaving the root of the mountain behind, where a lake filled in the core. The Tongans’ gods were angered, and one of them, Tafakula, bent over to expose himself to the thieves. His behind shone so brightly, the deities mistook it for the sun rising, and thinking they were going to be revealed in their caper, they dropped the peak to flee back home, creating Kao Island.
That’s not the only excitement the volcano has seen. Fast-forward to 1789, and we find ourselves near the scene of the Mutiny on the Bounty. Capt. William Bligh and his 18 loyalists took refuge on Tofua, where one crewmember was killed by natives and the rest escaped, beginning their epic journey to Timor.
In the much more recent past, my husband and I sat on the deck of our catamaran,
Starry Horizons, and watched the sun set behind Kao Island. Both Kao and Tofua are formidable despite being sliced into two. Kao is the highest peak in Tonga, and a dormant volcano, while Tofua, Kao’s low-lying neighbor, still erupts, spewing a column of smoke into the atmosphere. We are anchored 40 miles away, at Tatafa Island, and our position is just perfect to watch the sun as it slides behind Kao and lights it up with a fiery glow.
We couldn’t always see the volcanoes through the humid air and clouds, but fortunately, the view of Kao and Tofua are only one appeal of anchoring at Tatafa Island. We were alone, anchored on a shallow, sandy bottom with protection from the northeast. From the southeast side of Tatafa, a sandbar stretches out toward Uiha Island for more than a thousand feet at low tide. I enjoyed a walk out as far as I could go, letting the waves crash over my feet.
Onshore is uninhabited, with dense forest and wide beaches. For the first time, I saw dead urchins washed up on the shore in various states of decay. Shells were green, purple or white, surely indicating the species of the urchin. Almost none were whole, and the ones that were whole still had bits of decaying matter inside. Also littering the beach were cuttlebones, the porous internal shell found in the mantle of cuttlefish. I picked up one to compare it to my forearm — it was almost as big.
The east side of the island is still within the barrier reef, and the rocky terrain created a shallow river flowing down the beach. I often caught sight of spotted eels and sand crabs hiding in the rocks.
We weren’t joined by any other boats in the anchorage, but we weren’t alone. Local boats zoomed past, ferrying people and cargo from Uiha Island to Pangai, the capital of the Ha‘apai group. Sailboats occasionally darted through the nearby pass, on their way to other remote islands. At night we heard the call of our unseen neighbors — whale songs that we could hear through our hulls.
As the sun dropped under the horizon and the sky turned dark, a faint glow from Tofua’s volcanic activity was visible, lighting up the bottoms of the few clouds above it, while the rest of the sky was speckled with stars. We retired for the night, pleased to have found yet another gorgeous anchorage, and yet another reason to love Tonga.