Flying Foxes
Our
friends, Chuck and Lauri on Free Spirit, had to leave Tonga for Samoa for their
“official” wedding (they have had wonderful unofficial weddings in Mexico and
Tonga). We had spent a lot of time with
them here in Tonga and were sad to see them go.
We’ll have to meet up with them in 2016!
We wanted
to explore the eastern barrier reef islands of the Vava’u group. It is
necessary to navigate a narrow channel in the coral to get over there, so few
boats head that way. We had waypoints to navigate through the channel and our
friends, Alison and Randall on Tregoning, had radioed to say they were already
anchored in that area and the pass was no problem, so off we went.
We anchored
at Ofu, near Tregoning, later that afternoon. After spending time in the main
harbor and the popular anchorages near town, it was a treat to be anchored in a
quieter place. We explored the quiet island and the isolated shores. The next
morning we went exploring in our dinghy, “Tubby” along with Alison and Randall
in their dinghy.
Along the
way, we discovered a good sized colony of Flying Foxes (a large, tropical fruit
bat). We had already seen one small Flying Fox up close back on Ha’afeva
in the Ha’apai group, but this
was much better. There were several
trees just full of the bats hanging there. As we got close, the noise from the
dinghy motors bothered them and dozens of them took to the skies. It was so
impressive that after some snorkeling we went back to Good as Gold, got out the
good camera, and went back to the bats for some photos.
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Flying Foxes hanging in trees |
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Flying Fox soaring |
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Flying Fox mother with baby clinging on to her belly |
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Flying Fox coming in for a landing |
Alison and
Randall began their southward trek to New Zealand and we moved over to one of
the easternmost islands of the Vava’u group, Kenutu. We anchored on the west
side to be protected from the near constant easterly trade winds. We went
ashore and found the path to the eastern side of the island to watch the open ocean
crashing on the cliff faces. It was
quiet impressive!
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Waves crashing |