Imagine a place where hundreds of birds fly overhead. Where baby birds squeak from every branch you can see. Where eggs litter the ground you walk on.
Imagine a place ringed by white sand and coral reef, a place you can circumnavigate in under ten minutes.
Imagine a place where the wind can push the waves and the moon can push the tide as easily as a man knocks over a cup of water.
Imagine putting your tent too close to those waves and tides.
Imagine a deserted island where 6 friends arrive with tents, a cooler, ukeleles, some water toys, and a lot of papayas.
Imagine hermit crab race courses, twirling flaming poi balls, reading books beneath hatching seabirds, cooking over a fire, collecting colorful shells, swimming in against a stiff outgoing tide.
Imagine camping for a weekend on an outer island in the south of Vava’u in Tonga, and you might just see the vignettes described above. We did.
Fonua Fu’o and Fonua Unga are spectacular places, almost untouched by humans. Brown noddys and fairy terns use these islands as rookeries, and blacktip sharks as nurseries. Boobies and frigate birds dive for needlefish. The ground all around moves and wriggles, since almost every available shell is filled with an industrious hermit crab. The waves push and pull more strongly on the outer islands, evidenced by our wet campfire the first night. And the sun seems to shine more brightly, evidenced by our burnished skin when we returned home.
Special places, for sure…especially for bird-nerds like Rob and me. Well worth the very hard ground we battled with very thin mats, the mildewy water bottles, the sunburned lips, the crab pinches, and the inevitable bird poop bombs from above.
