Some Sunday hammock time
Dinghy raft-up floating through the harbor
Heading home after church
As I sit here writing the blog I realize that for us it is Sunday, September 23rd, but most of our readers are enjoying a Saturday night. Welcome to the influence of the International Date Line. Actually the dateline was extended east to include Tonga as most of their business transactions involve New Zealand or Australia who are clearly on the other side of the dateline. Interesting quirk to the dateline.
Tonight I am writing the blog because Bob is pouting. We played our tie-breaking cribbage game tonight (we can’t remember how many games we’ve played but we know we were tied) and I stomped all over him. Too bad, so sad!
Sundays in Tonga are pretty low key, at least on Charisma. Bob actually set up the hammock and dozed while I went to the local Catholic Church for mass. The singing was spectacular. The church was packed with Tongans dressed in their finery. It is a big deal for Tongans. Most of the adults wore pandanus mat skirts over pareos. The young children, especially the babies, were dressed in fluffy dresses and cute little suits. In the states you would have thought it was Christmas. After mass the families piled back onto their trucks with as many as 12-15 people in the back of the pickup and Grandma in the passenger seat to head back home. Obviously it is an important event in their week.
I think most of the cruisers were a little under the weather after the pub crawl on Saturday night. We were lucky to have ended the crawl early. But an energized group of cruisers did manage to have a dinghy raft-up luncheon. We would have gone but it was a potluck and we don’t have a lot that we could share other than canned beans. Maybe next time. As the dinghy luncheon ended the raft of dinghies started drifting into the anchorage. Timing is everything. I had just finished a cockpit shower and gone down below to dress when I heard, “Charisma…. Charisma…” The raft of dinghies was floating around singing to us deadbeats!
So our day ended restfully with a wonderful meatloaf dinner. It is amazing what wonderful memories meatloaf dinners can provoke. Yum!
We hope you all enjoyed a restful Sunday too!