Our walk into town at Ha'afeva. Actually, this IS town.

We ran across this woman preparing pandanas leaves for weaving into floormats

Still at Ha’afeva. We walked into the village today, which was a very pleasant ¾ mile through a narrow jungle road. Once at the village we found one person who traded us some really nice mangoes for a bag of walnuts (and a bag of balloons for his daughter). A little further down the road we saw a nice garden and started talking to the man who was tending it. Pete was his Anglicized name. We asked if he had some papayas and bananas. He walked over to his papaya tree and pulled three nice ones down and gave them to us, but said that he would have to go further to his plantation to get some bananas. He suggested he would trade a stalk of bananas for some flares. Since we have plenty of the latter, we readily agreed. He said to meet him on the wharf at 1800. I had my doubts the time of the meeting would be very exact, this being Tonga, but agreed. So, we went back to Charisma and I dug out some flares to have ready for our meeting.

In the meantime, we went for a snorkel and did some clean up around the boat. Also, we scored a large, frozen corned beef on the last island. We’re cooking it as we speak, and it’s looking good. It’s a perfect accompaniment to all our root veggies that we always have since they keep well. So, tonight it’s corned beef, cabbage (from at least two weeks ago), potatoes (from at least a month ago), an onion and carrot. Yum! Then, sandwiches tomorrow.

So, back to our story. Yes, we now have no bananas. We waited, then we poured ourselves a Charisma. Still we couldn’t see Pete at the wharf (we’re anchored about 150 yards off). Longer, longer, and finally it’s dark. We couldn’t see Pete even if he did show up.

So, no bananas, but I’m keeping the flares out as I have a feeling we’ll see him standing on the wharf in the morning.