Mariner's Cave

Hey everyone. Ryan here. Its true, I've re-surfaced from reading Game of Thrones...but mostly just to email Flood and Matt about Game of Thrones, which I don't think is what Abby had in mind :).

Now, I hate to jinx a perfect game by talking about it, but we are two weeks rat-free after our slaughter. Food remains un-eaten. Floors remain un-pooped on. And our heads haven't even witnessed the horrors of a rat falling from the ceiling on to them. Its truly paradise!

Last week we visited our best friends in Tonga, Mark and Alissa, on their island. Now our fellow PCVs like to poke fun at these types of "Couples Retreats", but if they only knew the joys of spending every. single. second. with your spouse, they too would be in need of a good group counseling session. Plus Mark is an amazing cook, so there are fringe benefits too.

The purpose of this week's vacation was to visit Mariner's Cave (or 'Anauku to the Tongans) which is by far the best adventure to be had in the Kingdom. Mariner's is an unmarked, underwater cave that was discovered by Will Mariner, who sailed with Captain Cook back in the day. While its advertised as a tourist attraction here in Vava'u, its actually incredibly difficult to find so most palangis (white folk) don't ever visit it. Like true Americans, Abby and I yearn to feel superior to palangi tourists so the fact we were traveling on a tiny, decrepit fishing boat with our Tongans friends made us feel all the better.

The weekend began on Friday evening when said fishing boat took the four of us from Neiafu to Nuapapu, Mark and Alissa's island. Unfortunately there was a mix-up so instead of sailing during the day, we sailed in the darkness of light. Without lights on the boat, our boat driver had to use the stars to map out our course and use the moonlight to guide us. It was incredibly cool. It was great to finally arrive in Nuapapu and after a 30 minute tractor ride (again, with no lights!) we got to see where Mark and Alissa live. They have done this entire experience without electricity and are much more isolated, given that their island is a two hour boat ride from Neiafu. It is incredible to see how they have thrived in such conditions. The island itself is beautiful and very welcoming.

Matamaka, one of the two villages on the island of Nuapapu and the village where Mark teaches:

The next day we went back to the wharf, got back on the fishing boat and headed for Mariner's. After an hour ride, we found ourselves staring at the same island formation we had. Only this time, the Tongans told us that behind this particular formation was a glorious underwater cave. We were still skeptical.

         

 

The "front" of Mariner's Cave:

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At this time we all jumped off our rickety old boat, put on our snorkel gear and prepared for our descent into the great unknown. That's when my dear wife thought it wise to inform us that this was her first time ever using snorkel equipment or flippers and really wasn't sure what to do. This was just about the last thing any of us or our Tongan guides were expecting to hear and definitely did not reassure anyone that this would be easy! This is definitely NOT an experience for beginners. That said, we soldiered on for our dive into the cave. Now, the cave itself is only about a 7-10 foot dive down, followed by a 4 -6 foot tunnel you have to swim through before you can enter into the cave. While it sounds doable, the choppy ocean water, the high tide and the ocean waves made it much more of a daunting task than we envisioned. 

The mouth of the cave:

 

After a couple of false starts, my wife was beginning to lose her resolve. The issue with the cave is that you have nothing to push your legs off from but open water. So those first few strokes down into the mouth are slow and arduous, making you believe you can't hold your breath that long. After the false starts, our Tongan guides took over. These are actually just buddies of Mark and Alissa's who took us out on their boat. You simply cannot imagine their strength. Two of them grabbed my wife's arms and pulled her the entire way through the cave. Most of these guys are still young and I am definitely recruiting them for the Valley swim team. I am guessing they will have an easier time making Varsity than I ever did! After the girls went through, Mark and I went at it. I swear I thought my lungs were going to burst but I kept hearing my swim coach Wags in my head (shouting "hoo, hoo") while I swam my way through a school of zebra fish through the tunnel and finally made it inside. It was glorious.

A photo from the inside of the cave. (Note: this is NOT us, we don't have the technology for such pictures so I just googled it)

 

After that, Abby and Alissa tried their hands at jumping from the cave walls while Mark and I went outside to try our hands at spear-fishing. We caught nothing, but watched as our Tongan buddies took one breath, swam 20ft. down and thrust a spear through fish that would become our dinner. It was incredible. Afterwards, we all gathered outside the cave for our boat to come get us. Unfortunately all we saw was Nuti, our hilarious old Tongan boat driver, waving his hands for us to swim to him. So we went on our way, swimming another mile in the ocean while enormous bats (we're talking eagle-sized here people) swooped over our head. This allowed me to live out one of my nerdier fantasies by shouting "I'm Batman" during the swim. My wife was very impressed. When we finally caught up with the boat. we learned that the rickety old motor was broken and we were in a bit of a pickle. So while the Tongans worked on repairing the motor, the palangis helped out anyway we could. Nope. Actually, while the Tongans worked on repairing the motor, the palangis fell hard asleep on the roof of the boat. Faka 'ofa! (how sad) 

After about an hour of idling on the mighty Pacific, we finally hit a stroke of luck and saw a sail boat in our midst. Remember those palangi tourists I was so uppity about earlier? Yep, well they saved our ass. It took some cajoling but we convinced the four people from Wales to drag our boat the two hours back to Nuapapu. I can't say they were extremely excited to be helping us, but they definitely dragged us all the way into the wharf. During the interim, our group had just the most fun time as I taught a mini-social studies lesson about the differences between England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom (Abby's note: my husband claims he did not like teaching social studies, yet he never stops trying to teach us all his useless knowledge! Don't worry, we all just ignored him anyway)!

Here are pictures we took of the boat that pulled us home:

        

All in all, we had an amazing weekend visiting our friends and exploring Mariner's cave. It was great to get out and spend some time in the Ocean which does not happen as often as we would like. It was truly an adventure worthy of noted explorer Alexe Froment Mericle...although I heard he retired and became a leasing agent or something like that.