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20 October 2012
We woke around 0700 and had breakfast of toast and fruit in the poolside garden. The Outrigger Hotel is an old but very well-kept place. It is somewhere we would come back to for another stay if we were to pass through Apia again. At 0815 we were collected by Aquasamoa for our dives back […]
31 August 2012
Above: The King’s Palace in Nukualofa. Today we head back to Tongatapu on the 1535 flight. The timing would allow us some activities (at a push) if we had been unsuccessful with whaleswim on the preceding days. Since we had been rather lucky, we could do absolutely nothing but laze around the guesthouse then go […]
30 August 2012
Today is our “spare” day in case weather or other factors prevented us from achieving our whale-swim or dives. Since everything had gone so well, we rented a scooter today to go sightseeing around the Vava’u. Due to its odd octopus-like shape, we thought we could go to a few different arms of the island. […]
29 August 2012
Above: With no underwater camera, all we can capture is a surface photo of the crystal-clear water. Diving in Vava’u was a bit of an afterthought after such an awesome day yesterday’s whale-swim where we got really close-up to three humpback whales. We toyed with the idea of doing more whale-swims. But no one could take […]
29 August 2012
Above: With no underwater camera, all we can capture is a surface photo of the crystal-clear water. We toyed with the idea of doing more whale-swims. But no one could take us; they’re all full. It’s probably better that way as our companions told us our experience yesterday was unbeatable compared to the other days […]
28 August 2012
We walked down to Dolphin Pacific’s office with a large wad of cash at 0830 for our whale-swim adventure. There were 8 guests including ourselves (with 2 of them picked up at a resort rather than setting out with us). The rules require a max of 4 pax in the water plus the guide. Some […]
27 August 2012
We landed on time at Tongatapu shortly after 1100. Our connection to Vava’u was in less than three hours which would be enough time on a good day (and touch-and-go in case of a delay). As it turned out, we got through immigration and customs very quickly as we had no checked luggage. We shuttled […]
7 August 2010
We flew back to Rarotonga early and returned to the Aquarius Rarotonga for another nightstop. We hired a motorbike to explore even though the weather was getting a bit cool. We attempted to circle the whole island but failed on our first attempt anti-clockwise as it started drizzling. After a break, we reversed direction and […]
6 August 2010
We did two dives today with Aitutaki Scuba (Neil Mitchell). The first dive was at Rapae Wall was alright. We saw a turtle float past … then another one which had been resting amongst the rock got up and took off. We also went down 28m into a canyon but there wasn’t much to see. My dive […]
6 August 2010
We did two dives today with Aitutaki Scuba (Neil Mitchell). The first dive was at Rapae Wall was alright. We saw a turtle float past … then another one which had been resting amongst the rock got up and took off. We also went down 28m into a canyon but there wasn’t much to see. My dive […]