• Welcoming committee greeted us as we arrived at Ha’afeva Island for an afternoon visit.

  

• Garden of taro plants on Ha’afeva. The 300 villagers on the island grow most of their own food.

  

• Most of the 170 islands of Tonga are small flat coral atolls, with about 50 uninhabited. Total population of Tonga is a little over 100,000 people.

  

• Ha’afeva Medical Officer who looks after the 300 people on Ha’afeva, plus another 200+ living on the smaller nearby islands.

  

• Two girls on Ha’afeva weren’t quite sure about us at first, but later joined with other children to follow us around.

  

• The Tongan people are Polynesian, a culture which spans the South Pacific from Tonga to Hawaii.

  

• ‘Eua Island, SE of Tongatapu, is one of the few islands that rises far above the Pacific.

  

• Cliffs of ‘Eua create a dramatic profile at sunrise.

  

• We went beachcombing on several small uninhabited islands in the Ha’afeva group.

  

• Bleached driftwood and dense carpets of shell fragments, on an island where the only footprints were our own.

  

• A coconut sprouts wherever the wind and the tides leave it.

  

• On this tiny uninhabited island, a visitor before us created this sculpture from old flip-flops that had washed ashore.