Ha Apai

quiet and relaxed and home to spectacular beaches and offshore islands.

Ha'apai: The South Pacific Island Paradise

There is Koh Yao Noi (my Thai paradise island), Otres Strand (my Kambodian paradise beach), Tofo (my Mozambique paradise beach), and now I throw Ha'apai, Tonga into the mixture, because after seven years of travelling I find that it is the most beautiful place I have ever seen. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I found paradise.

By the time you've followed my Tonga update, you'll already know I can't get enough of Ha'apai. Since I left the island, I have been constantly discussing it and am committed to convincing as many as possible to see it for themselves. Where' s Ha'apai anyway? Ha'apai is the name of a string of isles in Tonga.

In this part of the land there are 51 of them - although only 17 are populated - and information about them, as everywhere in Tonga, is in short supply. When it came to determining which Ha'apai island to go to, I was disappointed in not too scandalous newscasts. First I wanted to stay at Taiana's Place on the island of Uoleva, known as the best and least expensive ($13 per night) backpacking site in Ha'apai.

But with the limitations of the islands and my aversion to telephoning, making a reservation turned out to be hard and I took the simple way out. That'?s where I found Matafonua on Foa lsland. With $100 a day, it was out of my money, but when I took a look at the beautiful pictures of the chalet and combined them with the flawless critics, I was immediately sure that I would let off steam.

These are some pictures of Matafonua taken by Darren Rice, one of the owner and whose instagram you should follow. Yeah, okay, Matafonua, you can take all my cash. The journey to the chalet is simple. When you arrive on the Tongatapu Principal Isle ('yes, I know this is the hardest part for most of my readers!), take a 40-minute plane ride with Royal Tonga to Ha'apai, followed by a 20-minute minibus ride to Matafonua, and you've done it!

As always, I used to pay for my time in Matafonua with my own cash, and I will go on and on about this place because I love it so much. In Matafonua you will live in modest cabins on the shore, ideally placed to enjoy the cool ocean breezes. The Matafonua is insulated at the top of Foa Island, as you can see from the drones pictures above, so it's okay to have open doors and keep the bungalows unoccupied during the daytime.

Probably you will only meet other Matafonua visitors and owner-friend' s while living here. Spooning against the International Date Line, Tony is one of the first nations in the hemisphere to see the sun rise. This is how many nations wanted to reap the tourist revenues of those who celebrate the year 2000 in the land that first sees the dawn that many - even Tony - began to change their time zones to put their claims on first place in the mixture.

Sitting on the shore, I burying my feet in the sandy ground, observing the staring of the outcrop. I was only 600 leagues from where I was sitting, but its time zone means that it was 23 hrs behind Tonga. Whilst it was 6 o'clock in the morning on a Wednesday in Ha'apai, it was only 7 o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday there.

It is an area where it is simple to make acquaintances, where everyone concentrates endlessly more on conversations than on technique and where you immediately prolong your sojourn because you are not sure that travelling will be better. There' s only a few places in the whole wide globe that fit into this group for me (Atilla's Getaway in Selcuk, Turkey, and Frendz Resort in Boracay, the Philippines are the two that immediately come to my mind), and Matafonua is now at the top of the group.

Because of the night-time dinner together it means to make a friend in this part of Tonga and to always have someone to talk to. If you had the sensational setting that made everyone stay at the chalet all night - why decide to go - then this was a place where you couldn't get lonesome even in the low seson.

I had a day of relaxing in Matafonua. I woke up with the sundown every day and left my cabin for a walk on the shore before going to the hotel for breakfasts. I spent the remainder of my forenoon talking to the other customers about traveling, getting e-mails and taking pictures of the beaches all the time, because I wanted to be there.

Most of the time I got 350 of the same pictures instead. Dinner was amazingly good in Matafonua - I would rate her as the best in the South Pacific, so I always took the opportunity and ordered freshwater seafood for Iunch.

At this point the shore would call me and I would feel culpable because I didn't spend as much of my life as I could humanely. Sun bathing on my own personal sandy beaches, bathing in the hot sea and snorkeling from a large flock of leafy sharks: There is so much to do in Matafonua, and I wasn't even there for the year.

You can kayak to the desert in the picture above or hop on a standing paddle board to work off the baked goods that you have no doubt gobbled up at breakfasts. It is possible to hire a bike to travel the eight mile to the next city, try free diving and go for a hike on the sundown.

For a small guest house in a remote part of the globe there was a great deal to do. Instead, I was satisfied with spending my afternoon on the beaches, chilling in the sea, read a textbook and doing little else. It was a period when you had to put away equipment, chat with folks from all over the globe and wonder if Tonga was one of the most underestimated goals in the game.

Exiting Matafonua Lodge was one of the most difficult journeys I made and I was so nearing prolongation. And, of course, I would have felt culpable if I had skipped the Vava'u archipelago, but I also know how seldom it is to find a place where you have fallen in love it.

If you didn't find it out of the gushiest blogs I' ve ever posted, Ha'apai was the place for me.