Vava'u is a northern cluster of islands in the Kingdom of Tonga. It is noteworthy in the world because it is one of the two places where people are allowed to swim with whales. Vava'u is THE place to swim with humpback whales. Of course, that's exactly what we planned to do there.

We had hoped to swim with the whales on Kam's birthday. What could be better than that anyway? Unfortunately, the weather didn't cooperate. We found ourselves flying to Vava'u at 6 PM on July 23^rd. Kam got her cake a day late too. Doesn't she make it look good though?

A little piece of trivia: Tonga is the closest country to the international dateline (on the west side). As such it is the first country to experience the new day. This seems to have completely screwed up the roosters. They crow all day and all night. We really hate them and eat chicken at every opportunity. Here's a view from our hotel room:

Our first day out on the boat for whale watching was a complete success. We were able to swim with a mother and her calf. The whales were very nice and didn't eat us. Here are a few pictures from that day (that's Jeff in the photo on the right):

With Kam's new dive license in hand, we gave diving a try the next day. Between our two dives, we took a swim near the beach. Here we are happy as clams:

We dove in swallow's cave on our second dive. It is known as swallows cave because the people who first named it saw lots of birds flying around inside. Evidently they were actually swiftlets, but the name stuck. There were millions of little silver fish swimming around inside of the cave.

There is a weekly yacht race in Vava'u on Friday nights. We joined up with them and were able to take a ride on one of the charter yachts. Our yacht's captain tried to cheat, but we still came in dead last.

After those two great days, we were torn between diving and whale watching the next day. Ultimately we decided that since we couldn't really expect to swim with whales anywhere else, we should try it again. We were amply rewarded with another swim with a mother and a yearling calf.

We only had one chance to swim that day, but we were more than ready for the second close encounter:

At the end of the day we came upon two whales that were breaching every minute or so. We couldn't quite figure out what they were doing, but they looked like they were having fun. They beat their tails in the water and leapt out time after time. We followed them for an hour or so and took lots of pictures. Here is one of the better sequences:

We went out whale watching the next day too, but had little luck. We saw one whale, but it dove every time we boated over near it. The sun was out though, so at least we worked on our tans!

The Penrods left the next morning (Monday). We decided to take it easy that day. We managed to wash our clothes and visit the shops while we recuperated.

Tuesday morning we planned to move our bags out to a small island to a hotel/resort called The Blue Lagoon. We arranged to have another whale watching trip would drop us off at the island at the end of the day. Good thing we did too . . . this turned out to be the best whale watching day of all. As we got on the boat (our 4^th trip, mind you), the guide beamed at us and explained how they were in the water yesterday for 4 hours swimming with two whales that just hung out on the surface for 10 to 20 minutes at a time. As you can imagine, we kicked ourselves a bit for resting the previous day. As luck would have it though, a helpful call from a yachtie who was boating around put us onto the same two whales again. We also had a great day and were able to get in the water time and time again for around 4 hours.

As you can see in the picture, these two whales just floated along at the top of the water with their heads together. They were both female. Our guide thought the bigger one might be having labor pains. She looked pregnant. We theorized that the second whale was there to provide moral support.

Here are two more pics with Kam swimming on the left and Todd on the right:

Finally, we got the underwater pictures developed and scanned in. Here's what at least Todd has been waiting for:

And here are pictures of Todd and Kamla underwater with the humpback whales in the background:

The Blue Lagoon...

We couldn't believe our eyes when the boat glided into the lagoon that fronted the hotel/resort. It's an incredible secluded place with beautiful green waters and whales spouting just outside the reef. The place consists of 7 separate buildings. The main building (on the right in the photo), is the restaurant. The other 6 buildings are separate rooms called fales people like us can stay at.

We learned on arrival that we were the only people staying on the island. We also knew that the owner of the place is a professional chef that once cooked for the king of Tonga and is reputed to make the best food in Tonga. We were due for a really good time.

We had the furthest fale from the restaurant. It really had no doors and the bed was actually outside on a veranda that looked out over the sea in the back. Here is our room from the sea and a few views from the veranda:

We hung out in our room for a few minutes admiring the view and funky bathroom design. The owner claims had didn't know how to pound a nail in before coming to the island. He personally designed and built all the buildings there. He used materials he could find on the island and integrated the buildings with the trees and rocks that were already there. The bathrooms were built directly on rocks he found buried in the ground. Really an amazing place.

We managed to pick ourselves up and headed to the restaurant. Of course we were the only people there since no one else was staying on the island. Our personal chef made us a meal that was out of this world, far and above the best meal we'd had since leaving the US. This is the walk up to the restaurant and the table we ate at:

One of the funky bathrooms

The sunset our second night on the island