Niue - Tonga - Fiji
We spent a week exploring the limestone caves, going cave-diving and enjoying the relaxed atmosphere amongst locals and cruisers alike. The social highlights were a birthday party on the trimaran Migration with 32 people and a movie night showing the classic "Casablanca" in the Niue yacht club.
The two days passage to Tonga was again a fast and hilarious sail. Anchored off Neiafu, the capital of the northern Vava´u group with about 50 other yachts, most of them met before somewhere along the way. So this turned out to be the climax of social life, with daily acitivities, among these ANIMA participating in the weekly yacht race with a crew of nine and visiting the nearby Mariner´s Cave with 12 people on board!
Two very active weeks in Tonga passed by quickly. Meanwhile Uschi, Wolfgang´s girlfriend joined us for the passage to Fiji, which was quite slow, but with sunny skies and almost flat seas. The check-in-procedures in Fiji took some time and patience. It´s hard to understand, why this has to be so complicated for the yachties. From our port of entrance, the lovely Savu Savu in the north, we sailed in day-hops to Vuda Point Marina, in the west of the main island, Viti Levu. Uschi had to fly back home and Klaus joined us for the passage to New Zealand, which will be the theme of next month´s report ...
There are no pictures of Fiji, which this year is only the hop-off point for the New Zealand passage. Next season I plan to spend several weeks in this huge, gorgeous cruising grounds.
