Nina and Adrian Hoffmann
Wanderlust - A Solitary Island in the South Pacific
eISBN: 978-3-95910-273-5
Eden Books
A publishing house of Edel Germany GmbH
Copyright © 2019 Edel Germany GmbH, Neumühlen 17, 22763 Hamburg
www.edenbooks.de | www.edel.com
Copyright of the English edition © 2019
Some of the persons in the text are anonymous for reasons of protection of privacy.
Project coordination: Svenja Monert
Cover adaptation: Geela Eden | www.geelaeden.de based on a design by Judith Haentjes, Johanna Höflich | www.johannahoeflich.de
E-book conversion: Datagrafix GSP GmbH, Berlin | www.datagrafix.com
All rights reserved. The work may only be reproduced - even in part - with the permission of the publisher.
Maybe it would have been better
if we'd never set foot on a desert island.
After careful consideration we have decided not to mention the name of "our" lonely island. The idea that others might find happiness there drives Nina and me mad. I'm sorry.
I know that sounds selfish. It is. If you have good arguments, you may be able to convince us to give you all the information; and if you want to solve the mystery without our support, you will probably be able to do so without too much dislocation. A little internet research, a little asking around in the small South Sea kingdom of Tonga. Voilà.
We can't even explain exactly what our problem would be if others enjoyed life on "our" island. It's not ours, it's just a perceived ownership claim. I think we're afraid of getting jealous. For only a few months after our return to Germany it has already become clear to us: leaving the island was a mistake. Or the mistake was to find it in the first place. That's a matter of opinion.
Even with our now three-year-old daughter we have already been there for a few weeks, in January and February 2016. I would almost say we could spend the rest of our lives there. Well, in theory. With a child everything is not so simple anymore.
The island was perfect. Living in the moment, a daydream without deadline pressure. Fishing, gardening. Harvesting papayas, enjoying sunsets, making fire on the beach, walking around the island at full moon. All that.
In doing so, we always ignore the fact that we had just as many negative experiences. Some who almost forced us to stop our year in paradise early. On the one hand the forces of nature, on the other - man. Hard to believe, but he became the greatest threat to our island idyll. There were days when our desire for the South Seas was gone. Days when we were afraid for our lives.
Nevertheless - with this book we want to whet the appetite of our readers, you, for the South Seas.
We were also accompanied by our young mixed-breed dog Sunday, whom we took with us the long way to the other end of the world. His name is so because we found him as a puppy on the street on a Sunday. He's been in the family ever since. He is knee-high, black-brown-white and has a striking white tail-top. Getting him to his destination was extremely complicated; we had to fill out a lot of documents, answer a lot of questions from the relevant authorities. A German tax return is nothing compared to it.
Sunday has been our "Friday" on the island, if you will. We could talk to him when we had worries, and he always understood us. He was fishing with me every day and digging in the sand for crabs to challenge them to play. Without him, our island time would never have been what we remember it to be.
Nina's parents Gaby and Klaus - who helped us so tirelessly in every situation.
Editor Friederike Haller - for her great improvements to the manuscript.
Svenja Monert from Eden Books and her team - for supporting the realization of the book.
Christian - for his journalistic advice.
Sione from the church ferry - for the selfless help in Tonga.
Island owners Jamie and Matt - who shared their dream with us.
Karin and Herbert - for the conscientious reading of the manuscript.
Jonathan, Henry and Ratu - for the key to paradise.
Karin and Uwe (Karin's Garden, Taveuni) - for their support during our first adventure in Fiji.
Tony - for effective fishing baits.
Jim - for many pleasant conversations on the beach of the desert island.
We would also like to thank all other friends and acquaintances who we did not mention here by name and who supported us in the realization of our island dream.
Foreword
1 The Island
2 Germany
3 Ferry Trip
4 At the Ministry
5 In the Village
6 Island Exploration
7 Shopping
8 Arrival
9 Beginnings of a Garden
10 First Visitors
11 Cyclone
12 A Visit from the Americans
13 Fishing
14 Bubonic Plague
15 Foraging
16 Surprises
17 Resupply
18 Self-sufficiency
19 Sailors
20 Barracuda Trauma
21 Sea Cucumber Camp
22 Everyday Life
23 Grilled Chicken
24 Whales
25 Petroglyphs
26 Déjà-vu
27 Melancholy
28 Farewell
A thousand thanks to ...
The rain pelts wildly on the corrugated iron roof of our hut. When it really gets going, sleep is out of the question. I like that.
It's about midnight, a few days after New Year's Eve. We've only been on our desert island a few weeks. We lie on the clammy bed linen, which because of the humid climate hardly wants dries in the hottest time of the year - even if we hang it on the clothesline during the day.
"If it goes on like this, the rain tank will be full in five minutes," I say to Nina.
"I don't care, I want to go back to sleep," she mumbles and cuddles up to me. We listen to the rain keep drumming. Sunday jumps on the bed and lies down in the hollow of my knee. He hates rain, even if it's warm tropical rain.
I whisper to him, "Don't act like that," and pull him towards me at the head end to smell the sand and the sea in his soft ears. He growls sleepily.
It's funny: when it rains in Germany, I immediately get in a bad mood. I'm happy here on the island. You sit alone on a patch of sand surrounded by coconut palms and the wide sea, almost thirty hours’ flying time, twenty hours’ boating time and many waiting times away from Germany, and all the water of this planet plunges down on you. At least that's what it sounds like.
And finally I hear what I've been waiting for: the water splashing out of the overflow of the rain tank. I push the bedroom window up and look into the night. The tank is right behind the house, I can see the water jet.
"Nina, if we go outside now, we can have a real shower," I say. "As we know it." This means that we don't have to tilt water over our heads from a metal bowl, but can simply stand under the shower head - in this case the overflow of the tank. "A shower," I rave to Nina and squeeze at her. "Come on, it's all warm outside, just down to the beach and let’s have a shower." Without waiting for an answer, I grab her by the hand and pull her out of the bed, out of the hut, into the rain, down to the beach. Inside, Sunday is happy to have the bed to himself.
As we stand on the beach, we are already completely wet. We look back and see the candlelight shine in the hut. Tall drops slap our hair on our foreheads - tingling like a champagne shower; but who needs champagne when you live in paradise?
"We'll lie down in the sea", Nina calls now, but still taken with the tropical rain. The water is shallow at low tide and warmer than the rain, a single large bathtub. The moon shimmers lightly through the clouds, the waves are gentle. We let our toes protrude out of the water, hear the impact of the drops on the surface and the soft noise of the waves. Until I get a thought.
"I'm sure you can fish well in the rain at night," I say to Nina.
"You only think of one thing," she replies and jumps up. The idea that predatory fish could nibble at us also spoils my pleasure in bathing and I follow it.
We run to the hut holding hands and finally stand under the waterfall at the overflow that washes salt and sand off our bodies.
Then we throw ourselves into bed at Sunday, who immediately jumps down because we are too wet for him.
Next morning, Nina's the first to go outside. "Look at this," she calls to me in the bedroom. I go after her. We stand barefoot at the bright white beach under a coconut palm and look at the turquoise blue lagoon. Everything is calm and peaceful, the sea seems to be smooth and glittering in the sun. I give Nina a long kiss.
"Welcome to paradise," I whisper happily in her ear.
Germany. At five thirty, the smartphone rings. SMS from the police. Accident with several fatalities on the motorway.
"I gotta go," I say to Nina, who's still slumbering.
"Oh no, again," she complains.
Sometimes I hate my reporter job. Standing at some accident site and photographing car wrecks - what's that all about? Worse still, it's become routine. Three dead, one seriously injured. Off the road, cause of accident unclear. These are the facts that will later appear in the daily newspaper; the words for the text have long been in my head. Sober sentences. It's actually about people. People just torn out of life, probably on their way to work.
I drag myself to my clothes, pack my camera, put on my hi-vis press vest. There's no time for breakfast or even coffee. While on the way to the scene of the accident I look tiredly at the road, when suddenly pictures shoot into my head. Beautiful pictures, distant pictures. From our vacation on an island in Fiji. It's been a while. I enjoyed getting up there at night ...
After the work is done in the editorial office, my colleagues from the online section tell me that the accident report is already the most viewed item after a short time. In the conference room I get praised for the early morning work; the photo gallery I made with my smartphone is especially well received by the readers. That's why I'm supposed to say a few sentences for the video editors, which they can put over a short clip from the scene of the accident. Business as usual; if it is not a traffic accident, there is a major fire or a robbery/theft/burglary.
I encounter all these situations with professional distance, otherwise I could hardly digest my breakfast. Nevertheless, it always leaves me with a bad feeling when I'm praised for having captured other people's misfortunes. And lately, in situations like this, it keeps flashing in my head. The island.
As I walk past a travel agency with a colleague during my lunch break, I pause for a moment and look at the palm trees that are pictured as advertisements for a trip to the tropics. I would love to go in and book immediately, but the colleague pulls me further.
"We don't have time for this today," he says.
"As if we ever had time for something like this," I answer. "It's a miracle you let yourself be talked into having coffee."
"Don't whine," laughs the colleague.
He doesn't understand that, I think, and I let myself be dragged along; through the crowds back into the editorial building.
In the afternoon I call the police spokesman to find out whether there are still three dead or whether the seriously injured person has also died in the meantime. It stays at three. I update the online message and write that the seriously injured person is, according to the police, out of danger. After that, I go home.
The evening traffic jam is as expected. On the radio is the song I Will Love You Mondays. Actually, a song about the efforts of love. 365 attempts a year to get it right. I interpret it in my own way: 365 days a year "running around and going nowhere". 365 days a year to make the right decision - and get out of here.
When I walk in the front door, I'm frustrated, like always after such a shitty day. Strictly speaking, the day wasn't even shitty - I did my job, got praised for it and now return home to my dear wife. Nevertheless, I am in a bad mood, especially as I am always on call and can be torn out of the evening at any time, even though I already had one appointment after the other during the day. I hardly bring out a greeting, hardly talk a word with Nina. I'll moan at her for little things.
"You didn't buy any butter again, just the nasty margarine," I'm annoyed when I open the fridge.
"Why don't you go buy your own?" Nina gives back. She's right. And actually, I don't even need butter right now. It sounds childish: basically, I just want a beer and get upset about something. Let go of my frustration.
"Well, how was your day?" asks Nina as a peace offering.
"Don't ask," I say.
A little later we sit in the living room and switch on the TV. Zappingly and silently we waste the evening. Actually, I might as well ask Nina how her day in elementary school was - she's a teacher. But somehow I don't have the nerve. Stories of children who misbehave, and of their parents who actually like it too, because of self-development and so on (they are just too lazy to educate their brats - my opinion!) - I don't need such stories today. Even though I know it might help Nina get rid of her ballast. When did we stop talking to each other?
Again I think of the beach. A campfire under the South Seas starry sky. We didn't always talk then either, but it was a good silence. A common one.
While on the screen an ad for a sensational new car runs, showing it drive silently through dreamlike landscapes as if there was nothing more natural than a heap of tin in Mother Nature, my mind goes through the fact that one can fall victim to fate completely senselessly during a banal car journey here. The selection is absolutely arbitrary. The risk of being run over by a tsunami in the South Seas is much lower than in German road traffic.
And suddenly I don't feel like wasting time anymore. Be it in the car or in front of the TV. We all get so much time stolen every day, just like that. And nobody seems to mind. On the contrary, we simply join in because we forget what else we could do. That there are other things we could experience.
"There's no butter or margarine on the island."
I'm looking at her. Just gaze for a moment. "You too?" I ask.
"Yes. All the time; for months."
"But not for a few weeks, you realize that, don't you?"
She sighs. "It would be nice."
"Nina," I reach for the remote control, switch off the device and look into her eyes. It is as if her words had awakened in me a will to make decisions that the daily grind had silenced for a long time. Now it’s reporting back. "I want us not only to have dreams, but to make them come true."
"It's not me," she replies. So it's a done deal, as if we only had to talk about it weeks before. We're going back. We're moving to the island.
In the days and weeks after this evening, I feel exhilarated, standing above things in a way like a superhero who nothing and nobody can touch. Even if doubts keep coming in between.
"Think about what we'd have to organize." Sometimes it's Nina who expresses her shyness, sometimes it's me. There are so many things to keep in mind until you have escaped everyday life in Germany - the apartment must be vacated, the furniture stored, the car sold, the telephone and electricity switched off. It's not comfortable. And these are just the things that await us here.
Once that's done, there are farewell meetings with friends, with neighbours, with colleagues. relatives at the very end. And everyone will ask them, "What are you doing all day? Don't you get bored? Don't you get sick of it?"
Counter question: "What are you doing here in Germany all day? Don't you get bored? Don't you get sick of it?"
On a fateful evening a few useless weeks later, during which I often stared into the window of the travel agency: Nina bangs her way up to me on the sofa, literally throws herself at me and says: "It can't go on like this. We're finally planning this instead of just imagining what needs to be done. My contract's about to expire."
Nina's not employed, not so bad in this case. I, on the other hand, have to quit, which the editor-in-chief probably won't like at all. But what the hell? We do it with our heads together. It's amazing how easy it can be all of a sudden.
I'm excited when I meet my boss to confess in the beer garden. The bewilderment is written all over his face, and he must first take a deep sip of wheat beer before he can say anything.
"You're serious about this, aren't you?" I nod. He nods. "Okay. Lonely island, yeah?" I nod again. "For a whole year?"
"Yep."
My boss still shakes his head, drinks another sip. Then he nods too. “I'll be happy to have you back when you return,” he says.
"Thank you," I reply kindly and rejoice like a honey pie horse. The idea of being eligible for a job again after our year of withdrawal gives me security. Despite our project, which in the eyes of most people is pure adventure, Nina and I attach great importance to security. It is not the desire to take risks that drives us to a deserted island, but the knowledge that we are better off there, that this is what we need right now. Still, it's nice to be able to go back in case it gets too much.
When I get home, I see that Nina has already packed the first moving boxes that we will put under our families' care.
I grin and shout to her: "Free. We are free!"
The journey to paradise leads through hell and unfortunately past lots of shipwrecks. It's early evening, darkness is already breaking over the harbour. In daylight we saw from here the banana trees and the tall palm trees along the coastal road. The turquoise blue sea made the surroundings together with the sunshine extra bright and only enjoyable with sunglasses.
Now, at this hour, the South Sea has disappeared. The sky is cloudy, even the stars and moon give no light.
Nuku'alofa is the name of the place where we are - by definition the capital city of Tonga, but capital village would a better decriptor.
Nuku'alofa deviates in some respects from what we had imagined of our South Sea idyll. After all, we are talking about the Garden of Eden on Earth, as this area with its thousands of islands between Hawaii, New Zealand and the Easter Islands in the southeast was described centuries ago.
In contrast, Nuku'alofa's appearance is sobering. The city was half burnt down after the death of the king in 2006. There was unrest, preceded by the demand for a democratic composition of Parliament. Shops were looted and set on fire. Today's centre, if you want to call it that, consists mainly of cement foundations - remains of the fire ruins. Although the city with its thirty thousand inhabitants is comparatively small, conditions are like in a big city: garbage is lying around everywhere, drugs are being traded and stolen. It also happens that a robber armed with a machete targets the bank.
At least outside the city there are beautiful villages, corners with countless mango trees and beaches to discover, and the South Sea becomes more what we expected to find.
Nuku'alofa’s harbour is a small scrap yard with a small mooring at the top of the pier. Only a few of the worn bollards are still in use. Many ships lie on the ground, bows protrude warningly out of the water.
"Is this such a good idea?" I hear Nina asking, shaken and looking over at the wrecks.
"I don't really know," I say.
The rental car is outside the port area and we walk the remaining meters. Uncomfortable in our flip-flops, because we constantly step into the next pothole. Sweat drips from our eyebrows, the air is humid and salty. Sunday is panting.
The only ship among the dozen on which the lacquer holds is the light blue painted Alo'ofa. "Love" is what that means. She looks run-down. The boat is at the end of the pier, about fifty people have gathered in a group and are standing in front of a barrier tape. A spotlight connected to a generator illuminates the gravel surface in front of the small ferry. Nina puts down her backpack, which is far too heavy for her petite figure, and I add the canisters of petrol.
I have a dull feeling in my stomach and am beginning to understand the challenge I will be facing today. When I look out at the dark sea, I see white crowns of foam on the waves everywhere.
I don't have a choice. A trip on this boat is the only way to get to the place that is to become our little dream world for the next year - somewhere in the middle of nowhere, in the deepest Polynesian loneliness.
It will be an island-hopping of the most strenuous kind, through the night, with several stops. I can't reach the desert island itself directly by ferry; I depend on a fisherman to take me there from the nearest inhabited island. For the few nautical miles I need as long as on a plane around the world.
Nina will wait with Sunday in Nuku'alofa and start shopping for the first months on our island until I come back from the exploration and find out what awaits us.
We get an overview of the hustle and bustle. People are stacking a lot of luggage, some have bags of taro roots with them, a woman a plastic Christmas tree with a chain of lights. Many of them already now, in the middle of November, are drawn to their families on the secluded islands. Far away from any shopping market they will spend the Christmas season there.
Sione, the man from the ferry, recognizes us. He calls our names over our heads and wave to us. We are the only Palangis in the crowd, as whites in the South Sea Kingdom are called by all, and easy to recognize.
"Adrian, are you ready to go?" he asks as we stand in front of him.
Am I?
"I think so."
In the first two months in Tonga we had tried in vain to reach the remote island areas that interested us the most. The sailors we met rejected our requests for a transfer from the outset. Fishing didn't go any better. We were close to despair. Sione helped us. When we met him, he was walking barefoot from a neighboring wreck over a mason's floorboard to the Alo'ofa, hopping over the gap between the ship and the pier to me, looking at me with his coconut brown eyes, and answering my question, which I had already yelled at him from a distance: "Yes, my friend”.
As it turned out, Sione is a true sea nomad. One who knows all the little islands in the middle of nowhere. He is 44 years old and spends his life exclusively on boats. On the Alo'ofa he works as a kind of administrator, he lives in the neighboring shipwreck.
It gets serious, I kiss Nina goodbye, from which she can hardly get away, and pat Sunday on the head.
"Everything's gonna be fine," I whisper into Nina's ear. She nods, but says nothing.
Sione points me over a narrow beam into the boat. Before I find myself a place and let Sione go back to his work, I ask him: "Is it getting very bad?"
He answers very untypically for most Tonga people who like to say what you want to hear: "It's getting rough." I had a hunch.
The Alo'ofa is in reality only a former fishing boat with a covered outer surface. There's no room inside for passengers. I sit down on a narrow wooden bench on the side from where I can look forward to where most of the passengers are. They lie down on the ship's floor and use their luggage as pillows. A man, dressed in black and with a woven mat of dried pandanus leaves curved around his waist, stands in front of the passengers and begins to speak in Tongan.
"That's the priest," says one of the boatmen. "He prays for a safe passage."
We lay down, I see Nina standing at the pier, in the warm rain veil of the night, and we wave to each other one last time.
Now, so soon after the departure, everything seems very unreal. With wise foresight, Nina gave me a few tablets against seasickness before starting the ferry trip, particularly high doses, of which we took a whole series of packs from Germany. With a sip of water I flush down the first pill.
"What's that?" asks a boy watching me.
"It helps against seasickness," I answer.
"Can I have one too?"
"Sure," I say and give him a travel gum instead of a pill. They're pretty good, too, especially prophylactic for boys.
The Alo'ofa chugs past the first small islands that lie a few kilometers before Tonga's main island Tongatapu and whose contours, although we are now so close to them, I hardly notice anymore in the black of the night. From here our boat goes out into the open sea.
Without a phase of acclimatisation, the passage begins, which everyone in the ship could do without. Meter-high waves, which I can imagine more than I can see, pile up in front of us. I'm busy concentrating on a point outside the boat. But I don't know which one to take, there aren't many to choose from, so I look back towards Tongatapu, where a light burns in a sparsely equipped South Sea lighthouse - a lamp on a metal pole.
Minutes later this light has also disappeared, and I search in vain for hold on the horizon. There's only darkness left. The Alo'ofa swings up and down, sometimes a gush of water splashes from the bow to the side corridor. The plastic tarpaulin over the railing, which Sione lowered after an hour of driving, and even my raincoat don't offer any protection from the waves after a while. I'm cold, I'm wet all the way down to my underpants. Annoyed, I turn to my side, my eyes stubbornly turned to the oil barrels standing at the back of the ship. So only my back gets the water and the hood of my jacket and it no longer runs over my face and chin in the collar.
The tablet makes me sleepy; I forget my fear and would like to give in to the desire for sleep. But I have a very bad seat, squeezed between two fat men. The chewing gum boy lies at my feet and has pulled a blanket over his face, only his eyes look out.
"Tastes all right," he says. "I think it helps."
The tablet works for quite a while on me, and I hope to survive the trip relatively well. But suddenly, I feel sick. I reach for the railing, stagger back to the oil barrels. Opposite is the so-called toilet. I push the wooden plate to the side, which is meant to be a door, and fall into it full of gratitude for having reached the bowl.
As I notice only now, I've been sitting in front of the side window of the toilet the whole time, which is why the whole hell ride over the smell of urine rises to my nose. After this first session I decide to go to the railing, which in the long run is more humane than the toilet cabin, where salt water mixes with all sorts of things on the floor.
When I returned to my crushed position, I noticed that other passengers were also using the railing to get rid of unnecessary stomach contents. They fold the plastic tarpaulin up a gap and stretch their heads through in wind and waves.
"How are you?" the boy asks anxiously.
"It's okay," I lie.
The rain becomes even stronger at night, the waves become even higher, and after each ridge a steep descent begins. I wonder if the luggage stowed in the lower bow space is not too heavy to bring the Alo'ofa safely to the next spot of land.
Whenever people run to the railing and back again or the next wave sloshes in, I startle awake. The wet clothes on my skin are uncomfortable and will not dry any more tonight.
Actually, I'm not supposed to take the second tablet until eight hours after taking the first one. But I decide to chance it two hours early, it's just after midnight. I somehow dig the bottle of water out of the backpack, for which I have to wake the sleeping boy using it as a pillow, and throw in the next tablet.
"Can I have some more gum?"
I pass it to him wordlessly. Being seasick is like dying.
Although I have given myself the answer time and again, I ask myself: is it really the right thing to do? Was it wise to leave the apartment and give up jobs? For what? For a crazy dream? An idea that perhaps cannot be realized in the way we imagine? What's in it for us? I have no answers, I'm in a boat and my head is spinning.
There is a time on that night when I stopped longing for the end of the journey. I've lost all sense of time. If someone told me we'd been on the road for days and I didn't have a watch on the phone display, I'd believe it.
The Alo'ofa floats in the waves like a message in a bottle that never arrives anywhere. I don't feel like we're moving ahead either. Meanwhile I wouldn't care myself if I slid half asleep from the bench to the ground and from there under the railing into the depth. The main thing is to close your eyes without everything spinning in your head. Finally, the second pill overpowers me.
It all started when Nina and I left two years earlier for that trip through Tonga's neighboring island state of Fiji. We wanted to get out of the old world for a while, out of everyday life - a wish that many people have. Some fulfil this dream directly after graduating from high school, first go on journeys before "the seriousness of life" begins. With us this was not possible, although we already dreamed of paradise during our school days. As soon as she had her diploma in her hand, Nina threw herself into her studies and I started with the civil service and training.
Time passed, it was a good time, but at some point it was clear: if we didn't dream for a lifetime, but really wanted to see our paradise, then it was now or never. We did not suspect at all that this first adventure would become something that we understand today as our personal way of life.
First we moved to Fiji's northeast, to a small island with many hills, streams and seven villages. We found a place to stay in a bay on the edge of a settlement and tried to integrate ourselves into the village and South Sea culture. The islanders welcomed us warmly. And finally fate took its course, because one day we met Jonny.
Jonny was a tanned and cheerful mid-forties man from South Africa who came to Fiji to enjoy life - and he said: "There's this island, so you know, it's a real insider tip."
We listened curiously, and the more Jonny told us, the more fascinated we were. It was a desert island. The desert island, thirty nautical miles away from the next inhabited one. In the middle of the ocean, in the middle of nowhere. A small grain of sand on the nautical chart, not even noted on most charts. Unattainable to anyone who didn’t know it existed. It was about four hundred by one hundred meters big; around the wooded interior of the island there was a sandy beach as wide and long as the white in a fried egg.
The beauty of the island dazzled us, its unspoiled beauty took our breath away. Without talking about it, it was clear to both of us that this was exactly what we were looking for. The solitude. Even though neither of us is a misanthrope, but on the contrary love and need our friends - the thought of being only a couple for a while appealed to us. Would we get to know each other anew if we had nothing and no one else to distract us from each other? Would it strengthen our relationship?
When we first felt the warm white sand of the island under our feet, we felt like we were the only people in the world - the most beautiful place you could find. It seemed so surreal, so incredibly perfect. So that even today we almost can't believe we really were there. That it wasn't imagination. It was real.
This island looked as if a higher power had arranged each grain of sand separately, placing each coral in the turquoise lagoon individually. And we suddenly got the chance to live there for a short time. Permission to live there. Our entry into paradise. We couldn't help ourselves.
Jonny referred us to the owner's son, a New Zealander, and he was very happy about our interest. He never thought about renting the island and the beach house on it, he said, but that sounds good. "Can you deal with yourselves?" he asked. Could we? Of course we could!
In this island idyll there was no Western luxury as we know it. We had a compost toilet consisting of a plastic barrel and a wooden frame around it. But there was a completely different kind of luxury: we had time, infinite time. For all daily things in life and above all for each other. I think that was what planted the longing in us and allowed it to germinate, until it grew into this unconditional need that no longer made us happy at home.
It would have been obvious for us to go to that island again the second time, we had all the contacts, but there was a problem for which we simply could not find a solution: in principle, Fiji does not grant permission to import dogs from Europe. No special permit either. No argument. But it was clear to us that we would not leave our dog behind.
So we came to the kingdom of Tonga. Located right next to Fiji, the islands are even more remote than their neighbouring country, which has become more touristy in recent decades, according to the travel guide.
The nice gentleman from the quarantine station helped us right away with our special dog import request. And: In relation to inhabited islands there are disproportionately many uninhabited ones in Tonga. About 30 settled, 340 desert - hardly imaginable that we should not find anything there.
Weeks before the disastrous ferry trip to the island, I visit a backyard office belonging to the Ministry of Lands, Survey, Natural Resources and Environment. It's lunch break and smells like chicken-flavored instant noodles when I come in. The employees pour them into coffee cups and stir until the noodles are soft enough.
Richard, head of the Geographic Information System subdivision at the Ministry, interrupts the matter, which demands all his attention, rises from the desk chair and smiles as he approaches me to shake my hand. He wears Tonga business attire: a black wrap skirt, the obligatory pandanus mat tied around it, a black shirt and wide leather sandals. He seems warm and polite, but after listening to my request he will in all likelihood declare me crazy.
"How can I help?" he asks and looks at me expectantly through his angular glasses. Palangis are usually found in the Immigration Office one street down because of visa issues, a building that would collapse if there weren't so many passports piled up in it. Or they could make it into the Ministry of Lands antechamber to pay fees for leased land. But here, in the corrugated iron-covered annex behind the main building, no one ever comes.
"It's a little complicated," I say. "I can come back after lunch too."
"No, no, that's all right," Richard replied, rolling an office chair towards me and asking me to sit opposite him.
I take my seat gratefully and describe my concern to him. "My wife and I are looking for a suitable desert island for ourselves," I say. "I need an overview and good maps."
I'm surprised Richard doesn't react in astonishment. It only takes him two seconds to process what I want. "And what are you going to do there?" he asks.
"Whatever most Tongans do," I answer. "We like the simple life on the islands, want to grow our own garden and go fishing once in a while."
Richard smiles at me and takes a breath. "Don't plant marijuana," he warns, and I don't know if he means that as a joke. He leads me to a table in the corner of the office where cards in DIN A1 format are spread out. Some show large islands in detail. Others show whole groups. Richard pulls down one of the cardboard rolls lying on a cupboard. He opens the lid and pulls out a card showing the entire Ha'apai island group. It is located in the middle of the kingdom and is particularly isolated and little developed. Just what we're looking for. The individual archipelagos are scattered so far that one might think that someone had dropped sugar sprinkles on the map and let them roll. The enormous expanse of the ocean is the dominant element. The pure land mass in the South Sea makes up one percent, the rest of the surface is water - it is as large as the surface of the moon.
Richard's map shows the distances from island to island - the map that we got before at the tourist office was useless for us. There are four islands which we have noticed and about which we would like to learn more. With days of internet research we tried to gain as many impressions as possible. Google Earth hardly works because of the bad internet connection in Tonga, but for some islands we find descriptions of sailors who anchored in front of them on their journeys through the archipelago. The contributions are sometimes several years old. In most cases it is difficult to obtain up-to-date information. With luck we come across photos that sailors put online after their trips and learn about fruits growing on the islands and animals living there.
On one of them, made very distinctive by smooth, big boulders on the beach, a Tongan hermit allegedly lives several months a year with his pigs. I found out about it at a beach bar in the evening.
"Is it still like that?" I ask Richard.
"As far as I know, yes," he says.
Unfortunately, this means that Little Bora-Bora, as sailors call the island, is out of the question. Nina and I, a “settler duo”, so to speak, don't want to disturb a hermit. The island would have had another advantage: it is more than ten meters high at one point - a good protection against a tsunami.
This is also the view of Richard, who shows me a map showing the development of a tsunami in September 2009 on the Niuas, the two northernmost islands of Tonga. The wave had cost the lives of dozens of people.
"The tsunami danger is considered to have increased in the next few years," says Richard. I flinch. It is clear that there are tsunamis and that they are dangerous, but I now hear immediately, for the first time, that the probability of being caught by one has increased.
"You have to make sure that you get all the official warnings, no matter how," Richard recommends and looks at me insistently. I nod; I'm certainly not taking the risk lightly.
Two more islands are eliminated; they are too small for us. You can hardly walk a circle on them, and after a few hours we would be at each other’s throats.
In the Ha'apai group, however, there is still a small chain of islands that could fit. An island in the very south is the largest, one and a half kilometers long and three hundred meters wide. Unfortunately, Richard can't give me any information about it. "I've never been there," he says. He also doesn't know the island a few miles further north. Nevertheless, it seems to me an option because it is described by sailors as a huge banana and papaya plantation that must have been planted decades ago.
The third uninhabited island in the alliance, further miles to the north, is one kilometer long and measures almost three hundred meters at its widest point. It rises out of the sea like the mighty back of a humpback whale that emerges to breathe. Nina found an aerial photograph of her on the Internet. It lies in the same lagoon as the former plantation island, and the turquoise water around the beaches can still be seen from a thousand meters above sea level. It has a remarkably wide sand peak in the northwest - a dreamlike place for evening campfires.
"I think a Palangi built a house on this island," Richard mentions casually.
My pulse is suddenly increasing. "Really true? A house? Does anyone live there?"
"I don't know."
A thought dawns on me. If no one lived on the island and the owners were to be contacted and if our project was just right for them - is that conceivable? With us, they'd have someone to look after the house, look after the land. And for Nina and me, that would be the quickest way to get to the desert island. There would be no further discussions with authorities or landowners. Because even if an island is officially owned by the government, there are noblemen in Tonga who have a right to it and with whom it would have to be clarified whether we could settle there for a year. With a white man's private property, so much would just go away.
In the meantime we are so busy organizing our island time that it would do us good to finally choose the place. In addition, a finished house would save us the time to organize the building of a hut, and to select, buy and transport the building material on a larger boat to the island.