Safetosea

Well, back from Tonga and had a very interesting time.

I'll follow up with a longer post soon as I have a bit to do today, but a few shots to show where I stayed, and a little of what I got up to.

The wave, a left out front, the day I arrived. It went onshore shortly afterwards though I went out for an hour but I and it were totally forgettable. You can see the conditions it degraded to in the shot of me.

The crab, I nearly stepped on while stumbling through forest as I returned from fossicking around the site of the first proto-Polynesian settlement in the Pacific.

It seems from this site in Tonga true populating of the Pacific began. Amongst the mangroves not far from the crab, I was picking up pieces of pottery, remnants of these Lapita peoples, cast aside 3000 years ago.

And that wasn't the half of it.

As for the tree, the little boy who grew up sitting in it, looking at and surfing the sometimes wonderful waves out front, was Chas Egan, son of Shane and Chris, (thanks guys for looking after me at your Blue Banana), brother of Hayley, now doing his final paper for his PhD in astrophysics. Go figure.

Way back when they named him they gave him a middle name that proved to be prescient.

Astro.