Inconsiderate Tourists

The guest house we stayed at was lovely, and even included breakfast the next morning. As it is pretty much the only operating guest house in town, we met lots of people coming in and out, including the judge of Tonga! He was actually on our flight. There is no judge living in Ha'apai so he flies over every couple months to sit all the cases that have accumulated. We also met a few people surveying buildings after the cyclone, and others who were just family or friends of people on the island. According to the Polish cafe owner, we were only the second tourists she'd seen since Cyclone Ian. The first couple didn't even know that the islands had been hit by a cyclone before they arrived! Lesson to all- do your research right before you travel. You never know what could have changed since you booked everything.

In any case, we were enjoying the time to relax and snorkel, but were starting to feel a bit in the way. We had arranged with Finau to leave at low tide which wasn't until 2pm. However, we had to vacate our room earlier to make room for then next guest. All the people we had met the day before kept asking if we were still going to Uoleva. They seemed skeptical and to be wondering why we were still sticking around. We had tried to explain that we were coming to help out, not just vacation, but to be fair we hadn't done much yet (except deliver two boxes of much appreciated food). We went for another swim in the morning to get out of the way and enjoy our last hours of freedom/boredom before heading to Uoleva to get to work. :)