Nuku'alofa

Nuku'alofa is the seat of the last kingdom in Polynesia — the only Pacific nation never colonized — and it wears the fact with white-painted Victorian ease: the Royal Palace stands in timber and red roof by the waterfront, the royal tombs hold their wide green explanade downtown, and church harmonies on Sunday morning carry, with the wind right, from one end of Tongatapu to the other. The whole kingdom rests on Sundays, entirely and by constitution; travellers learn to love it.

The traveller walks the palace waterfront and the talamahu market's pyramids of taro and watermelon; drives the coral coast to Houma, where the reef exhales through a kilometer of blowholes in synchronized geysers; stands under the Ha'amonga 'a Maui trilithon, the Pacific's Stonehenge, raised around 1200; watches flying foxes drape the casuarinas at Kolovai; and — the kingdom's great gift, July to October — swims, with licensed operators and quiet fins, alongside humpback mothers and their new calves in water like blue glass.

The Guide's practical counsel: the whale swim is a privilege with rules — small groups, licensed boats, the whales' mood as final law — book months ahead and take the briefing seriously —; Sunday closes shops, transport and beaches near villages, so make it the day of church singing and long lunches; dress modestly everywhere — Tonga is formal by island standards —; and the pa'anga economy runs on cash and patience, both worth carrying in quantity.