Vava'u

Vava'u is fifty islands in the north of Tonga, raised coral cliffs and green hills around a maze of channels so sheltered that the sailors of the Pacific have called its harbour the Port of Refuge since the Spanish came in 1781 — and it is where the humpback whales come, between July and October, from the Antarctic to calve and to sing in warm still water: this is one of the few places on Earth where a swimmer may enter the water with them, in small groups under a licensed guide, and float beside a mother and calf in the blue. Neiafu, the town, sits on the harbour's edge with the market, the wharf, the cafés where the yacht crews of the season gather, and the lookout of Mount Talau above; the islands to the south hold Swallows' Cave on Kapa, a cathedral of light entered by kayak, and Mariner's Cave on Nuapapu, entered by a dive under the rock into a chamber that mists and clears with the swell, named for the English boy William Mariner who lived here as a Tongan for four years after 1806; the ‘Ene'io botanical garden keeps the island's plants; and the outer islands — Hunga, Ovaka, the beaches of the eastern reef — are a day's sail and a night's anchorage away.

The traveller flies from Tongatapu in an hour, or takes the overnight ferry, sleeps in Neiafu or on an outer island, and gives Vava'u four to six nights: two mornings on the water with the whales, because one may bring nothing and the second brings everything, with an operator who keeps the rules — one boat, four swimmers, no chasing; a day of the caves — Swallows' by kayak, Mariner's for those who will hold their breath through the tunnel; the snorkelling of the Coral Gardens; a sail among the islands with a night at anchor; the market and the Sunday quiet in Neiafu; and the lookout at dusk with the harbour below and the yachts' lights coming on. Divers add the reef walls and the wreck of the Clan MacWilliam in the harbour.

The Guide's honesty: swimming with whales is a privilege the whales did not grant, and the traveller who does it chooses an operator with a licence and a conscience, keeps to the rules, and accepts that the whales decide the day; the season is short and the boats book out; Sundays in Tonga are for church and rest, and the traveller plans for a day when nothing opens; the accommodation is guesthouses and small resorts, the flights are small and the ferry is long; and a mother humpback turning her eye on a swimmer in the blue water of a channel off Vava'u, with the calf rising to breathe beside her, is one of the encounters that changes a person, which is why the Guide holds this page as it holds few others.