This day we really had one goal – find the rainforest.
So we headed back to the school and found someone that could give us directions – easy! Go through the school, keep left and turn left again when you hit the airport. Then left again. We found it!!
There’s a very tiny bit of land in Tonga (really tiny :() that is original land. Almost every other chunk of land has been given over to Taro or Coconuts. So we were going to find the rainforest. This isn’t hard, it’s marked on all the tourist maps and there are sign posts for it everywhere. We knew it was across the compound of a church school – the King’s School I think. Which if you drive far enough backs on to the airport. It was huge. Well when you compare it to Akaroa Area High School, which I was. We drove up and down through the school and beyond. Got to a road where there was a calf tied up – this is how they do herding, tie the cow to a tree on a long lead and let her forage. We met this calf on the side of the road going out then not long after that more or less came to a dead end. We could’ve continued but the car was not designed for that and we’d also realised we were going in completely the wrong direction. So we turned around and headed back. This time the calf was in the middle of the road and wouldn’t move. Not a little calf, maybe a yearling. So I got out of the car and persuaded him to move. Reminded me very much of the cow incident in Taranaki – again I assumed the animal knew I was good and again I was wrong. Will write that one later. But this time he did move because he was freaked out by me and I was fortunate he went in the direction I wanted 😁
We went into the rainforest and came across these:
I had thought a flying fox was a zip line type thing that is awesome. Turns out it’s more like what the name implies. Actually amazing to be honest. Not my thing, but bloody hell – they’re there and are healthy and happy and have the tiniest rainforest in the world to live in and they’re thriving. Gives me hope.
The actual thing about the rain forest is there are so many amazing plants, and awesome descriptions of them, that my mum was fighting her instinct to collect the whole time.
Actually I’m pretty sure she was fighting that instinct the whole time she was in Tonga. It’s a terrible thing for a gardener to travel and come back empty handed. Ask Joseph Banks.
BlueKahu 