YV&C International Yacht Vacations & Charters Magazine reports:

Swimming into a small entrance tunnel at a depth of 26 meters, you ener one of the biggest oceanic limestone caves in the South Pacific Ocean. Fifty meters long, it’s also 20 meters wide and 20 meters high. The cave is teeming with flashlight fishes, reef sharks and a two meter grouper.



In the gin clear water, you feel as though your gliding under the roof of a huge cathedral. The caves floor is at 50 metres, below! When Roland Schwara of Water Sports Ha’apai showed this magnificent  cave to US and Japanese scientists, exploring the  whole South Pacific’ for oceanic caves, they were stunned. “That’s the best” they shouted, barely spitting their diving regulars out!

It’s the fantastic underwater visibility, exquisite caves and humpback whales, that are Tonga’s biggest drawcards, as well as the laid back atmosphere of the Tongan people, a coral kingdom forty years behind the rest of the world.

The Kingdom of Tonga with its many islands lies in the heart of Polynesia.  Tonga’s neighbours paid tribute to the power of the ‘tui tonga’, an ancient dynasty of kings who ruled the kingdom for 1000 years.  Tongan warriors used great double canoes to travel between islands.

Our first stop was Vavau, in Tonga’s northern islands. Rolling into the ocean at Mariners Cave, from our diving boat, the ‘Dolphin Diver’, we found the caves entrance at 15 metres below. Swimming through a tunnel, we discovered a magnificent cavern, into which we surfaced. It was like an illuminated ‘blue room’with magnificent limestone walls.

My mask was foggy, so I took it off but my sight was still blurry. I was experiencing a remarkable phenomenon, the air space inside this cavern was being pressurized, turning to a fine mist, with each swell.

Our next dive was at Fotula. Here we swam through the very centre of this ‘peak like’ rock island, towering 30 metres above and below sea level.  We found a tunnel entrance 30 metres below, adorned in vibrant sea fans and watched as a white-tipped reef shark cruised below.

At Swallows Cave, we swam into a craggy limestone cave, extending 15 metres above and below water level. Looking skyward when underwater, we were enthralled at the other-worldly blue tear drop shape that was in fact, the cave’s topside entrance.

The cave walls still carry inscriptions left by early whalers and feasts were held by the Tongans, in this special place. You can easily snorkel into Swallows Cave, by swimming a short distance underwater, emerging into it’s amazing airspace.

At Alladins Cave, rainforest dribbles through a hole in the roof . Here, we ventured into a side tunnel, into Alladins Secret Cave, rising into its sculptured limestone airspace.

We were diving from the 37ft  ‘Dolphin Diver’ owned by Dolphin Pacific Diving, who also have a faster runabout for whale watching tours during the whale season, (June to October).

The 400 feet long copra steamer: Clan McLaren, lies in the Port of Refuge. She sank in the 1920’s and lays upright with her deck at 18 metres, stern at 25 metres and  prop/rudder at 32 metres. Coral cod, moorish idols and clown fish flitted over her deck where several brass port holes lay.

Between dives, we happily loitered at the Bounty Bar, where many global yachtsmen and divers meet. With spectacular views of the ‘Port of Refuge’ channel, it’s a great place to share great travel stories.

The Spanish were the first to open the eyes of the world to Vavau.  It was in 1781 that a Spanish frigate under the command of Francesco Antonio Mourelle which en-route; Phillipines to Mexico, stumbled on Vavau by swooping south of Samoa.

The ‘Port Au Prince’ was a British privateer which sank in the Ha’apai group. Most of its sailors were massacred and those spared including Will Mariner were obliged to join the Tongan chief  in the wars of that era. The ship carried plenty of gold coin.

The Ha’apai group to the south of Vavau, offers adrenalin pumping cave and volcano diving and is spread over an area of  18,000 square kilometres. This group contains 1500 coral reefs and even a 150km long barrier reef. It also supports 1600 species of fish and virtually every kind of soft and hard coral, that lives in the South Pacific.