Trip to Tonga

We decided to explore the main island of Tonga.
Out boat drops us at the fishing wharf in the city of Nukualofa.
We walk around the fish market, admiring the long octopuses, the large crabs tied in green baskets made from coconut fronds.
We see multi color parrot fish and huge conch.
There are also plastic coke bottles filled with home made fish sauce warming in the sun.
We rent old clunky bikes from a ninety year old man who sits in a house on the front road.
He separates two rusty bikes from a pile of five ancient bikes resting on his sofa tied with a blue metal chain.
We call them Clunky and Clunkilina. The seats are way too low for us, but after unsuccessfully trying to open the bolts with a rusty wrench, we give up and ride with our knees nearly scraping the road.
We find a lovely cafe' in town (Cafe' Escape) and we eat a great meal and check our emails.
Then we get on our bikes and ride down coconut shaded roads exploring the island.
We stop to photograph often.
The local men, wear sulus (sarongs) with some form of woven shorter skirts tied on top of them.
The women wear skirts decorated with beads or woven leaves.
The most amazing and artistic things are the cemeteries.
They are unique to this place.
We have not seen anything like them anywhere around the world.
The graves sometimes are a mound of sand, decorated with plastic flowers.
At other times they may be surrounded by concrete blocks, and the most unique ones have a quilt hanging above the grave.
The patterns on the quilts are colorful and artistic and we cannot get enough of them.
We ride to the blow holes - where a rugged coastline gets pounded by the waves and creates an impressive show of whistling blow holes and thundering roars.
It is worth the journey.