When James Cook called Tonga “The Friendly Islands” he probably didn’t have this lady in mind. She is at a market on Tonga’s main island of Tongatapu. Soon after snapping this I headed for one of Tonga’s smaller islands, Eua, where of the two or three places to stay I chose the grandest, which is to say the one that seemed most likely to have hot water. “Take the room on the end,” the owner of the motel-row-like accommodation told me. “The fellow in number two snores.” You can read about one of my visits to Tonga, including Eua, in the November 2011 Conde Nast Traveler magazine.
