In Depth

When you drive from the airport into Nuku'alofa, the nation's capital, you can see why the country's main island is named Tongatapu (Sacred Garden). Every bit of it not occupied by a building or by the road is under cultivation with bananas, tapioca, taro, yams, watermelons, tomatoes, squash, and a plethora of other fruits and vegetables. The Tongans might be generally poor in terms of material wealth, but they own some of the South Pacific's most fertile and productive land. There just isn't much of it.

Geography -- The kingdom consists of 170 islands, 36 of them inhabited, scattered over an area of about 259,000 sq. km (100,000 sq. miles), an area about the size of Colorado. The amount of dry land, however, is only 697 sq. km (269 sq. miles). That's smaller than New York City.

Tonga has three major island groups. Tongatapu and its neighbor, the smaller 'Eua, comprise the southernmost group. About 155km (96 miles) north are the islands of Ha'apai, where Fletcher Christian led the mutiny on the Bounty. About 108km (67 miles) beyond Ha'apai, beautiful Vava'u reigns as the kingdom's sailing heaven. Even farther north are the remote Niuas Islands, but you won't be going up there.

The largest island in the kingdom, Tongatapu, has about a third of the country's land area and about two-thirds of its population. It's a flat, raised atoll about 65km (40 miles) across from east to west and 32km (20 miles) across from north to south at its longest and widest points. In the center a sparkling lagoon is now unfortunately void of most sea life.

Most of the islands here are raised coral atolls. The exceptions are the Niuas and, in Ha'apai, the active volcano Tofua and its sister volcanic cone, Kao. Geologists say that the weight of the growing Ha'apai volcanoes has caused the Indo-Australian Plate to sag like a hammock, thereby raising Tongatapu and 'Eua on the south end of the Tongan chain and Vava'u on the north end. As a result, the sides of Tongatapu and Vava'u facing Ha'apai slope gently to the sea, and the sides facing away from Ha'apai end in cliffs that fall into the ocean.

Government -- Tonga technically is a constitutional monarchy, although in many respects the king is head of a system of hereditary Polynesian chiefs who happen to have titles derived from England. The king picks his own Privy Council of advisors and appoints nine cabinet members and the governors of Ha'apai and Vava'u. With a few exceptions they are nobles. The cabinet members and the governors hold 11 of the 30 seats in the Legislative Assembly. Of the 19 other members of the assembly, the nobles choose 10 from among their ranks, leaving 9 to be elected by the taxpaying commoners.

It would be an understatement to say that the royal family has a hand in every important decision made in Tonga; in fact, very little gets done without the royal family's outright or tacit approval or involvement.

With more Tongans living abroad, and those at home being exposed more and more to news of the world, the monarchy has been under increasing pressure to move to a democracy. Observers say this is not likely to happen as long as King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV -- now in his late 80s -- is on the throne.

Economy -- Tourism is an important component of Tonga's economy but of minuscule size when compared to Fiji and French Polynesia. Tonga has few natural resources other than its fertile soil and the fish in the sea within its exclusive economic zone. The world markets for its exports -- fresh fish, vanilla, kava, bananas, coconut oil, pineapples, watermelons, tomatoes, squash, and other vegetables -- have been unstable and depressed at times in recent years. Money sent home by Tongans living overseas is a major source of foreign exchange. Nevertheless, Tonga is the poorest of the countries covered in this book.

What Day Is It?

Theoretically, the international date line should run for its entire length along the 180th meridian, halfway around the world from the prime meridian, the starting point for measuring international time. If it followed the 180th meridian precisely, however, most of the Aleutian Islands would be a day ahead of the rest of Alaska, and Fiji would be split into 2 days. To solve these problems, the date line swings west around the Aleutians, leaving them in the same day as Alaska. In the South Pacific, it swerves east between Fiji and Samoa, leaving all of Fiji a day ahead of the Samoas.

Since Tonga and Samoa lie east of the 180th meridian, both countries should logically be in the same day. But Tonga wanted to have the same date as Australia and New Zealand, so the line was drawn arbitrarily east of Tonga, putting it 1 day ahead of Samoa.

To travelers, it's even more confusing because the time of day is the same in Tonga and Samoa. When traveling from one to the other, only the date changes. For example, if everyone is going to church at 10am on Sunday in Tonga, everyone's at work on Saturday in Samoa.

Tonga's Seventh-day Adventists, who celebrate the Sabbath on Saturday but work on Sunday, have taken advantage of this abnormality to avoid running afoul of Tonga's tough Sunday blue laws. In God's eyes, they say, Sunday in Tonga really is Saturday. Accordingly, Tonga is the only place in the world where Seventh-day Adventists observe their Sabbath on Sunday.