Travel Pacific
Escape From City Life
Finding the Blue Lagoon Provides Half the Excitement
There's a problem about dining at the Blue Lagoon. Reaching it. If you do, you'll be glad to add it to your "eaten there" memorabilia list. First take a plane to Fua'amotu Airport, Tongatapu, and then hop aboard a Royal Tongan Airlines' Twin Otter or Shorts for a one-and-a-half-hour flight to Nei'afu, Vava'u. Then find a boat, preferably one that does about 25 knots. This will run you across the normal flat calm of Vava'u's mostly sheltered sea to reach Foeata, in the south of the Vava'u group, in about half-an-hour.
There, up a rickety flight of 40 wooden steps from an almost perfect powder-sand beach you'll find the beehive-shaped but open-air structure of the Blue Lagoon enshrined in the bush. Eco-nuts will approve. Friedyl Pott, who hails from a village near Dusseldorf, Germany, began building the Blue Lagoon in 1996. A lot of the structure was cut from the immediate bush, with rough planks milled in Nei'afu from logs sent there.
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The Blue Lagoon isn't so much eco-conscious as simply contrived from stuff that was handy. Pott doesn't have pots of money. That's the way it also mostly is with six large fales (bungalows), each of a style from a different island country, appearing in the bush around the restaurant.
When completed in a few months (one is open already), they'll form a secluded resort for temporary escapists from metropolitan life. Despite the Blue Lagoon's apparent isolation the tables there are busy. There's constant trade from foreign cruising yachts and from the charter fleet based in Vavau's main harbour, and from passengers from the Oleanda, which carries 30 to 40 people out of Nei'afu on four-day cruises. There were 98 diners one day, recently, somewhat of a stress, says Pott, who is comfortable with a dozen or 20 customers.
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The 49-year-old chef is held to be one of the best in Tonga, where he's lived for 15 years, starting at the Tonga Beach Resort. He and his wife Ma'ata, from Hunga, one of Vava'u's islands, ran the Taloa restaurant down in Nuku'alofa for years before shifting to Foeata.
What's Pott's speciality? "Everything," he roars, but of course, he emphasizes local seafood, fruits and vegetables. A four course meal sets a diner back by $T33-50. The fare is tastily uncomplicated but not entirely simplistic. The beer is local or Australian and there's a modest range of Australian and New Zealand lines with something from Europe hiding in the back gloom. Eating at the Blue Lagoon can't be anything less than memorable, not with that setting and ecological appeal. A fale costs $T160 a night for two or three people. After finishing the fales, a boat jetty is projected. The Blue Lagoon will be closed during February and March. The Potts need a holiday from their corner of paradise.
