After coming ashore I rode a bus along the only road that left town to a small resort offering beach-time and refreshments. I spent as much time watching the action above the water as below. The snorkeling yielded bright-ly coloured fish and two barracudas hunting herring, but the gathering of local Tongans on the beach was more fun to watch. Family connections are important in Tonga — remittances from family living abroad are a major source of income for the economy — and a communal meal was underway. A small mountain of cooked hotdogs built on the barbecue while women set out salads in bright red bowls, their laughter and song punctuated the warm tropical air. Children swam fully clothed —walking downtown without a shirt will get you a ticket in Tonga — while their parents watched our group of foreigners swim with shoulders and knees exposed.

Swimming in Tonga has gained international attention not because locals wear more clothes doing it but

because from May to October people can swim with humpback whales. The sheltered waters attract thousands of whales for birthing and mating. Almost everyone with a boat will take you out to swim with a whale, a behavior that has raised conservation concerns about the disturbance it may cause.

I wasn’t in Tonga during whale sea-son but saw evidence of the creature’s importance to local culture while ad-miring a whale design on a local hand-icraft. Souvenirs grow on trees here, literally. With few foreign imports Ton-gans still make traditional bark cloth. Bark is cut from a tree, soaked, then dyed and stenciled. I asked the artist - Mrs. Moa - where she got inspiration for her design. “I get inspired by the whales I see here,” she said, pulling out a Samsung phone and showing me underwater video shot only a few me-ters from a mother humpback and calf. “I’m a good swimmer. We spent about an hour with her before leaving so an-other boat could spend time with the whale,” she explained.

As images of the whales played in my head, I headed back to the ship, re-alizing that while Tonga wasn’t easy to reach, for the people (and the whales) who made the journey, there was something special here. For me it was the chance to see a country that was doing things their way.

If you decide to go:Paul Gauguin Cruises offers voyag-

es that stop in Tonga and include all

meals, drinks, gratuities and airfare from Los Angeles. www.pgcruises.com

August is the best time to whale watch or swim with whales. Mrs. Moa offers accommodation and tours at ww-wflyinganniemoavavau.com.

Carol Patterson inspires everyday ex-plorers with words and video. When she isn’t travelling for work, Carol is travel-ling for fun. More of her adventures can be found at www.carolpatterson.ca

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TONGA: Swim with whales

STORY FROM PAGE B1

Photos by CAROL PATTERSON/Freelance

Fall in love with the Brooklyn BridgeBY JENNIFER LARUE

ADVOCATE NEW SERVICES

NEW YORK — There’s a sublime moment that occurs when I reach the top of the Brooklyn Bridge — a marine breeze whiffing up from the East River, traffic rattling along on the roadway below, hundreds of peo-ple shuffling, loping, toddling, jogging, moseying, and biking past me, smart-phones and selfie sticks raised in all directions, the American flag hoisted high overhead, the Manhattan skyline working its magic in the background - when I pause to hope this scene never will cease to stir my heart.

I promised my editor this story about walking the Brooklyn Bridge so many months ago, it’s embarrass-ing. It was meant to coincide with the long-anticipated completion of a ma-jor, multi-year rehabilitation (its first since 1958). Over budget and, like my story, way behind schedule (a project-ed completion date of the end of 2014 has been pushed back to spring 2016), the project has left this National Reg-ister Historic Landmark draped in tarps and mired in construction incon-veniences for several years.

My writing problem was that I really wanted to do the thing justice without overstating my case. After all, on the face of it, the Brooklyn Bridge is just … a bridge. A functional structure carry-ing people from Point A to Point B. But for all its simplicity, maybe because it’s so simple, the bridge offers one of the most authentic and stirring New York City experiences I know. (As a bonus, it doesn’t cost a dime.)

The first time I remember seeing the bridge was in the famous opening sequence of the 1979 Woody Allen film Manhattan. Allen’s shameless affection for it set the stage for my feelings when finally I saw it in person a few years ago.

Opened in 1883, the span is the old-est of the three suspension bridges — along with the Williamsburg (1903) and the Manhattan (1909) — that cross the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn. According to the New York City Department of Transportation, more than 120,000 vehicles, 4,000 pe-destrians and 3,100 bicyclists cross the Brooklyn Bridge every day.

The upper span of the bridge is open to pedestrians and bicyclists 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Walk-ing it requires very little preparation;

my first time was totally spur-of-the moment. You can enter near the spec-tacular, Beaux-Arts-style New York City Hall on the Manhattan side. But I happened to already be in Brook-lyn (reporting on Henry Ward Beech-er’s legacy there), so the decision as to which side to start on was a no-brain-er. And it worked out well: Walking from Brooklyn to Manhattan affords superior views, since you’re facing the Manhattan skyline the whole time. But in fact it hardly matters. Nothing’s to stop you from turning to look behind you, right? And though this might seem obvious, it wasn’t to me till someone pointed it out: It’s okay to march half-way across, then turn around and head back where you started. (In fact, I did just that on one of those impossibly sunny days in early December, steal-ing some time between meetings in the city.)

The Brooklyn-to-Manhattan trek starts in the super-trendy section of Brooklyn known as Dumbo — for “Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.” I got a bit disoriented and found myself headed toward the Man-

hattan Bridge. That would have been fine; it’s walkable, too, and I hear it has its charms. But I saved that for an-other day.

I learned pretty quickly to obey the cardinal rule of the Brooklyn Bridge: Bicycles rule. Bikes and pedestrians have separate lanes in the 15-to-20-foot-wide passageway, and the bikers don’t take kindly to walkers straying into their territory. Many ride like a gold medal’s at stake, and only some use bells to warn of their approach. Stenciled walkway markings (recently repainted as part of the overhaul and already looking a bit shabby again) designate the bike and pedestri-an lanes. If you’re walking with kids, you’ll want to hold hands.

This 1.3-mile walk isn’t actually much of a hike; the incline is gradual, and there’s ample opportunity to stop and rest. Most guides suggest allowing an hour for a leisurely stroll. It’s best to wear comfy footwear, and definitely not heels, as their spikes can get stuck in the wooden walkway. The path is ac-cessible to wheelchairs and strollers.

The first few minutes of the Brook-

lyn-to-Manhattan trek are at such low elevation that they don’t offer much in the way of spectacular views. That’s when the people-watching kicks in. The Brooklyn Bridge brings you el-bow to elbow with a remarkable and colourful cross-section of humanity. Locals, traveling from one borough to the other as part of their routine com-mute, are easy to spot, walking brisk-ly and staring at their smartphones, earbuds in place, as they dodge tour-ists, sometimes barely concealing their annoyance. Everyone else is in free-for-all mode, swarming up the walk-way, causing traffic jams by stopping abruptly for photographs. Vendors selling snacks, touristy trinkets and $5-for-two-minutes caricatures line the entry ways.

When it opened, the Brooklyn Bridge was deemed the Eighth Won-der of the World. That designation has shifted over the years as new feats of human achievement burst onto the scene. But if you ask me, it’s still pretty darned wonderful.

If you goThe Brooklyn Bridge Pedestrian

Walkway begins at the intersection of Tillary Street and Boerum Place. It’s also accessible via an underpass on Washington Street, about two blocks from Front Street in the neighbor-hood Dumbo. This underpass leads to a stairway to a ramp leading to the Brooklyn Bridge Pedestrian Walkway. Public bathrooms are on the Brook-lyn side at the head of the Brooklyn Bridge Park, as well as at the end of Old Fulton Street.

The bridge is more easily accessed by subway from the Manhattan end; the closest stop in Brooklyn requires a walk of one-third to two-thirds of a mile to the pedestrian entrance.

Check the Brooklyn Bridge Face-book page (facebook.com/Brooklyn-BridgeNYC) before planning your vis-it; the page is updated regularly with information about construction plans and bridge-related events.

For an overview of the overhaul project and construction updates, vis-it the New York City Department of Transportation site at nyc.gov/html/dot/html/infrastructure/brooklyn-bridge.shtml.

To book a water taxi service, visit nywatertaxi.com or call 212-742-1969.

Photo by ADVOCATE news services

Visitors to the Brooklyn Bridge take photos with the Manhattan side in the background.