This site is asso­ci­at­ed with one of the key episodes in the his­to­ry of Pacif­ic explo­ration. Cap­tain James Cook, already known to the islanders from pre­vi­ous vis­its, land­ed here in April 1777. His arrival was greet­ed peace­ful­ly by the locals, cement­ing the archipelago’s rep­u­ta­tion as the “Friend­ly Isles”. For sev­er­al weeks, Cook and his crew con­duct­ed astro­nom­i­cal obser­va­tions, includ­ing prepa­ra­tions for the solar eclipse of 5 July 1777, and stud­ied the local flo­ra, fau­na and cus­toms. He met with the ruler of Ton­ga at the time, Tu’i Ton­ga Pau, and attend­ed impor­tant cul­tur­al events, such as tra­di­tion­al pigeon hunt­ing. Today, a memo­r­i­al stone mon­u­ment erect­ed in 1969 com­mem­o­rates the his­toric sig­nif­i­cance of the event. The sur­round­ing area is a qui­et coastal area with trop­i­cal veg­e­ta­tion, man­groves and views of the lagoon. This place is not only his­tor­i­cal, but also nat­ur­al, where you can feel the atmos­phere of the 18th cen­tu­ry and imag­ine what the meet­ing of two cul­tures looked like.