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The whale rested motionless about twenty feet down in the deep blue water. Her grey skin was grafittied with the scratches of fights and ship propellors she had survived. She was so still and so large that she looked like an ambitious Damien Hirst exhibit suspended in acrylic. Her 10ft calf, a cute, playful thing, whose long pectoral fins gave it instant baby-appeal, swum vertically upwards to breathe, twirling and rolling gracefully, lying belly-up on the surface like a playful puppy.

I was swimming with whales in the South Pacific - a puny, flippered human, ungainly in snorkel and mask. On one ascent, the calf looked right at me with a big, doleful eye, gazing at this strange goggled and gangly intruder who spent most of the time floating on the surface. I remembered what someone had said when I voiced concerns about getting thwacked by a tail or even being swallowed like Jonah: “when you look into the eye of a whale, you’ll know that there’s no reason to be afraid.” I could understand why people have been moved to tears and almost believe stories about observations that whales are so in tune with humans that they are friendliest with children and pregnant women. Is it a yearning for our evolutionary ancestors’ freedom in the easy weightlessness of the deep that makes us sentimental about dolphins and whales?

I had joined a small cruise in Tonga, not specifically to swim with whales, but it was the season when they visit these warm waters and swimming with them was one of the bonuses. We were cruising the islands of this archipelago, south-east of Fiji and nudging the international dateline. According to legend, the powerful Polynesian god Tangaloa, fished up the 200 or so islands of Tonga from the bottomless sea with a whale bone fish-hook on the end of his fishing line. Tonga would have been larger, but the legend says the line broke and some of the islands fell back into the sea. He must have had a long line - the waters around Tonga are some of the deepest in the world. The famous Tongan Trench plunges to a depth of six miles; its currents sending up cold water from many fathoms down as well as the occasional prehistoric fish.

It is to these waters that humpback whales migrate 6,000 miles from their feeding grounds in the icy Antarctic each year to breed and give birth. They are a discerning species - the butterfly blue sea and white sandy bays of the sheltered coves are romantic boudoirs and secure nurseries. The Vava’u group of islands, a short hop by small plane (for humans) from the ramshackle Tongan capital of Nukua'lofa, is a particular favourite with the humpbacks and it is here that tourists and whales converge between July and November each year.

Not that people visit Tonga solely to swim with these 45ft long leviathans. The same qualities that make the islands popular with mating whales, also make them superb for sailing, cruising or just passing the days on beaches of egg-timer fine sand. In the quiet palm-fringed anchorage, Port of Refuge, below the one-street town of Neiafu, most of the yachts are available for charter. For those who prefer bigger decks on which to sip their sundowner, the MV Oleanda is a small cruise ship, which makes leisurely four-night cruises around the islands. I joined the 132ft ship and settled in to my tiny, clean cabin just as a rainbow arced over the town and the afternoon sun shone low and golden through cool, crystal rain.

There were less than twenty of us on the cruise, mostly Australians, all here primarily to swim with whales, a fact I should have borne in mind when I mentioned during introductory cocktails that I had once eaten whale blubber in the Faroe Islands (an experience not to be repeated, for reasons of taste and, now, enlightenment.)

The humpbacks which visit Tonga have the King to thank that they are no longer hunted and eaten and turned into fish-hooks. In 1978, His Majesty Taufa’ahau Tupou IV - the South Pacific’s only monarch - decreed that the whales should be spared the harpoon and become a tourist attraction instead. It was perhaps one of the famously portly King’s more sensible, albeit small-scale, money-making plans. Since then he, and his government, have been the source of several scandalous stories: there was the proposal to earn millions for the country by dumping other nations’ nuclear waste in the Tongan Trench; the sale of surplus satellite space to overseas phone-sex lines and, most recently, the squandering of US$26 million of the Kingdom’s wealth by investing money in 'viaticals' - a high risk, ethically dubious scheme only legal in certain US states whereby investors gamble on the early demise of terminally ill patients. That it was the King’s newly appointed Court Jester who lost the money made the whole escapade even more bizarre. How the older generation must reminisce about the halcyon days of the King’s late mother - towering Queen Salote - whose only escapade worthy of a mention in the international press was when she happily chose to get soaked to the skin as she rode through London in an open carriage at Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. It is this memory which still attracts some older British visitors to these far-flung ‘Friendly Islands’ - the name Captain James Cook bestowed on them. (Perhaps mistakenly: Cook didn't realise that the Tongans were planning to murder him and his crew at the feast they held for him, a plan, which, luckily for Cook, went awry.)

Modern day travellers need not worry. A highlight of the Oleanda cruise is the friendly crew - always there with a big smile and helping hand. I had to ask one - an engineer called Uinisi (Tongan for 'winch': "my father was a ship's engineer too" he said by way of explanation) - to prise open my paint-sealed port-hole. It was a tough job which tested even a young Tongan's muscles.

It’s not just the whales which are an attraction of a cruise around the volcanic islands of Vava’u. There are caves in the cliffs where swallows nest and another where you have to swim through an underwater passage to a grotto eerily lit from the sunlight shining through the water. There are deserted beaches where you can paddle ashore on one of the ship's skiffs and spend the afternoon snorkelling over coral gardens to the accompaniment of long high-pitched notes of faraway whale-song.

There are ancient burial sites and villages to explore. I went ashore to Taunga village on an island of the same name, with Masi Uta’atu, the Oleanda’s skipper and my guide for the afternoon. The rickety wooden wharf was piled with fishing nets which had cut-up flip-flops as floats - they seemed to symbolise Pacific island life. After five minutes’ wandering in the seemingly empty village, we came across an old man hoeing his cassava patch. His face was weather-beaten and wrinkled and his smile kindly. He said, proudly, that, at 81, he was the oldest man in the village. His name was Nafetalai Sila, although he had an official name too. He was the village’s best fisherman and in honour of this, the chief had re-named him Moana Lea Mei Vaka which translates as ‘the ocean talks from my boat’.

On such village tours there are many snapshots of island life: a woman weaving a pandanus mat; the cement water tanks which collect rain from the church roof - inscribed with the name of the labourers who built them and a thought for the day: ‘Christ our perfect pattern'. There are village stores selling just soap powder, tins of mutton and enormous ceremonial yams costing a small fortune. I asked Masi what people do in the village. He replied succinctly: “Sleeping,” he said. “People don’t need money - just a little to build their houses and that gets sent to them from overseas relatives.”

On board ship, there are games of scrabble and books of Tongan myths and a small deck with wooden lounge chairs and tables where you can sit with your cocktail and admire the view of the islands, many with sheer cliffs, undercut by the waves, so that they seem to hover above the sea. Food is plentiful and unpretentious - mostly local fare of fish and tropical fruits bought from villages along the way. When I asked what, exactly the cream sauce was with the tasty grilled mahi mahi, Lina Fusi, the waitress, went to the galley to enquire. She came back with the answer: "whipping" she said.

For evening entertainment, one anchorage at an island called Tapana, has a small seaside bar and restaurant - a wacky, driftwood cabin of a place built by a couple of eccentric Spaniards - Maria and Eduardo - who washed up on their yacht and decided to stay. They serve paella and play live music and invite customers - mostly passing yachties, always eager to socialise - to join in with percussion. Maria wears a flouncy dress and does a spot of flamenco.

It's not only the women who wear dresses in Tonga. If you time your cruise for August, as I did, you will catch the Miss Cosmos Polynesia beauty pageant for the fakaleiti community of Vava'u. Fakaleiti, as you will learn from the Oleanda's cocktail menu - where it is a sweet but potent concoction of bourbon, vodka, coconut milk and cream, costing $8 (about £2.70) - means "like a lady." Across the whole of Polynesia, but especially in Tonga and Samoa, it has long been tradition for some men to dress and live as women. A common explanation is that if a family had all boys, one of the youngest, or the one who showed most inclination, was brought up as a girl to do 'girl's' chores. Nowadays, it is for many the only expression of a gay identity and one which is completely accepted by society. The beauty pageants at which the 'girls' parade in their finest are raucous and sometimes a little lewd, but despite that, they're opened with a ten minute prayer and attended by all the family. At the opening night of Vava'u's ‘Miss Cosmos Polynesia’, the contestants were resplendent in their marine-themed frocks, but a long, fishing-net cape and four-inch platform stilettos are a perilous combination as 'Vanessa' found out to everyone's mirth.

Other Tongan traditions to do with dress are more sombre. Something which sets Tonga apart from its Polynesian neighbours is the national dress of the taovala which everyone wears, especially when going to church.

This is a mat worn around the waist - woven from pandanus or hibiscus. Different shapes and styles of mat have their own particular meaning. As well as there being formal and more informal styles, there are mats that are worn only during mourning. I once saw a young man in a black shirt with a huge, brown pandanus mat folded around his waist that reached up to his armpits so that he looked like some strange corn dolly. All his family were in black and wore big mats too. They were mourning the death of the young man's father. He would be wearing that mat for a year, however hot the weather.

Winter (July and August) temperatures are usually a pleasant 23 degrees celsius or so, with lots of sunshine. The week I was there, it was cool enough to require a pullover in the evenings and was overcast for most of the time. It didn't help to hear everyone saying that it was the coldest winter they could remember.

Not that it had bothered me, I had swum with whales. I had come to enjoy the sun and sea, the village life, the tropical scenery and the people. But now a humpback had looked me in the eye. It's something I will never forget. I had no reason to be afraid.

This feature first appeared in Conde Nast Traveller.

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