The Knotty Travellers: Gimme Some More Samoa!

Day 15 – Written by Aus in Apia, Samoa– Thursday, September 30^th, 2010

It is our last night in Samoa tonight, and as you may guess we are sad to be leaving. We are most definitely excited about our next stop in Auckland, New Zealand, but are going to miss Samoa. Kim and I have been just so impressed with the people and the natural beauty of the place. As I mentioned in my first post, it seems so untouched, and unspoiled. People seem to have simple lives, and they like it that way, we do not see a lot of consumerism or even a desire to live that way if it were within their means. People are for the most part content to live modestly and communally off the land. That may be a bit of an oversimplification, but I think it is true here more than any other place I can remember visiting.

We had a great introduction to Samoan culture at our first stop in Lalomanu. After our last blog entry there, we had one more morning to explore the place before taking off for Apia en route to Savaii. We were fortunate to have met some nice people from New Zealand who were regulars at the place, and they told us about a hike to a volcanic crater that could be arranged by Litia, our host at the beachfront fales we were staying at. So we spoke with Litia and arranged our tour for the morning of our departure. After breakfast we were met by Joe, our guide, and his brother who drove the truck up the mountain to where we started the hike. In fact, after the drive, it could hardly be called a hike, as it was only about a 20 minute trek to the side of the crater. But we did get to walk back down the mountain road...so at least we got a bit of exercise. Anyhow, the ‘hike’ was still impressive. We walked through some very lush vegetation and across some of Lydia’s family’s land to get to the crater. We couldn’t get a straight answer on how old the crater was, but we did get a cute folklore story about how it was formed. Joe said that many years ago, the village was at odds about who between males and females was the head of the family and who worked harder to support the family. To settle it, they had a one-day competition between all the men and all the women in the village as to who could dig the deepest hole. At the end of the day, there was the crater we were looking at, and there was a pretty pathetic hole in the ground a few hundred meters over. The women took the prize of the hardest workers and got the credit for digging this massive crater. However it was formed, it was the lushest vegetation in the village, and it was full of giant bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the trees. Kim did not like the bats, but they were not bad---more like birds really. They feed off all the fruit, and appropriately were called fruit bats. Joe had some other interesting stories about the crater and Samoan life that we found interesting. He told us of a time when he was a teen and a really bad cyclone hit the village, and there was a food shortage. Due to the fact that the crater was so lush and full of life, and I suppose it is naturally protected by its shape, they were able to sustain themselves by finding ways to get deeper and deeper into the crater to find food. The crater was steep, I would guess about 60 or 70 degrees, so getting down in, and more importantly--out, sounded quite impressive. Even more so when he said that they had done it by manufacturing ropes out of coconut trees. He had a lot of stories actually about how the villagers use the coconut trees.

Kim in the truck on the way to starting the hike...

You can just make out the bats in the distance inside the crater.......

The crater... hard to see the size and incline... but nevertheless....

Kim and Joe overlooking the crater, trying not to get to close to the edge....

A cool fiddlehead I believe they are called... they are big and grow from the tops of trees...

I did not realize that coconuts were giant seeds for the coconut tree, and when they fall, they eventually sprout roots and beginning growing into a tree. The young trees contain the coconuts that most would picture-the hard brown shell and white inner rim. Joe and his cousin ripped a few of the young trees from the ground and cut them open with his machete. Inside those coconuts is something like coconut favoured cotton candy--- a very yummy soft spongy ball that we all ate, very good. Also inside is an oily gel-presumably used for many things, but for Joe he remembers using it as hair gel while in school. Outside is hard shell that is used to make bowls, jewellery and other things. We were also treated to coconuts not yet fallen from the tree, which contain a delicious milk that Samoans will use when they need a drink. Quite impressive how much Samoans use the coconut tree, and how proficient they are at finding and retrieving them. Joe’s cousin who accompanied us was tasked with climbing a coconut tree to harvest some branches and coconuts. He climbed himself and a machete up a 50 foot tree with remarkable ease, and then proceeded to make his way to standing on top of it to get the last of the coconuts. We were all treated to some delicious coconut milk for the walk down the hill. During the walk down we learned more about life in the village, and I had the opportunity to plant a Taro plant, which is kind of like a very bland potato, but a Samoan staple.

Joe showing us the young coconut and removing the coco cotton candy...

Joe's cousin climbing the tree to get us some coconuts!

A look at just how high he was... can you see his orange t-shirt?

Removing a cocount from its shell for milk....

Walking back down the mountain......

Trying my hand at Samoan life, planting the Taro plant.....

After our hike we had another swim in the crystal clear water and caught some sun before having to head out to Apia where we spent the night before leaving for our adventures on the other main island of Samoa, Savaii. Apia is the capital city, and it was nice, definitely not very urban. The entire of population of Samoa is only about 160,000, and I’m not sure how big Apia was, but it not seem all that big. The tallest building we saw was only 4 storeys high, and I think there was only a handful of multi-storey buildings. The construction of most homes and businesses in extremely simple... mostly open concept and in many cases without any real walls. That doesn’t really change in the city. The only sign of ‘westernizing’ that we saw was a McDonald’s restaurant. We spent one night on the town and were able to walk pretty much the whole place, but the city is definitely not the highlight of a trip to Samoa— it is instead the great weather and the adventures in more remote parts of the island, which we got on our trip to Savaii.

Oh, before I go into Savaii, I suppose I should mention quickly our blog posting fiasco at Apia. We had planned to post all of our blogs there as the place were staying at, the Samoan Outrigger hotel. It had advertised that they had high speed internet and WiFi in the rooms. Well, that turned out to be a wee bit of a stretch of the truth. It turns out Samoa is a little bit behind in terms of their progress with the internet. So we will be posting and editing all of our latest posts once we hit Auckland, where we will have a decent internet connection. So, please excuse any scrambled posts if you happened to view them while they were incomplete due to us giving up completing the posts in frustration.

Ok, on to Savaii.

Savaii is the northwestern island of independent Samoa, and roughly equal the size of Upolu, where we flew into. So, we needed to take a ferry. The ferry terminal is about an hour west of Apia, and was a reasonable taxi fare of only 70 Samoan Tala, which is about 30 Canadian dollars. The ferry itself was even cheaper at only 12 Tala each, and took about 1.5 hours. Samoa was quite affordable if you stayed away from the most expensive accommodations etc. We unfortunately only had one night in Savaii, as we needed to be back in Apia for our 6:40AM flight to Auckland tomorrow. To make the most of our time in Savaii we rented a car and drove the island at our own pace. It worked out really well. There is really only one main road on each island, a coastal ‘highway’ that circles the island connecting all the villages. There are no villages inland. So we drove the coast starting westward and circling back east at the top of the island. On our first day we saw some more incredible beaches and some cool stuff including the Alafaga Blowholes, which are big holes in the volcanic rock along a beach that blow big streams of water out when the waves hit the rockwall. It was neat, certainly more impressive in person as you could hear the sound and get the full effect, but we did get some photos.

The blowholes blowing....

Yours truly enjoying the rush...

The western edge of Savaii is the closest you can get in the world to this side of the international date line, so only kilometres away it was another day. We also did a canopy walkway tour over the Faleuloupo Rainforest preserve. It was cool, but it was a bit of a tourist trap (Samoan style of course). There were no other tourists there, but it was a bit overpriced for what it was relative to other things we did. However, I’m sure it would cost more in Canada or many other countries, and we didn’t mind supporting the local economy.

The canopy walkway....

Very steep coming up....

We ended our night in the village of Manase, which is the most touristy place on the island, where there are 4 or 5 different accommodations ranging in budget and style. Still no holiday inn or megaresorts, but we did find a place offering air conditioned suites for 550 Tala per night. We chose the low-budget option, the open air beach fales at Regina’s. These cost only 70 Tala per person (about 30$ Canadian) and included 3 meals a day. They are modesty indeed, but they did the job. They are very open concept and had a combo tin/thatch roof, with thatch siding that was able to be raised to allow the air in. It was a bit buggy but we coated ourselves in Off bug spray and were fine.

Our digs....

Regina's beach fales....

This morning we woke and hit the road pretty much immediately after getting breakfast, as we wanted to make sure we left plenty of time to make the last ferry of the day at 2PM, so we would not be stranded on the island and miss our flight tomorrow. We still got to see some cool stuff on the drive though, including the highlight of our trip to Savaii, swimming with Sea Turtles. The turtles were in captivity at a place in the village of Seleaolupo, but there were plenty of them and some were quite big, so it was pretty cool to get in and swim with them. Here are some photos....

The driving was really fun. We had a small little Toyota Vitz that did the job, but didn’t have a whole lot of pickup. Kim did the driving as she is accustomed to driving on the other side of the road due to ther time in the UK. It was nice to be able to see the place at our own pace and stop where we anted to. We really enjoyed Samoa and hope to be back someday. Right now though we’re headed to bed to grab some sleep before waking at 3:45 AM to catch our flight to Auckland. That flight will be the last time we cross the date line on the trip, I think. We go forward 1 day and back one hour, so we pretty much skip October 1^st and go right to the 2^nd. Weird! We will have to send back the lotto #’s to our Canadian friends once we are in the future!

All the best to everyone reading. I will leave you with a few more photos from our adventures in Savaii.

Some lava fields .....