The next morning, I again proceeded to use and abuse the duty free lotions and potions area, and take advantage of the nice makeup. We had to stay in the airport until midafternoon, so there wasn’t exactly a lot to do, though we could only use the internet for 15 minutes, so duty free was the place to be. Anyway, we finally boarded our flight to Samoa (by the way, it is pronounced SAM-oa with the emphasis on the “Sam” rather than the “o” like we pronounce it; just in case you wanted to know). The flight was easy and got us into the island of Upulo, Samoa at about 10pm. We found a “shuttle” going into the city of Apia where our “hostel” was located; I used the quotation marks on shuttle because, it was, in fact, a taxi driver attempting to seem more economical to tourists by holding up a sign saying “shuttle to Apia” (sly guy). We told him our destination, which we finally made it to after going to the hostels old location, and then stopping to ask about three different people lounging on the side of the road for directions. Now, earlier I used the quotation marks on hostel because, this was a person’s house, not a hostel. We walked into a man’s living room, where his three children were watching TV. His showed us to our room, which was next door to the children’s room, and we all shared a bathroom. Either way though, we were happy to not be in an airport. We promptly took showers as it was dreadfully humid and went straight to bed.
The next morning, Jared and I were prepping to head out to the grocery store to get things for our meals, when there was a knock on our door telling us breakfast was ready. Score!! Free breakfast! We went downstairs and sat with the family, eating fresh bread (really good), something that looked exactly like an empanada but was filled with pineapple jelly (not so good), other pastries, mangos, and tea and coffee. We much preferred to sit with the family over a meal and get to discuss the island, their lives and exchange ideas. The family gave us some pointers for the day and we set off. The first thing we wanted to do was drop off some laundry, so right off the bat we walked in the wrong direction. We did finally find a laundromat by the main road, but, as we found out when we started the long walk into the center of town, we were probably at least a mile out of our way. Oh well, we found a grocery store along the route into the center of Apia, which we explored and found that prices were not a lot better than the Cook Islands. In the center of town, we stopped into the Information Site to get some recommendations on how to spend our time in Samoa, after which we explored around town a bit including the central market and the lively, hectic bus depot. We decided to grab a bus up to the Robert Louis Stevenson museum, which wasn’t much of a museum. I have no idea how that made the list of top 10 things to do in Samoa, but we were clearly misguided, as was the person that wrote the list (if you’re reading this Trip Advisor [yes, I’m aware that’s unlikely], I am available for a job). We paid $10 just to walk around his former house…yea that was it. It wasn’t an artistic house or especially…anything…it was just a house! Anyway, that was a failed decision on our part. After the 10 minute-$10 tour, I wasn’t feeling very well, so I sat around and read while Jared hiked up a small hill to the Robert Louis Stevenson tomb, which apparently was also a bit of a disappointment, not revealing a view of anything expect the shrubbery directly in front of him. Anyway, after that, we got back on the bus into the center of town and made the long walk back to the laundromat and grocery store before heading back to our hostel. Upulo was so hot and humid throughout the day, especially as we walked out of town and off the coastline; by the time we got back we promptly took cold showers just to cool off. The rest of the evening, we relaxed, ate dinner and took at least one more shower before getting into bed spread eagle in an attempt to prevent overheating before falling asleep.
The next morning, we had breakfast with our family again and packed up a few things for the day. The man who lived in the house offered a full day tour of the island, which we decided to take. The island is deceivingly large so it was the easiest and most time efficient way to see everything we wanted. First, we drove through the center of Apia, and along the coast eastward, as he explained a bit of the history of Samoa, their culture, and his life there. Like the Cook Islands, Samoa is a very religious country, with huge churches dedicated to very small villages…hmmmm, perhaps a bit of misallocation going on there, but who am I to tell the church to give back the poor! I digress. An interesting feature of the Samoan urban and suburban landscape are fales, which are open-aired meeting houses. What we might think of as a “neighborhood” are villages here, and every village is made up of basically one large extended family; all land is privately owned and passed down through generations, and every village has rules that are to be followed as law. All family gatherings, family meetings, disputes and decisions are made in fales, where the family will meet whenever necessary. It also appears to be a place where people tend to lounge and nap on hot days. Our first stop on the tour was the Piula Cave Pool, located behind a Methodist ministry school. Despite the fact that I felt a bit uncomfortable at a ministry school on an intensely religious country, in my bikini, the cave pool was quite nice; the water was fresh and clear with the mouth of a cave opening up to it, where you could dive down and swim through to another cave, and the entire scene was right on the coastline. After, we continued to drive through the countryside, spotting waterfalls and expansive landscapes of rolling hills and rainforests stretching out to the sea. On the opposite side of the island, we stopped at Lalomanu Beach for lunch of fish and chips (french fries) and a bit of swimming in the clear blue lagoon. We continued our drive farther around the island, stopping at Te Sua to walk through their botanical garden and lava field, play around the blowholes, which attacked unsuspecting Jared as he had his back turned to them, and lastly swim in the fresh water of the giant swimming hole, maybeeeee thirty meters below the ground, which would have been called a cenote if we were in Latin America. Our last stop of the day was the Togitogiga Waterfalls inside the O le Pupu Pue National Park, where we got to jump into a waterfall pool and get a back massage by the waterfalls. On the way home, we quickly stopped at Papapapaitai waterfalls, which I really just wanted to mention, because I love the name, and they were actually really lovely to see. The whole tour took until about 5pm, which was perfect to head back to the house, for some showers, dinner, relaxing and bed.
The next morning, we decided to pop out to Manono, a very small island just off the coast of Upulo. After breakfast with the family, we leisurely walked to the center of Apia to catch a bus. The bus took a while before we could actually leave, the ride then took longer than expected; I mentioned the island being deceivingly large. During the ride the bus went through varying stages of jam-packed including requiring probably about 10 passengers to actually sit on the laps of perfect strangers. People are really helpful though, they will take your bag right out of your hands if you’re standing and put it on their laps! Also, they always asked where we were going and called out to the bus driver to stop when we reached our destination. Despite leaving a bit before 9am, we didn’t actually arrive until about 12:45pm. When we got off the bus at the boat ferry, we had to wait awhile for enough people to show up to fill the ferry; we were told that only required eight people. We waited for ages for another bus to come around and offload some more people, at which time we sort of started to meander to a small boat. At that moment, a man came over and flagged us toward him, so we figured that was the boat ferry to the other side. He started explaining how the boat would drop us off and could wait until we wanted to come back, at which time, we realized he was soliciting us for a private ferry ride. We declined his offer and made our way back to the area where we were originally going to board. Right as I was approaching, the two men said something to one another in Samoan, and the guy on the departing boat tossed the rope anchoring the boat to the dock and started floating away…just as I was about to board!! As I looked on in totally shock at this “FU” move, he apologized saying that boat was a “special ferry”. I was apoplectic; I believe (Jared does not) this entire maneuver was to force us to have to pay for a private ferry ride instead of just taking the public ferry with the locals. The first man again approached us offering his private boat ride; he was trying to charge $100 for a round trip boat ride, at which time I went off on him saying he was forcing us into this decision and could go f*$& himself (in nicer terms) if he thought we were going to take this type of crap treatment just because we were tourists. Jared called it a “temper tantrum”, but was impressed that I convinced him to come down $40 from his initial asking price. We ended up accepting the offer, with Jared profusely apologizing for me. Haha whatever, I’m not gonna be taken advantage of and not put up some sort of fight. Either way, the good cop bad cop routine worked and we boarded the boat. It was a quick 20 minute ride over to the small island of Manono. There wasn’t much to do or see on the island but a couple things, so we started walking leisurely expecting to swim and see an ancient grave site called the Ancient Star Mound and 99 Stones along the way (which by the way is supposedly the graves of a man and his 99 wives; he apparently dead with the 100th wife). Along the way we smiled and waved to everyone we saw in their open-aired homes; we didn’t make it very far before a young girl hollered out asking us to join her for lunch. We initially just sort of waved and continued on, until Jared decided he was actually hungry and wanted to join. We walked back and approached the girl who enthusiastically welcomed us, despite obviously being a bit anxious about the amount of food they had for their own family. About one second after Jared and I noticed her momentary apprehension, we felt about two inches tall and wanted to just turn and run. Instead, we walked into the home and said hello to all the different members of the family. They welcomed us into their main family living area, a large mostly unfurnished rectangular area with screened windows and chairs lining the exterior. This was apparently the area where most of the family slept at night and watched TV from a huge big screen gifted to them by their aunt who lived in the US. They set up a table, and gave us coconuts right away. We sat down with two girls a bit younger than us, and chatted with them while we sipped our coconuts. The family brought us servings of fresh fish, breadfruit and taro with a really good salted coconut milk sauce. The girls asked us about traveling and life in the US and told us about their aunt who lived in Salt Lake City, while we asked about growing up as young girls on a small island in Samoan culture. We felt pretty bad about eating a significant chuck of their food for the day, so we bought the whole family sodas, which they mentioned they loved and didn’t get a lot. After lunch, we strolled down the island with the girls for a few minutes before we had to get back to catch our return boat to Upulo. We exchanged names for Facebook (which I actually can’t find now and feel really bad about), and set on our way back to Apia. Once back on Upulo, we didn’t have to wait long for the bus, which was not dreadfully crowded. Back in town, we made our way to the hostel, stopping along the way to pick up highly recommended cinnamon bread (yum) and local fruit ice cream (super yum), before calling it quits in the usual way back at the hostel.
The next morning was our last in Apia; we were headed for Savai’i, the largest island in Samoa and third largest in Polynesia. Our flight wasn’t until the evening, so we still had the whole day to spend in Apia. We had breakfast with the family, packed up our things, and started out. During breakfast, we had all commented on our luck with the weather while in Apia, as it only rained at night or in the mornings before we left; that day our luck changed. We had to walk out to the main road and bus station in the pouring rain, but I’ll tell ya, it was so hot I think I was still sweating under being completely soaked. Once we got into town, we went into the Information Site to await their cultural show. I ran around for a few errands, including FINALLY being able to send off my New Zealand nursing registration application. The cultural show at the Information Site was great, probably our favorite cultural exhibit yet. We started out with two men in traditional attire as they explained some of the basic principles by which the Samoans live. He explained the fales we had notice everywhere, village and family hierarchy and family duties. My favorite was probably when he stated that when a little girl is born, she is to be served, and when a little boy is born, he is to serve. Men and women basically perform the same duties they do in most other cultures (except men are expected to cook for the family), but they clearly just view male and female relationships and gender equality differently. Anyway, I obviously liked that concept. The two men showed us how to cook a traditional umu, underground cooking hearth, from getting the fire started, yes I now know how to make fire from two sticks of wood, and NO it is not how you see it in the movies…pretty cool, all the way to putting the prepared food on the umu to cook. They showed us how to make coconut milk from the meat of a coconut, how to make the really yummy taro leaves in coconut milk, and how to braid a fish into palm leaves to cook. Next we saw how women make tradition clothing from bark; the woman literally started out with a thin stick, and ended up with a 3 x 1 ft strip of thin cloth! Next we saw the traditional tattooing! We actually saw a man getting tattooed! There were two women fanning him as he lay on his stomach, two men stretching the skin on the back of his legs and one man with two sticks: one stick had a thin metal blade attached at the end, and the other stick was used to firmly tap the first stick and metal blade into the skin! I imagine it’s kind of difficult to visualize from my description, so maybe try googling or youtubing it; it’s actually quite interesting and a completely foreign way of performing tattoos. Apparently, in the Samoan culture, tattoo artists are highly revered, and it is one of the only professions passed down within a family. The most respected men and woman in any family can choose to undertake a tattoo, which can take several months to complete. The men get a tattoo from their waists down to their knees, and women from their upper thighs down to their knees. If a man or woman decides to undertake the lengthy process and then at some points backs out, he/she brings shame upon the entire family and village. It is not a decision taken lightly, and once completed, the person is forever looked up to as a leader of the community and someone to be respected and revered. I thought it was so interesting how opposite their culture is to western culture in regards to tattoos. Lastly, we saw the carvers who make all the tools and boats for the community, before finishing off with lunch from the umu we had originally prepared! We both really enjoyed their entire experience, and came away knowing a bit more about Samoan culture. After the show, we headed out to the bus, and went to the ferry terminal. Basically, the entire bus was going to the ferry, and it was packed. We had our huge bags, which apparently everyone but us knows how to deal with, so Jared’s bag was taken and thrown in the back under some benches, while mine was up front being straddled by people sitting, and almost everyone had someone sitting on their laps. Besides effectively cutting off circulation to Jared’s legs, the ride was easy (I say that because I was sitting on Jared; he might have a different story) and we didn’t have to wait long for the ferry once we arrived. The entire boat ride over to Savai’i was just about an hour. Once we arrived, we assumed we could just wait on the side of the road for a bus and hop on that…silly tourists. Basically, every bus on the island, which was like five, were waiting to leave at the ferry. We were one of the last off the boat, so we had to scramble asking around to find out which bus to take. Once we did, things did not look do-able. The bus was jam-packed, worse than I had seen before. No room at all, and we had our huge bags to maneuver. Ug, I did not think we’d be able to swing fitting everything on the bus. Luckily, despite the fact that we were clueless, they were not. Two guys came over and grabbed our bags and ran to the back of the bus. I took a quick look at the back and saw one hemp string hanging from the bus, which they were fastening to the bags. At that sight, I literally just started laughing and jumped in with the other passengers; if the bags died, the bags died! There wasn’t even room to sit on anyone’s lap, but a nice man did grab my purse and backpack from me…it’s an odd feeling that you just have to go with, so as not to be that Crazy-bitch-American who thinks everyone is trying to steal from her. The ride was an uncomfortable hour and a half of being too close to too many people, but at least people weren’t rude or obnoxious during the journey, like the 8am NYC subway. Some nice people notified the bus driving when we were at our stop, and we got dropped off right in front of the recommended accommodation, Tanu Beach Fales. Miraculously, when we got off, both of our bags were on the side of the road and intact; the only casualty of the ride was my Nalgene bottle. We entered a large area full of open-aired fales, some bigger, some smaller, some clearly dedicated to dining areas and other to rooms. We were greeted by the head of the family, nicknamed Mount, who gave us some coconuts to drink, checked us in, and gave us the lay of the land. Our beach fale was about fifteen feet from the water at low tide, and about five feet from the water at high tide. The fale was bare, basically an elevated wooden platform with retractable palm leaf panels as the walls, and a mosquito net for the floor bed that was placed inside the fale when we arrived; it was perfect! We settled in with our bags, met one of the four other people staying there, and relaxed in our fale. At about 8pm, a bell rang alerting us to dinner. We met the last three people at the accommodation, and we all sat together and had dinner of breadfruit, fried fish, sausage in curry sauce, rice, taro leaves with coconut milk and vegetables with a lemongrass tea; it was more food for dinner than we’d had in a long time, and it was all really good. The rest of the night we spent relaxing, reading, and listening to the ocean outside of our fale.
The next morning, we woke up but refused to get out of bed, and instead looked out of the fale onto the ocean, until a bell rang again for breakfast. We joined the other four people for a hearty breakfast, and planned our day. We originally wanted to take a bus back a bit beyond the ferry to go to Afu Aau waterfalls, and do a hike in that area. Unfortunately, we were informed that the only bus out to that area had gone for the day and there was no bus until late in the afternoon, which was the last bus going anywhere. We debated a few other options, including taking a full day tour the accommodation could set up for us, and decided to just rent a car ourselves for the next day, as it was already approaching noon. Along with one of the other people staying there, Christian from Germany, we decided to walk to the Paia Dwarf Caves, which we were massively incorrectly informed was a 30 minute walk away. Boy was she way off; it was a 30 minute DRIVE away. Luckily, over an hour into the walk, a car pulled up with a Danish couple, who were going to the Paia Dwarf Caves as well, and they offered us a ride. Thank god! We still had close to an hour walk left; 30 minute walk my a**. Anyway, it worked out perfectly in the end, because you need a guide to accompany you through the cave both because the caves are on private land and because they are pitch black and you need someone who knows their way, if you want to stay safe. Along the road, we picked up a man who lived on the property and could be our guide; he didn’t speak much English but could get by. The Danish girl who picked us up, Katja, actually lived in Upulo doing research for her Anthropology thesis and had visited the caves before, so she told us to bring absolutely nothing and allowed us to put everything in her car, which was really convenient for us. The five of us and our guide walked over to basically, a whole in the ground; it was not what you would normally call a cave. It had been formed during the eruption of 1905-1911; yes there was an eruption on the island that lasted six years. During that time, most of the magma flowed through underground tunnels formed by the lava, one of which, we were about to explore. As we descended into the cave, all natural light faded and we had to use the flashlights from our guide. The ground was a mix of volcanic rock and mud; some parts easy to traverse and others really difficult with the slippery mud and the sharp jagged rocks. We scaled down into a few fresh water natural pools and continued farther and deeper into the tunnel. Legend has it that the tunnel goes on infinitely and far inside are small fairy sized humans (they call dwarfs), that supposedly came out once years ago to bless a man with wealth and luck. People became jealous of the man’s fortune and wanted to know how he got it, so he told them about the “dwarfs”. The “dwarfs” then took away their blessings and hid in their cave, never to be seen again. The Danish guy we were with, Lasse, was a bit of a dare devil, and when the guide claimed we had come to the end of the tunnel walk (but obviously not the end of the tunnel), Lasse kept going until he hit what appeared to be a wall blocking the tunnel…until he found a crawl space in the wall. All the boys followed suit and kept going, but Katja and I opted to save our bathing suits from the garbage and refrain from crawling through the mud. So lame I know; too bad Jared doesn’t write the blog. Anyway, after a few minutes, the boys returned and we made the slow walk back to the surface. Katja and Lasse offered to give us a ride back to Tanu Beach Fales for lunch, and then even invited us to accompany them to the island’s canopy walk Falealupo Canopy Walk. After eating a bunch of free bananas Tanu offered, we all met back up and went to the canopy walk, which was one “bridge” build in the canopy of the rainforest, though the bridge was just a bunch of ladders strung together with planks over each ladder to walk on, so it was a bit nerve-wracking to cross. On the other side of the bridge was basically a really cool tree house that we climbed higher into the canopy. We had to purchase a ticket to enter the canopy bridge, and that ticket also allowed us to see the “giant footprint” down the road, which was just a weird looking indentation in the volcanic rock, that is now believed to have been the left foot of a giant as he walked (the right footprint is supposedly in Fiji…I’ll let you know), anyway not a whole lot to see, and it also allowed us to see the “rock house” which we couldn’t find but weren’t all that disappointed about. With the Danish couple and Christian we drove around the island for a few hours, stopping at a nice beach and around Cape Mulinuu to something we think was called “Star Mound”, which was thought to be used for religious purposes or pigeon hunting…who knows. By the way, that cape is the closest piece of land to the International Date Line; just a tidbit for you. As evening rolled in, we hauled back to Tanu so we didn’t miss our dinner!! Katja and Lasse ended up staying at Tanu also that night so it worked out well. After dinner, we cleaned up and headed to bed in our ocean front fale; honestly, ocean front never gets old.
That next day, we had originally decided to rent a car, but
Katja and Lasse offered us a ride in their car again, so we ended up getting to
save a bit of money! After we all had
another hearty breakfast together, we piled in the car. Our first stop was a large crater. Almost the entire island is volcanic, and
craters abound. Directions in the
Pacific islands all seem to be kind of the same in their crappiness. In the actual Tourist pamphlet, it tells you
to look for a fallen tree and the path is between that tree and an old
fale. That is how we found pretty much
everything on the island: look for the coconut tree and the grave, or the old
rock mound and the breadfruit tree, ug.
Anyway, after the short hot jaunt up and around the crater, we needed a little
cooling off, so we headed to the Afu Aau waterfalls, where we got to swim
around in the pool under the falls, and climb the rocks leading behind the
falls, pretty neat. We had some fresh
fruits snacks there, before migrating back.
Driving with Katja was kind of enlightening, because she knew a lot of
Samoan culture that you wouldn’t necessarily get to learn from guide books,
like the fact that, though Christianity has brought a lot of unity to the
people, it is also sort of stripping them of the little amount of money people
have. Samoa does not export anything;
tourism is their biggest income market. During
services, the churches actually name each family and how much they have
donated, in front of the entire congregation!
So basically, people can’t afford sugar, but they are bullied into
donating to the church. Hmmm, something
seems wrong with that. Anywayyyy, on our
return to Tanu, we stopped at the empty town market, and the Saleaula Lava Fields. As
I mentioned before, the island was hit by a volcanic eruption in 1905, which
started slowly, taking almost a full year for a huge mountain to emerge from
flat earth, and threaten the towns below with ever rising bubbling lava. Finally, in 1906 the magma spilled out of the
mouth of the volcano and slowly flowed to the ocean, plowing through only a
medium sized village on its route.
Because its progress was so slow, everyone in the village was actually
able to pack their belongings and move, but we did get to see the ruins of the
old church, walk along the undulating black volcanic lava paths, and see the
imprints in the hardened earth of the metal from roofs that melted into the
ground. Pretty neat. After all that, we headed back to Tanu for
some relaxation and dinner before heading to bed.
The next day was
our last in Samoa. We woke up, had our
breakfast and packed. The bus came
around at noon; luckily, it was not jam-packed this time, and we had a bit of
breathing room. We made it to the ferry
easily, and back to Upulo, where we hopped on another bus to the airport. We waited for ages in the airport, as our
flight got delayed until 1am, but we got some good reading in, so it wasn’t a
total loss I guess, haha. Again, we were
sad to leave Samoan Paradise, but happy to be moving on to the Tongan version.
No comments:
Post a Comment