Samoa Trip: Part One

What a month it has been! If you are into travel-blogging, be prepared for a doozy! If you aren't interested in the stories behind the photos, feel free to skim. BUT you will be missing out on some very cool stuff!

For any of you planning on traveling while pregnant, I only have one tip: compression socks. That about sums up the 15ish hours we spent flying. We did have some epically long layovers, the first of which was in Fiji. Nadi Fiji (pronounced Nandi) is not the resortish, touristy part of Fiji. There isn't a ton to do there and the restaurants had the look of food poisoning about them. It is, however, home to the largest Hindu Temple in the southern hemisphere! It was impressively brightly colored and something to do to fill our 15 hour gap between flights.

Arrival at the airport in Fiji: 5:10 AM

We enjoyed the adventure of riding the city bus and visiting the market. We ate some fresh pineapple and bananas, then headed back to the airport and ate some decent Indian food.

Sri Siva Subramaniya Temple

This layover was entirely too long. We were very relieved to get on our last flight and get to Samoa. Finally! When we got to the hotel I'd booked, it was sweet relief to take a shower and sleep in a bed. Not an airplane seat, A BED!! I've never slept so well in all my life! Then, imagine waking up to the gentle sound of rain on the roof and looking out the window to find yourself in a tropical paradise.

This is the fale where we were served a hot, homemade breakfast with half a papaya on the side.

Just across the road was...the ocean! and a little garden.

You find these kind of flowers all over in Samoa.

We got a ride to the Mulifanua Wharf and took a ferry to Savai'i: the BIG island. Well, big geographically, small population. In the large ferry, the trip takes about an hour and the ride is smooth enough to be very pleasant.

Once we arrived on Savai'i at Saleolonga, we just headed to our next hotel. Lee and I booked a very...traditional room for ourselves and got my mum and pop something more modern. You know, with walls and a bathroom. Luisa's Lagoon is probably one of the prettiest little spots you can stay on the whole island and they actually had a good restaurant!

Word to the Wise: Home cooked Samoan meals are great. Most of the restaurants are no where close to that good. Not only that, they don't seem to actually have what is on the menu half the time. It's very weird.

With woven mats instead of walls, we were grateful for the mosquito net! 

Our room may not have had traditional amenities, but it had spectacular ocean views!

Why have a normal swimming pool when you have a rock pool...in the ocean.

Luisa's had free kayak rentals, so we explored the whole lagoon!

The nice thing about Dad speaking Samoan so fluently is that we made friends with the staff of every hotel, restaurant, or taxi-driver we met. Sometimes that meant getting better rates, sometimes it meant getting better advice. In one instance, saved us from Mom leaving a very nice camera behind!

Samoans are very friendly, very honest, and they really appreciate tourism. They haven't quite figured out all the ins and outs of what a tourist might want or need, but they are very eager to have a bigger tourism industry, so they aren't disdainful of visitors the way some countries are.

We met up with the tour group on July 4th. Not to toot my own horn, but of the places we stayed, the first two--the two I booked--were the best. For anyone looking to travel to Samoa, give me a call.

Our first tour bus. Wooden everything, no panes in the windows. Excellent ride.

We rode this fantastic bus to Viola, a church owned school where a local family was kind enough to make a delicious feast for us. The housing there was very westernized, so there wasn't a whole lot to see. The only item of note was a ceremonial fale in the middle of the compound.

The large fale at Viola.

We drove all the way around to the back of the island to our hotel at Vaisala. This is about as far from civilization as you can get. The hotel had signs all over to tell you to not drink the tap water. Even for Samoans it's only suitable for washing: do not ingest. If you wanted drinking water, you had to go to one of the giant rain barrels. Yes. Their only source of clean, fresh water is the rain. The room we were given smelled so strongly of varnish that we had to request to be moved. The four of us ended up sharing a room that had six or seven beds in it, each less comfortable than the last. But we hardly got the short end of the stick: one of the other families found a cockroach in their room! Another didn't have a mattress, just box springs! 

Taking a shower with hot water is something a luxury in Samoa, lots of hotels seem to not have water heaters. At Vaisala, taking a shower with water at all was luxury. The shower was on for a full 10 minutes before any icy water trickled out. Lee did the smart thing and stood out in the rain with some soap. He got a better shower than any of the rest of us.

On the bright side, their beach was great for swimming and their breakfast quite delicious!

On the following day, we continued our tour round Savai'i with a trip on the canopy walk and a visit to the Taga blowholes. The canopy walk is a bridge in the canopy of the rainforest. You climb a tall spiral staircase and walk across a kind of narrow bridge with nets all around so you can't fall off. From there, you climb even higher up an enormous tree. The view is spectacular, the bridge is very slippery, you've got to see it to believe it. 

Here is Lee on the walkway.

Claire at the top of the tree house, but nowhere near the top of the tree. You can kind of see the ocean in the background. 

The canopy bridge from the ground. It's pretty high up there.

This is about 1/4 of the base of the tree we were in. It's massive.

Here is a pretty terrible video of me crossing the bridge. The best part is where I take a serious spill and the camera goes all wonky. Enjoy!

Here is a video at the Taga blowholes. I will be posting photos of the blowholes on my next Samoa entry, but for now I hope you will be contented with this spectacular coconut demonstration!