Talofa Lava!

Well after an awesome plane flight (and by awesome I mean three crying babies who seemed to attempting some kind of choral fest) I arrived in Samoa.

So... Samoa is pretty awesome, it is SO hot!! I got sunburned walking to a marine reserve to see tropical fish, but it was definitely worth it - such a peaceful area.

Also - Samoa is home to the most hilarious beer of all time - it is called "Vailima" and it is the national beer of Samoa. The thing is, it was explained to me that it is similar to Fiji Bitter - no two beers taste the same! And it is not an urban legend. I tasted about four bottles of the stuff, one was like Speights, one like Tui, one like Heineken and one like Steinlager! This is only an approximate description, but given that it is supposed to be one beer, I'm quite impressed by the variety of flavours!! And while I'm on the subject of alcohol, Aggie Grey's hotel where we stayed does the BEST cocktails ever!

Apia is really nice, it was odd to be in a town where all the cars drive on the right-hand side of the street, and the buses are... well, the buses in Apia have to be seen to be believed - all the colours of the rainbow! There are lots of feral dogs around, but it is so hot that they basically just wander slowly around, so my phobia of dogs is quelled somewhat by their island disposition!

I hoped to catch a ferry to the other island Savaii where there are turtles to feed, and blow holes where a lava flow has covered part of the sea, but unfortunately we ran out of time. For literary buffs, it is worth visiting Robert Louis Stevenson's house on the outskirts of Apia and for the super-fit - climbing to the top of the hill nearby to visit his tomb.

We did however go on a day tour of half of Upolo (the main island which is where Apia is), we drove around the coastline and through all the villages. The villages are much more pretty than Apia is, I think because they have not been as comprimised by Western culture as Apia. The houses in each village are very colourful and as well as that there are plenty of churches in each village. The odd thing is that the mormon churches there have not made much of an effort to blend in - they are white buildings that vaguely look like the American embassy in Wellington because they have iron security fences around them. This looks particularly odd because for the most part Samoan villages are made up of open air fales...

Most villages also have a freshwater swimming pool where people swim and wash their laundry etc. It looked like such an awesome place to live - and our tour guide pointed out where some Aussies and Kiwis had built baches on the side of hills above some of the villages. But there are some interesting things about Samoa like - you cannot buy land if you are not a citizen, most villages have a curfew of 10.30pm and if you are caught wandering the street after that the chief would fine you, and their only chocolate factory burned down in 2002. Our tour guide was called Sio, and he was the most hilarious guide ever with practically every second sentence causing us to crack up with laughter.

We stopped at a couple of beautiful waterfalls, one of which Sio informed us "two german tourist die here because they drink too much vailima then they fink it is good idea to jump off waterfall. There is very shallow water at bottom, so they break necks. No more german tourist". Sio seemed to like to think everything happens because of too much Vailima. We pass a car accident/someone in the van yawns - "Too much Vailima ah?" Very amusing.

Eventually we arrived at a beautiful beach where we spent about three hours having lunch, swimming and sitting in cute little beach fales. The beach was super gorgeous, not too many people, white sand, crystal clear water. Because of my sunburn I had thought it would be better not to take togs in case I was tempted to swim. This did not work out well. I spent a fair bit of the time wearing a towel as a cape to protect my arms and reapplying sunscreen what felt like once every 5 minutes. But in the end, being told about the fish led me to become the most idiotic person at the beach - what began as wading in to the sea, hiking my skirt up to stop it from getting wet turned into going all the way into the water in a skirt and t-shirt. But it was worth it - the fish were amazing, beautiful bright blues, black and white striped fish, green fish... it was like a really good national geographic article!

We made our way back to Apia, and got there about 5pm so it was quite a long day. The next day was our last and we just spent it wandering around Apia. We went to the markets and I got a beautiful shell bracelet and a couple of pairs of earrings. We had a midnight flight out from the airport to L.A., it was very sad to leave, I'm totally going back again. If only to return to the bar at the Aggie Greys hotel and drink every cocktail on the menu!