Our years visa was about to expire, but we weren’t quite finished with New Zealand yet, so we set off to Samoa for a week with the plan of returning to New Zealand as regular tourists while we sold our remaining bits and pieces and packed up. Carolanne gave us a lift to the airport and we hopped on our plane to Samoa without any trouble. We’d been warned that the plane would be laden with tinfoil wrapped KFC meals, which are considered a great delicacy in Samoa. We were quite disappointed when we didn’t see any KFC, but we did see several bundles of McDonalds instead. Half way to Samoa there was a great rustling on the plane as they all tucked into their McDonalds meals, hopefully not too cold at that stage!
En route to the island we had crossed over the date line, so even though we had left New Zealand on Monday 6th October, we arrived in Samoa on Sunday 5th. Similarly on our way back to New Zealand Monday 13th October 2008 didn’t exist for us at all!
When we arrived we took a bus from the airport to our hotel in Apia and rushed out to get some dinner before all the restaurants closed (maybe we should have followed the lead of all the McDonalds munching locals!) We had to wake up a taxi driver asleep on his back seat to get us home again.
The following day we decided to see around the capital city, Apia. We walked into the town via the Maketi Fou (Food Market) and Flea Market before going on to the coast where we looked at various monuments and the government buildings. That afternoon we went snorkelling in Palolo Deep Marine Reserve. As it was quite near high tide we didn’t get to see much of the “deep” part but it was good fun swimming with multicoloured fish through the coral.
On Tuesday morning we were up early to go on a tour around Upolo Island. We were the only people on the tour and had a driver and tour guide just to ourselves. It was a really interesting day, helped a bit by the comfort of an air conditioned van as we drove around. We stopped at several places including their rugby stadium, a few waterfalls and beaches. Our favourite was swimming in the Piula Cave Pool. It is a fresh water pool near the beach, which is partly uncovered but also goes about 10 metres into a cave. The water was crystal clear and we had no trouble seeing fish in the water with us even inside the cave. We also got some coconut education on the tour. Firstly we drank the juice of young coconuts, which is much sweeter than the mature coconuts we get at home. We also had a demonstration on how to make coconut cream. They take a mature coconut and rasp it out and squeeze the shavings to get the cream out. It is very tasty!
After a quick visit to see some turtles we were home again. We arranged to go to a Fia Fia buffet dinner that night. A Fia Fia involves traditional fire dancing. It was quite a show, and we were the only non-nationals there. Because of that they put us up at the front right in the middle and gave us a special mention during the show! We had been told by a few people that Savaii was by far the nicer of the two islands of Samoa so on Wednesday morning we got a ferry across, hoping to get a hire car to drive around the island for a couple of days. When we arrived we discovered there were no rental cars to be had so we decided to think about what to do over lunch. The taxi drivers were quite insistent and pestered us quite a lot. We had been told that Tanu Beach Fales was a great place to stay. When we came out of the restaurant after lunch we spotted a Tanu Beach Fales van so hailed that and got a lift to the accommodation with him, much to the disgust of the taxi driver that was trying to adopt us.
The van driver turned out to be a son of the owner and he called ahead to get a fale prepared for us. Open fales are thatched huts with no walls used for shade during the day, which can have walls of woven reeds attached for sleeping. Our fale was right on the beach and we made the most of it, going swimming and relaxing in the shade.
On Thursday morning a group of 12 people staying at Tanu Beach Fales set off with Grace, a daughter of the owner, for a tour of Savaii Island. We paid just $90 for this tour but as the day went on the number of $2 or $5 we had to fork out for various “attractions” built up! Anyway, en route we saw the Canopy Rainforest Walkway, which was a fun walk up a big tree house really to see above the rainforest. That was followed by paying $2 to look over a cliff at the side of the road… lover’s leap. The Alofaaga Blowholes were fun, as a local man put on a display for us, throwing coconut husks into the holes just before they blew, sending the husks high into the air, while he ran away from the water! We went for a refreshing swim at the Afu Aau Waterfall and later we swam with the turtles at Saloalepai. 
That night and the next morning we were given the excuse of staying in bed by a big thunderstorm. Unfortunately it didn’t remove the humidity for long. In any case we had to go back to Upolo Island for our flight home. We were flying out on Sunday evening, but that day the entire island shut down to celebrate White Sunday. The only place we found open for lunch was McDonalds! We made our way to the Papaseea Sliding Rocks where we entertained ourselves for a while in the pools of the river. Seán tried sliding down the rocks, but after looking at how shallow it was and listening to his shouts, I passed! After a nice relaxing week off it was time to fly back to Auckland and sort out our things before starting the trip home.
