Blogs from Samoa, Oceania - page 3

We are very tired after yesterday’s travel so we sleep in and decide to spend the day relaxing. We swim in the shallows from the beach in front of the hotel. There’s lots of sharp coral underfoot and we spy the occasional fish. We dry off and set up shop on sun lounges under another small wooden umbrella shaped structure on the beach. Just as I’m about to shut my eyes I spot a large bunch of coconuts in the tree directly above my head. I think that they mightn’t be too pleased that they just missed killing Issy yesterday, and they’ve now decided to take their revenge out on me. I tell Issy that we need to move the sun lounges so that our heads are completely under the structure. She moves hers, which is ... read more

We were happy to get up at 3am to leave cold Melbourne for our six night trip to Samoa flying via Auckland. We landed in Samoa around 8.30pm pleased to find it was a balmy 28 degrees. Picking our hire car up from the airport it was a challenge finding our way in the dark to our accommodation which was on the other side of the island. We used the first cross-island road; thank goodness our maps on our phones worked without Internet. We were told you had to keep a low speed when driving through villages because of the animals, during our time in Samoa we found this was to be true, dogs, chickens, pigs, horses, cows all wandered across the road. We soon realized why oncoming vehicles were often driving in the middle of ... read more

Freitag, 23.02.2018 Pago Pago (Samoa): Regen, Min. 25°C Max. 28°C Leider begrüsste uns auch Pago Pago, wie zuvor schon Hilo, mit Regen es goss wie aus Kübeln. Im Moment herrscht hier „Wet Season“ also Regenzeit, erst im Mai wird es etwas trockener, doch regnen tut es hier immer. Dank den vielen Niederschlägen ist die Insel von einer üppigen tropischen Vegetation bedeckt. Da wir keinen Ausflug gebucht hatten, gingen wir den verregneten Tag ruhig an und genehmigten uns erst mal ein ausgiebiges Frühstück. Unsere Tischnachbarn hatten einen Strandausflug gebucht, der im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes ins Wasser fiel. Er wurde annulliert, denn im Regen am Strand liegen ist nicht jedermanns Sache. Der Regen hielt den ganzen Tag mit nur einem kurzen Unterbruch an. Gegen 10:00 Uhr machten wir uns mit Schirm bewaffnet auf eine kleine ... read more

There were quiet heavy tropic showers when we got up to day so decided not to attempt the bush walk to Robert Louis Stevenson's tomb today. Just to prove I am doing some work here we went to the Museum of Samoa which has some fragments of Lapita pottery from 3000 years ago and some 'plain pottery' dated 1000 years later. Lapita pottery was a definite decorated ceramic body were as the 'plain' pottery appeared not to have completed the change from clay to ceramic. It is also interesting to note that there were a number of large wooden vessels of a similar time but only a few fragments of ceramics, one could postulate that ceramics was never made here, It may have be brought with the original inhabitants and attempted again unsuccessfully 1000 years later,without ... read more

Have had a wonderful last two days - have ended up so tired haven't hat the energy to post anything. After we had been to the cultural centre we met a man touting for business to take us around the Island, while we are often sceptical of people touting for business, our decision to take him up turned out to be a very good one. To put a plug in for him his name is Tusi Junior Tautua, he took us to the highlights on Upolo the first day, we had as long as we wanted at all the places we stopped. First stop was the Robert Louis Stephenson Museum - This was his house kept in it original form with reproductions of anything that was no longer there, i.e. furniture etc. (So much for being ... read more