Samoa: Islands of Paradise
We ventured out snorkeling in the little bay in front of our resort. We timed it for just after high tide as we felt the currents would be gentler. We first explored the right side of the bay, but a strong surge kept pushing against us, not letting us further out. So we dilly-dallied in the middle of the bay observing the colorful fish swimming in the corals as we drifted left with the current. Looking up, we drifted too far left. We tried swimming back to shore, strongly kicking our fins as a very strong current dragged us further out to sea. The more we kicked, the more exhaustion settled in. It was too late. We could not make it back to the safety of our cove.
Being pulled past a rocky cliff, we spotted another sandy beach and aimed for it. Having succeeded to swim around the rocky cliff wall, the surge weakened and after some struggling, we stepped onto the deserted beach, surrounded by a high cliff of rocks and dense plants. Loud crashing waves drowned out all sound, so calling for help was hopeless. We were stranded like Robinson Crusoe! Did anyone know where we were? Would we have to wait for low tide to swim back to the resort beach?
Recovering from our little adventure in the swimming pool with a Lychee martini, we discovered that the pool bartender, unbeknownst to us, performed double duty as lifeguard, watching out for adventurous snorkelers. When he spotted us disappear around the cliff, he dispatched two strong, young Samoan men on two glass-bottomed kayaks to rescue us, and with a lot of trial and error, we were both able to climb onto them amid strong waves trying to swamp the kayaks. They victoriously paddled around the rocky edge back to our quieter beach as other guests watched comfortably from the restaurant veranda.
We explored the main island of Samoa with a rental car and were enchanted by the colorfulness of the houses, the sarongs of men and women, and of their friendly attitudes. What a change from Tonga!
Samoa was previously called Western Samoa and has two big islands. Savai’i is quite large with a huge mountainous interior and is rather undeveloped, and the other island where we were, Upolu, contains most of the population of roughly 300,000 people, and again here the villages are lead by chieftains, who also keep the villagers in a tight knit community. There is very little crime on Samoa.
Those huge outdoor porch houses are used frequently for big family gatherings
Every family home (the yellow one in the center) has their own porch-meeting house next to it (blue building, left side)
New to us were the huge columned, outdoor porches, independent from the main houses, next to every single-level house, which does not give a lot of privacy, so much is open. A religious people, each village has several churches of various christian denominations: Sunday everything is closed and it is dress-up-for-church-day. Everyone wears white.
White hats for Sunday services at every price level
We read that the village communities are very tight and do not offer the individuals many choices. Yet, nothing of that was visible to us. June 1st is their Independence Day, the day they became their own country, after being governed by Britain, Germany and lastly from NZ.
Volleyball…
… and soccer are played in the late afternoon
Samoa is separate from American Samoa, another island, being a U.S. territory, about 4 hours ferry ride away and just over the international date line. As we anticipate issues with Gitty’s re-entry into the US (long story … and, you never know), we decided not to risk visiting American Samoa.
Proud of their Samoan heritage
Sturdy palm frond baskets take only three minutes to weave
Downtown Apia
We visited the Robert Louis Stevenson House in Samoa’s capital city of Apia (he wrote Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). R. L. Stevenson is cherished by all Samoans as they attribute him for putting Samoa on the map.
Robert Louis Stevenson spent his last years at this house he built when arriving in Samoa
Traditional clothing at the time he lived here
Being Scottish, he insisted on having a fireplace
He lived his final years on the island and his house is now a museum. He suffered from tuberculosis and died of a stroke at the young age of 44.
We also drove through beautiful countryside along the hilly interior of the island and observed two amazing waterfalls.
A hundred-fifty foot waterfall from a beautiful garden
Three hundred foot waterfall from the viewing platform
At one of the waterfalls, we encountered the grand opening of a newly built viewing platform with government officials christening it
Even though the official event was still in process, they let us view the waterfall from it. They were all, press and officials, super friendly to us.
A lot of effort was made to beautify the roads all over the island
Last year, Samoa hosted CHOGM (Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting) 2024 in Apia. The Commonwealth is a voluntary association of 56 independent and equal countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Americas, Europe and the Pacific. Eleven members are from Pacific Island countries. Occurring every two years, It was the first such meeting held in the South Pacific and the Samoans were elated to be the first small island nation to act as host. They put great effort into beautifying the island and building out their infrastructure, even adding a business class lounge to their airport. They were very proud to have King Charles and Queen Camilla visit their country for the event.
Small island nations are especially vulnerable to issues of climate change and so the Samoans are particularly proud of the Apia Commonwealth Ocean Declaration for One Resilient Common Future, which calls on all 56 Commonwealth nations to “protect and restore the ocean in the face of severe climate change, pollution and impacts related to over-exploitation. This declaration paves the way for robust, ambitious, innovative and transformative action for a Common Wealth of shared ocean prosperity, resilience and sustainability that builds on national and collective efforts to protect the ocean and use it sustainably.” That’s a mouthful, but something Jyl could easily parse, I’m sure. In any case, the waters around Samoa are amazing and worth protecting.
Our highlight in Samoa, besides our charming resort and its staff, was the snorkeling at the Giant Clam Sanctuary. Only ten people are allowed at one time to swim among the clams. We happened to be there at low tide, which was wonderful for snorkeling, just about 50cm above the healthy corals in a quiet natural harbor.
First, we spotted two Green turtles resting between the low coral patches that were all over this area. A short time after we saw them: an abundance of large clams, about football-size, embedded in the ocean floor, all healthy, living clams with beautifully colored rims called mantle, one next to the other, hundreds of them in different shades of iridescent greens, blues, brownish yellow, gold, orange and purple. Then we reached the Giant Clams and couldn’t believe our eyes. There were about 20 of them and the apparent parents of all those other clams. If you stretch your arms out from side to side, they would reach from one middle finger to the other (about four feet wide), and about as high as a table. According to Wikipedia, they each weighed about 450 lbs. Every time you floated above one, it closed its two halves.
We loved spotting Samoan Cardinal Myzomelas (endemic to the islands) like this one flitting about while we sat poolside with cocktails
Those Giant Clams are part animal and part plant. Like corals, they have plant-like amoebas (zooxanthellae) in their tissues that produce food for them. When a clam opens its shell and spreads out its mantle, it exposes these solar panels of zooxanthellae to the sun to produce food, like a plant unfolding its leaves. At the same time, the clam feeds by drawing water through its siphon and filtering out tiny food particulates.
We liked our little resort a lot, as the staff that works there are super friendly and attentive. They all live in the village near the resort and are working there since a long time, sometimes decades, happily it appeared to us.
One day they put on a culture evening, not bringing in a commercial outside group, but more intimately from the staff themselves. The host is also the main cook of the resort - he strummed his guitar and sang as others demonstrated how coconut flesh is rasped off the half shell (as it is done still today in every household, we were told). One particularly delicious side-dish called Palusami (taro-coconut ball) was constructed by squeezing the freshly rasped white coconut flesh (called coconut cream) into a wooden bowl using coconut husk fibers like a cheesecloth and then flavoring the cream with salt and onions.
Preparing a Palusami ball for steaming on the Umu
Using many very young and shiny green taro leaves to form a water-tight shell, the chef poured seasoned coconut cream into the shell, then wrapped the whole thing tightly in an older, bigger taro leaf and tied it closed using the leaf stem. This taro ball is then put on the hot stones of the Umu, sort of an outdoor above-ground oven, and let it steam inside the shell for 25 minutes. We had that as a side dish for dinner and it was absolutely outstanding. The taro leaves cooked to a spinach-like green consistency mixed with the fresh, seasoned coconut milk. Yummy!
Samoan songs are just as lovely as the Fijian ones that we like and hopefully Randy will add one or two to his ever-expanding repertoire of ukulele hits. “We are Samoa” is the unofficial national anthem.
We really enjoyed Samoa and felt it would be worth exploring further, land and people. Unlike the three weeks we spent in the previous country, we felt we stayed way too short on Samoa.
