Samoa

18 – 30 August 2014, Bora Bora to Apia, Samoa
30 August – 17 September 2014, Apia, Samoa, anchored in Apia Bay then in Apia Marina

1 arrived in Samoa on Saturday 30th of August after a not particularly fun passage. All weathers except (happily) gale or storm. I think we got gale force briefly on Wednesday. Started off OK from Bora Bora then started to lighten and back so I couldn't point the north side of Maupiti without motoring which I did. Ended up motoring all that night and half the next day when a very light southerly came in and I could set the sails and the kite. During the passage I had: full main and jib plus kite, kite only in ghosting conditions where the main wouldn't set due to swell, one then two then three reefs in the main and finally for the last five days genoa only with six rolls in it.

Rain and wind on the passage to Samoa

Once I'd got anchored, almost the first thing I did was go and look for Aggie Grey's hotel. Unfortunately it was shut for renovation. It looked like it had been shut for a while and was altogether sad looking. A disappointment. It belongs to or has been bought by the Sheraton chain and is being renovated with little sympathy for what remains of it's period charm. Shame.

Fifty person canoes are one of the specialities of Samoa. I was still anchored out at this stage and the race went right past me. They don't go all that fast for all their manpower; maybe it's difficult to coordinate all those people.

The Small Island Developing States conference was on in Samoa when I was there. They had brought a cruise ship with them as a floating hotel. I guess this means that they were safe even if global warming resulted in Samoa sinking under the waves during the conference.

For once I was in a country when the festival was on rather than just before or just after. The Teulia festival was on for the first week I was in Apia; shows on all day and all evening on the stage in front of the government buildings, masses of booths with local handcrafts and food. The audience was mostly locals with a sprinkling of SIDS delegates and yachties. Apia doesn't seem to get normal tourists at all. They must be all at resorts somewhere else.


The thing in the photo was The Chief's Falifa which was a dance show by a group who are based in Hawaii apparently. A troop of about six men and six women who did dances from all over the Pacific accompanied by the guys drumming behind them. It culminated in fire dancing which was spectacular. The whole thing was very professional. The leader is a chief from Samoa who has a great line in dry patter. All very much for tourists but very good nonetheless.


There was a slightly lame comedy duo called the Laughing Samoans who are based in NZ. The rest was mostly local dance teams with very appreciative local audiences laughing and clapping at unexpected times. I guess you had to be an expert to really appreciate the subtleties.

I spent practically the whole week just going to the festival and visiting the nearby custom village where they demonstrated local handcrafts like making tapa cloth from mulberry bark and traditional tattooing which looks very painful. The chiefs are tattooed from their sternums to just above the knee with very dense dark tattoos. Apparently the women are tattooed too with lighter tattoos and only on the legs, but, as Samoans never take off their clothes even to swim and the women wear mid calf length dresses or lavas, it's impossible to tell how popular it is.

Vailima, Robert Louis Stephenson's house. It has joined the small and select group of houses which I will own when I become enormously rich or the peoples' revolution means that I can have any house I want. This picture makes it look a bit dull and symmetrical but it is really a perfect house for the climate. It is just above Apia and the breeze cools it nicely. It is entirely constructed of wood and there are wide shady verandas nearly all round and the rooms are bright comfortable. You can imagine RLS sitting out on the veranda writing. He only lived in Samoa four years but they said he wrote fourteen books on the island. I think that is exaggerated but the bookcases were full of RLS' books and made me realise that he was a much more prolific writer than I thought.


There were a few photographs of rather good looking Samoan women taken during his life maybe by his son in law who was rather keen on the local women. They are all topless. Apparently traditional Samoan dress was very similar for men and women; a lava lava and nothing else. The missionaries and the western influence certainly put a stop to that. Samoan men and women are all very modestly dressed, though the men wear only a lava lava when they are dancing or showing off in the custom village. Both men and women swim fully clothed then sit around on the beach looking wet and gritty.

The inscription on RLS's tomb which is his own poem Requiem (apparently misquoted in the second last line). The guide at Vailima sang it in English and Samoan which was rather nice.


The tomb is on the hill beside Vailima. It is a steepish but short and easy walk up to it.

The magnificent if slightly chocolate boxy cathedral in Apia. The inside of the dome is painted as if it is the inside of a traditional fale with the chiefs sitting round under their personal pillars and various holy looking types hingin aboot outside, biblical tourists.

Traditional sailing canoe from Hawaii. Note the Union flag on the Hawaiian state flag. Two of these arrived for the festival and were greeted on the beach with much drumming.

The chief from the Chief's Falifa demonstrating making fire at the custom village. Amazing. Completely genuine as far as I could detect; no lighted fag secreted behind his ear. Good patter too:

“Making fire takes a long time. Two hours. Go for a walk if you like. When it rains we don't eat. We go to McDonalds.”

I hired a car and drove round the island for two days. This is a rather boring picture of a waterfall for which I had to pây 5 Tala. You can't go anywhere or do anything in Samoa without paying somebody because everything belongs to someone. This includes the beaches and they generally won't even let you park without charging you. I don't mean big hotels but villages. A beach will belong to the village and you will have to pay to use it. This can become tiresome.

Vines. Climate change may be a threat to the Pacific islands but as far as I could see the biggest threat is from these vines. They have big heart shaped leaves and faintly grubby white trumpet shaped flowers and in some cases these fruit. Whole swathes of hillside in Samoa are completely covered by them draping over rocks, trees, grass and in this case power lines. My advice is; see Polynesia soon. In a few years the islands will all just be shapeless humps draped over in vines.

Man and fale. The nicest thing about Samoa is the villages where a lot of people still live in traditional fales which are just a floor and a roof connected by wooden posts. The villages are beautiful. The houses are colorfully painted and the gardens are spectacular. Because of the SIDS conference all the villages were dressed with bunting which was made from brightly coloured cloth. Unfortunately, I spent the first day just looking and not taking photos. On the second day, the sun was covered by grey clouds and the light was glary and impossible with my telephone to take decent pictures. It was a real shame. By the looks of it, the fale behind him is the village meeting place but the one just to the left is just somebodies house. As you drive past, you see people sitting watching television, all their belonging are just piled around. I can't imagine what it is like living in a fale. Theft must not exist or maybe, there is just always somebody around and it is very difficult to hide when burgling a house with no walls. And I guess everybody is family anyway.

View from my beach fale. I would have loved to get an invite to spend a night in a real fale but the best I could manage was a rented one on the beach. Very small and rudimentary. They put a mattress in it and hung a mosquito net over it. There were curtains made of un-picturesque plastic tarpaulins which you could let down if it rained or got windy (and it did). I paid 70 Tala for the fale with dinner and breakfast included. One Tala is about 40 cents US so it was not a bad deal.


The dinner was pretty nasty actually, rice, taro, chinesey noodley thing, bony chicken, over soy sauced, possibly tinned octopus, very salty frankfurters. Another thing I never managed to have was a traditional meal cooked in an earth oven. They promised traditional cooking at the custom village but when I went it was cancelled; they had cooked for all the SID delegates the day before or some such thing. I spoke to some other people and it had been cancelled the day they went too so maybe it is always cancelled. Shame. The traditional food, cooked wrapped in leaves is just a bit wet and mushy when cooked in a pot. I'm sure it would be much nicer steamed in an earth oven. We were told that traditionally it was the men who cooked but with the people using western cooking vessels and stoves more and more, this was falling out of use. The cooks at the stalls were mostly men though.


I really liked Samoa. It gave me the impression that their own culture is still very much alive and hasn't been swamped by outside cultures or tourism. A really nice place. Even if you do have to pay to sit on the beach.