Samoa Days 4, 5

I spent the early hours of Tuesday working fastidiously on my last blog post, spending close to 3 hours typing up the 8 pages of information about our first few days here in Samoa. I was very much in the mood to relax after that, being that I have been go, go, go with my parents in NZ for the 3.5 weeks prior to this trip. Ana, however, is much more excited to be out doing things at all times. I am sure I would feel this same way if I had not recently been on another vacation that was short on relaxation time and heavy on activities, and if extending my stay in Samoa was not a real possibility.

On this point, I looked up tickets today and it appears I can extend my stay until Christmas Day, or many days between now and then while tickets back to Auckland are still cheap. The only other thing I need to figure out, which I will do in the morning, is see if I will be able to return to Auckland after my working holiday visa runs out and go onto a tourist visa. The only problem I possibly foresee with this is that on a tourist visa you cannot be in NZ for more than 6 months in a 12 month period. I will not be in NZ for more than 6 months in a 12-month period on a tourist visa but I would be between the two visas. I think I’ll call immigration about this tomorrow.  Besides that, no foreseeable problems staying here. Another NZ$300 ticket back to Auckland and then another ticket onto Asia, but that’s it. It would probably only cost me about $1500 to stay here for another 3 weeks, all inclusive, and that seems like a fair reward for all my hard work serving food in Auckland over the last year, don’t you think?

Oh wait, there is one problem, I am supposed to be going to Asia in like 1 week with Elizabeth, but how can I go to a big industrial city when I can stay here? And I can just meet up with here 2 weeks late, that’s all. Seems okay, doesn’t it?

I really just think I need to do this to prove to myself that I am brave enough to do it. How often do you get the opportunity in life to just throw away all your future plans, and money you’ve invested in those plans, to do something else? Well the opportunity probably arises quite regularly but how often do you actually take it? Now that I’m thinking about it I have done this many times, leaving MN after I’d invested so much time and effort into creating an adult like there. Not going to India after going through the expensive and stressful process of applying for a visa. But why not do it again?

 Back to Tuesday morning, Ana was really excited about going to see an Ocean Trench down the road from here but I was just not feeling it. I really wanted to just lay around, read my book, do nothing, and plus, we’d be driving that direction the next day and could stop on the way. I was just not keen, but Ana really wanted to do something.

From where we’re staying we can see an island maybe 1 km off shore. There appears to be a beach there with a resort on it. With this in mind, I asked around if we could catch a ride out to that island, that way we can get in our goal of going to another island, Ana can feel like she’s doing something, and I can feel like I’m getting to relax and not have to do anything because I can lay on my sarong on the island and read my book.

I was informed quite quickly that this island was not a place we could get to, but just down the road about 10 minutes we could catch a ride over to Namua Island for a day trip. Done! Sio, one of the staff here (maybe he’s staff… it’s not always clear who works here and who just hangs out here....), offered to ride down with us to show us where it was and then we could take him back and then go. This is exactly what we did and the day was great.

We caught a water taxi over for $40 tala each, plus $10 tala for parking the car, about US$40 total. The kid driving the boat didn’t like much older than 13 or 14. Turns out he was 15, named Christian, his parents own the fales on the other island, and he’s been driving the boat for about 1 month. That didn’t make me feel any better about the situation, but the water wasn’t very deep – you could see the bottom the entire way over – Christian seemed smart enough, and what was our other option anyways? Christian was a very nice water taxi driver, very sociable, had quite good English (I think this is because he goes to school in the capital in Apia), and spotted a turtle! We’ve been wanting to see turtles this entire time but they are apparently rather allusive and it just hasn’t fit well into our schedule of other events.

When we arrived on the island there was another family there, but that was it, and they left after about 15 minutes. For a short while we were the only guests there and had a wonderful fale for the day. I sat and read my book while Ana went for a swim in the water. After maybe 45 minutes Christian returned after dropping the family of 4 off with 2 girls that had been at the place we were staying with us the night before. How funny! Then maybe another 45 minutes or so later another 4 people arrived and it was starting to feel a bit crowded – well not really, but the island was losing its private appeal with 6 other guests on it.

During this time, Ana and I enjoyed a couple of coconuts, went for a swim, and just relaxed.

Before leaving to head back to the big Island, Upolu, we had a long chat with the owner, Christian’s mom. We talked about life on the island, tourists, turtles, school, other things. It was nice to have a nice chat with a Samoan person. It was especially nice since her English was quite good and it didn’t ever feel like language was getting in the way of our being able to have a good conversation.

We returned to the mainland before 4 and headed back to our beach fales for a late lunch. This is a habit Ana and I have gotten into on this trip, having lunch about 4 pm. Most days it’s just the only time we’ve had. We’ve just been too busy over the lunch hour doing something fun. Anyways, we returned for lunch and they didn’t really have anything we could eat. Apparently Tuesday is shopping day they were pretty much out of everything.. We finally talked them into making us fried egg sandwiches and once again they took about 30 minutes to come out of the kitchen. The sandwiches were quite tasty minus some sauce they put on that we were not interested in. But we ate them and were happy.

During this time I called my family back home, showed them the fabulous place where I am staying, and caught up about the last 6 days since we’d last seen each other.

As I’m writing that now that is just crazy! 6 days, that’s it, and it feels like they were never even here. I practically don’t even remember the trip any more. Well that’s not exactly true, but it sure doesn’t feel like it was just last week. I feel quite lucky that I’m doing so many things that each day of my life feels much longer, and in a good way. Not in the way of wishing away the days so I can get to the weekend, but I’m just doing so many things it doesn’t seem like I could possibly accomplish so much in just one day.

After our sandwich time we spent a good chunk of time on the Internet, now that we had it. We decided at 4:32 pm to purchase 24 hours access to the Internet for $50 tala, that is about USD$22. We were able to use both of our devices at once and there was no maximum on the data. This was the best, most reliable Internet either of us had had in a long time – crazy that it was on a small remote island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but it was. With this we have both been able to get lots accomplished as far as e-mail, blog posting, Facebook, etc. goes.

Finished with the Internet, we ended up playing cards with another group of guests from New Zealand, Aaron, Nathan, and their sister and her boyfriend. I dominated the first few hands of a card game they taught me, Graveyard. I’m sure they quickly regretted pulling me into the game, at least at that point. My luck quickly turned sour, however, and then I’m sure they were happy to have someone to beat.

During the cards we spent plenty of time talking during which I revealed that I’m trying to stay out of the sun to keep my skin young, I’m not very comfortable in the ocean and thus don’t really enjoy swimming when I can’t touch the bottom, and don’t drink very often. They couldn’t believe I came to Samoa on vacation, they were wondering if I even had any idea what I was getting myself into when I bought my ticket. Although all these things are true, I have spent time in the sun everyday, and the ocean as well – three times on Wednesday to be exact. This was exactly the relaxing vacation I was hoping for, despite the ocean and the sun (which I both actually do enjoy) and the alcohol (of which I have had none yet in Samoa, and happy for it since I’ve been up early and well rested every day!).

Dinner was dinner and then off to bed.

Wednesday started off early, as usual for this trip, with a walk down the beach for me to watch the sun rise. I found a nice plank of week on which I could sit, I watched the crabs digging their holes, and waiting for the sun to come over the horizon. The sky started out a very pale blue with 2 layers of clouds, a higher layer that was turning from pink to red to orange to peach, and a lower layer of clouds that appeared grey like rain clouds. The colorful upper layer was streaky, like it had been painted with a  brush, while the lower dark layer was small little puffy clouds here and there. As the sun came closer and closer to the horizon the blue color of the sky intensified and the clouds nearest the horizon started to glow. It was at about this time that I just couldn’t stand it any longer and had to go back for my camera. It was all just too amazing and I couldn’t bear not recording it.

This is something I struggle with now that I have really gotten into documenting my travels, when can I just enjoy something in the moment and not try and record it via photo, video, or blog, and when do I need to make sure I have a record to keep forever. Before I began this journey last year with the WWOOFing, I was never much to take photos. I was under the belief that it’s better to be in the moment, enjoying it, that stopping everything all the time to take a picture. Since recording so much, however, I found that the photos, videos, blog posts are such an aid to memory, allowing me to keep fresh things that happened so long ago and in a detail I just could not remember without help. It does, however, happen now that I get stressed when I’m not recording something that I “should” be recording, either for the blog or because I just feel like I should. I guess this is fine, so long as I never let me camera too far out of my sight.

Post-sunrise I went for a walk down the beach in the other direction – where I had not explored before -  and found some cool rock formations (ironically I have no photos of these and will not be taking any to show you at a later time). Then came a bit of reading and breakfast. I have decided that if I do stay here in Samoa I will need to start doing some self-catering with more of my meals. The food we are eating here at the fales is just too heavy on sugar and carbs and not enough fresh fruits and vegetables. So for breakfast it was toast with butter and jam x 3 slices and some papaya, thank god!

Photo uploading came next and this consumed a large part of my morning, broken up by a swim here and there as well as some reading and another Skype session home to my friend. It’s so nice to be able to show people on the video the beautiful place I’m staying.

Because we hadn’t done the ocean trench Tuesday it was at the top of our list for Wednesday. After both Ana and I had spent a sufficient amount of time on the Internet we got in the car and headed for the trench. I am making this assumption with no proof to back it up but I would say the ocean trench has got to be one of the most iconic experiences here in Samoa. All the tourists know it and all the tourists do it. From the photos we had seen on line it didn’t look all the back. The ladder down into the trench looked more like a staircase and the whole thing looked quite easy.

Man, was that not the case when we got there! From the top the ladder seems to go almost straight down. There are no railings on the side, the steps are quite narrow, and it is probably 6 meters tall.  It took me 20 minutes to get up enough courage to go down the ladder – I attempted 3 times before actually making it past step 3 – but I finally got myself to the bottom, knowing that coming up would be much easier.  I finally just told myself that if I didn’t do this, it would be the first thing I attempted on this trip and failed at, the first thing I set out to do, go so close to, and then didn’t do. I just forced myself down that ladder. And it was awesome.

At the bottom of the ladder is a platform from which you can jump into the trench. Some people jump from the top of the trench but the water when we were there was only about 2 meters deep and the trench is 10 meters tall. I definitely wasn’t doing that! Not even from anywhere on the ladder, as that would be way too tall as well. Although I did use this as a argument to myself to get down the ladder, that if I fell the water was at least deep enough that I wouldn’t die, which was true.  When I got to the bottom I was in the water right away. Swimming around, having fun, it was great. The ocean trench, based on it’s name, is obviously fed from the ocean, but I was not ready for how strongly you could feel the waves inside the trench. If you were just floating in the water you would be pushed back and forth with each wave/swell coming in and out. (The waves weren’t actually breaking in the trench, but you could tell when they were coming in and out).

At the trench there was a group of American study abroad students who, once again, helped me work up the courage to do it. One of the students was from East Concord, NH – cool isn’t it mom? For those of you who don’t know, my mother is from East Concord, NH. Small world!

We spent about 30 minutes swimming around in the trench, jumping off the platform, just basically enjoying ourselves. And I was so proud of myself for doing it, I was so happy. We celebrated by getting coconuts on the way back form a cut kid on the side of the road. They were $3 tala each, about US$1.25 which was the most we’d paid yet, but who cares we’re on vacation and we needed to celebrate! We also stopped at a small roadside store on the way back and bought a few snack, another luxury we hadn’t treated ourselves to in a few days or more.

Then came a bit more Internet time before we ran out for good. Ana then had a massage while I sat around socializing with Jason Aw, a British born doctor working in Melbourne and vacationing here. Side note, I was planning to go to the doctor back in Auckland but I chatted to Jason about my few concerns and he told me not to worry and now I’m going to save NZ$70. Nice!

Later in the afternoon Sio, the guy who showed us to the island water taxi yesterday, asked for a ride home. Ana, Jason, and myself drove him to his family’s home, Mountain View, us on a hill overlooking Lalomanu. It was beautiful. He told us on the journey that everyone used to live on the beach but after the tsunami everyone moved up into the hills so if another one came there wouldn’t be the same destruction again. I also learned later in the evening that they have a great warning system in place now so that makes me feel much better! We took some great photos at Mountain View before returning to the resort for more socializing and a dinner with Crayfish.  I am now lying in bed finishing up this post and ready to hit the hay.

With that, good night!

Best!