Talofa Lava

Talofa Lava!

It's tough to believe that we've been home from Samoa for nearly a week now. It's even harder to believe how amazingly blessed we were to have the opportunity to visit such a beautiful country filled with even more beautiful people.

Samoa was our very first "beach vacation," so we did our best to sit back, relax, and enjoy the scenery. We stayed in a tiny, 10 hut resort for our week on Savaii, the larger but much less populated island in Samoa.

Here's a peek at our beachfront fale.

Homes on Savaii are usually comprised of two separate buildings. One enclosed home with windows and doors which is next to a separate, large, open fale that serves as a living room, dining room, and bedroom when the weather cooperates. Available to the breezes off of the water, the open fales capitalize on the merits of natural air conditioning. Apparently electric AC is reserved fairly exclusively for those inhabiting resorts. Our own cute little hut # ono made the best of every world; great sliding shutters to open up 3 sides of the room to breezes (while keeping out the bugs) and delicious, delicious air conditioning for the times when the shutters needed to close in order to keep out the rain. Plus, the view wasn't bad.

Truth be told, this is really how our view looked to us most hours of most days.  Well, Adam's, at least.

Ok, this is where we fess up to the fact that we apparently skirted the edges of a cyclone our first 24 hours on the island. While we enjoyed the drama of the boarded up windows and actually delighted in an excuse to hunker down in our fale for a day, we were ecstatic when the clouds lifted and the breezes eased enough for us to venture out and begin to explore our surroundings.

Callie counted 13 - yes thirteen different and distinct LDS church meetinghouses on Savaii.  Talk about  chapels with a view, this building sat only a few walking minutes away from the resort.  Too bad we weren't around for a Sunday.

Paradise just may be defined as anywhere with waves and palmtrees.  Oh, and a small store stocked with ice cold Diet Coke is a must-have.

Having maxed out our skin's tolerance to the intensity of the sun, our next day on Savaii was blessed with an amazing full day bus tour of the island in the company of two awesome Scottish women and a generous tour-guide host named Seti.  We hadn't been on the road for even 15 minutes before the van had stopped twice for fresh fruit from the side of the road.

Mangoes are delicious - but they're not easy to eat with grace.

Adam enjoyed a tree-top jaunt across a suspension bridge in the canopy of the island's cloud forest.

Island legends tell a tale about a mother and her daughter who jump to their deaths at Lovers Leap but return to the cove as a shark and a sea turtle.  We didn't see any turtles in the muddy waters but there was definitely a shark or two swimming below.

Adam's not sure about a Lover's Leap towards the sharks ...he's considering more of a Lover's Lean, instead.

Our midday stop was at the Alofa'aga blowholes.  

Our guide Seti and his trusty driver companion get the coconut shells ready....

throw....

BLOW!!!

Flying coconuts were amusing, but the fresh, ice-cold ones we had for lunch were even better.  Almost as in good, in fact, than the fresh pineapple that Seti cut up for us on the beach.

Turquoise waterfall paradise swimming, anyone?

The beauty of nature.

Savaii is, as I think we've established, gorgeous.  But it has a fiery history.  This church was demolished in a volcanic eruption in the early 1900's.  Mount Vailuluu is a temperamental giant who blew his top to cover parts of the island in thick lava rock.  Thankfully German soldiers were hanging out in the area on their large ships and were able to rescue the inhabitants of the island before anyone was injured.  

A bit of perspective as to the depth of the lava flow. 

Our final stop on the Savaii tour was for swimming with the turtles.  The family that cares for the lagoon where these rescued, often injured, turtles reside welcomes tourists to come and get up close and personal with the gentle giants.  A "health spa" for turtles, Samoan conservation officials periodically determine which turtles are ready to be released back into the wild.  In the meantime, they REALLY enjoy their papaya snacks.

Adam fell in love with another older woman.  

Callie wasn't so sure about her frisky man.

Back for a final beach day at the resort, Adam made friends with some locals...hermit-crabs, that is.  Sorry, Kara, I didn't find either Pearl or Ruffles (our childhood hermit-crabs who mysteriously disappeared during a particularly ugly sibling argument, I believe.)

Our final dinner in Savaii was timed perfectly with the resorts evening of feasting and dancing, the fiafia.  Better yet, the weather FINALLY allowed us to eat out in the open air under the sun and, eventually, the stars.

YUM!!

Callie was thrilled with the traditional performance of music and dance.  She was even more excited to see a "real life" version of a log drum she and Adam had tried to jigger-up her last year of teaching for an island musical piece for her girls' chorus.   Now if she had only brought her video camera...

At the end of the day, paradise is more about who you're with than where you are.  

But a palm tree doesn't hurt.