The first thing that was
so evident… green, lush, birds singing, and an island with a good infrastructure! That’s a result of being a territory of the
United States. Folks here too, very friendly!
We had no organized tour planned so we explored on our own… in the hot,
sticky weather.
We started off to hunt
for a geocache we were aware of. Oh no! it
was over 3 miles away, as the crow flies and even longer as we would be
walking. We finally decided after
walking almost a mile, a taxi would help.
We must have looked lost, a very nice lady asked what we were looking
for (the cache was located at the Samoan Boy Scouts of America office). I showed her the location and while I was
talking with her, a taxi came up to Jerry.
She wasn’t sure where it was but said she would take us (however, we
then had the dilemma on how to return to Pago Pago. Jerry, in talking to the taxi driver, found
out he knew where it was and would take us there and back for $20… well, you
know the decision we made.
And a good decision it
was! Got to the Boy Scout Office, found
the cache and the cache owner. His
scouts help maintain four other caches on the island (the only caches btw). Pretty nifty!
Our driver also showed us other sites: even
the old cable tram that was taken down in a horrible accident by a plane. The tram rode high above the bay where we
were docked.
The cable car was in use up until a tragic accident on Flag Day about 20 years ago (Flag Day is April 17th, and commemorates the original raising of the US flag on Samoa), when saw a plane doing a ceremonial fly by, accidentally collected the cable car cables that stretched across the harbor and subsequently crashed, killing over a dozen people. The noise and the smoke from the explosion could be seen from across the island, and the cable car was never rebuilt for some reason…. It’s so humid here, the remnants have already rusted out.
There’s the famous ‘Flower Pot’ rock… has a folklore store to it, but I’ll spare you the details!
Starkist (didn’t take a pic of Charlie the Tuna, there mascot) and the Government are the biggest employers here. We also notice, there were not nearly as many folks just hanging around with nothing to do! The island does, like the previous ones, still have the traditional clan life, where the head of the extended family enjoys being the top man! The villages here too have guest houses which look like huge gazebos, where people entertain their visitors. The bigger the gazebo (called a fale) the higher the status of the owner. No one explained that to us on the other islands.
Oh, and the villages do have electricity for lighting… but didn’t see much Air Conditioning anyway but in the stores in town. Another difference from the other islands, these guys have nicer cars!!! And keep them clean!!!! Also, no big buses here, just open windowed small mini run down busses, kinda funny!
Jerry and I received very special certificates for crossing the International Date Line!!! We are pretty cool people now! The next two days we will be at sea… that’s a long time!!!
Greeted by this cool scene as we came into port.
How cool, what a find!
ReplyDeletejudy