Island Hopping

When you decide to uproot your entire life and move to a foreign country things will have to change. For us, that meant tightening our budget. Food and entertainment are a lot more expensive than they are back in the USA. For us its not an issue. We have more family dinners and more time to explore outside rather than go to movies and basketball games. We had to give a lot of that up. Another thing we LOVE that we had to significantly scale back was our travel budget….GASP!
ANYONE that knows us KNOWS that travel is our life blood. We spent 6 of the greatest months of our lives traveling around the world, living out of suitcases and spending months in countries pretending to be locals :) For anyone that wants to re-live that wonderful adventure click here.

Anyway when Bruce told me that we were not going to be traveling any farther than the immediate area at first I went through the classic stages of Denial:

-First I thought he was joking. There is no way I could not travel. He wasn't joking
-Then I thought I would go nuts. I can NOT NOT travel!!!
-Then I thought I could run away. Hard to do that with a job and family (darn it!)

And come to find out, unless we figure out how to kick this nasty habit of needing food and shelter it looks like we will be working for a while…

So according to Bruce's budget rules we would have to find really good deals and we would need to limit our travel distance to less than 5 hours from home (by flight)

I was devastated. That meant no Scandinavian trip next summer or a Middle Eastern visit to my brother in the spring. We would be stuck…..hmmm, or would we??

What is WRONG with me??

I grabbed my trusty Lonely Planet guide and my eyes lit up with the delicious "problem" that I had.
We friggin live in the South Pacific!!!!!! OMG!

So it looks like my only trips would be restricted to the lovely islands surrounding our home country of New Zealand.
What a great problem to have! (Thanks Bruce!)
So with this new realization, I started flipping through the book, did some flight research and within one week we were off on a plane to Samoa!!!

Samoa is a beautiful island nation about 3.5 hours from Auckland. Settled by early Lapita Polynesian peoples about 3,000 years ago, Samoa became colonized by the Europeans in the 18th century.
They finally gained their independence from New Zealand in 1962 and subsequently part of the eastern island became a territory of the United States and is now known as American Samoa. We actually visited the "real" Samoa and not the American territory. Interestingly enough, the American territory is very underdeveloped as far as tourism and has few hotels or resorts but is known to have BEAUTIFUL beaches and reefs for snorkeling and diving.

Samoa itself is just jumping onto the tourism wagon. In fact, it seems like Hawaii circa 1940's. There are only a handful of hotels and beachfront resorts. There were lots of stretches of pristine beach without civilization around for miles! I'm sure you'd NEVER find anything like that in Tahiti or Hawaii.

We landed in Samoa and were smacked in the face with the incredible heat and humidity.
It was lush, green and beautiful…exactly as we expected.

We arrived at our resort which was on the northwestern side of the island it seemed a bit…empty.
At first I just thought it was because we arrived so late but I didn't see or hear anything that you would expect for a bustling beach resort. The next morning we were so excited to see daylight and to explore our surroundings. With Noa in tow, we jumped up and left the room. We passed by room after room noticing open curtains and emptiness. By the time we arrived for breakfast we realized…we were the ONLY ones there. We had breakfast in the restaurant alone and then ventured out to the beach front. Instead of the usual throngs of people clamoring to get beach chairs we saw nothing. No one. Just us.
For some people that would have been a bummer but for two old parents in their 40's we were like "WHOO HOO!" That means no one around to witness any tantrums thrown by Noa, no worries about baby toys being chucked too close to sleeping sun bathers, no one around to ask us to turn music down.

We had the ENTIRE beach to ourselves. The even cooler part was the resort staff. They were AMAZING! I'm not sure if it was because we were one of 4 families staying at a resort that can hold 200+ or if it was the wonderfully warm Samoan hospitality but I think it was both. The Samoans were warm, welcoming and loved to chat with us. We learned the name of everyone that worked at the resort by the 4th day we were there. They loved Noa and doted on him constantly. For whatever reason, no one could grasp the idea that he is a boy. I don't know if its the big curly hair or what but poor Noa was called a "sweet girl" more than I would have liked.

After 5 days of blissful chilling around the beach and pool, we got back into our "usual" selves and decided to go out for some exploring.
One of the lovely guys that worked at the resort was sweet enough to offer us a day of  exploring some of the sights and beauty that Samoa has to offer.

We loaded up Noa and were off to circumnavigate the island of Upolu.
Our first stop was the beautiful waterfall of Sopoaga. It is located in Lotofaga village where there was even a demonstration on how to make coconut cream!

Next stop was To Sua Ocean Trench. OMG! It is the most amazing natural feature i'd ever seen. It was formed from a collapsed cavern that filled up with sea water. There is a HUGE ladder that descended into the trench which I was nominated to crawl down. It was TERRIFYING! The ladder was long, slippery and seemed to plummet into the earth. I shook with every step down but I had to do it! I didn't want to regret the opportunity to swim in this amazing water.

Last stop was the pristine beach of Lalomanu. I thought it was beautiful at the beach on our resort. I was so WRONG!!! White sand beaches, turquoise ocean and NO HOTELS in sight! How is that possible?! I kept thinking that if this was Hawaii, Miami, Rio or any other spot in the world with a beach we'd be surrounded by high rise condos, beachfront resorts and throngs of people.
We enjoyed a much needed plunge into the bath temperature waters and admired the view.
Unfortunately, the rip current and waves were a lot bigger than on the north side of the island. Noa was used to playing in the harmless surf near the hotel. He almost got smashed by a couple of waves and before he could be swept out to neighboring Tonga, we decided to leave.

Lunch was hosted at the village of Saagafou. It was some of the best hospitality we'd ever experienced. It was like we actually lived there. The family that hosted us make their traditional fish dish, oka. It was raw fish marinated in a beautiful coconut cream sauce with onions and seasonings. We also had jackfruit, taro and mangoes. The lunch was superb and was even better because it was such a relaxed atmosphere. We felt like we were at home. We relaxed and Noa played with the kids. It was so beautiful to see. They couldn't understand each other but they still had a ball running around and playing some type imaginary game that involved lots of noise.

The trip would have been perfect except for some little bacteria that decided to hitch hike inside our wonderful lunch at the village. Within 24 hours I knew every nook and cranny of our beautiful bathroom. I was barely able to make the trip home but thankfully after 3 liters of IV fluids, some anti-nausea medication and 15 unnecessary pounds later we were safe and sound back in New Zealand.

Samoa is a great place and I HIGHLY recommend a visit there. It still relatively undeveloped compared to some other Polynesian islands but holds a beautiful charm and we will definitely see it again…

Unless of course we get to New Caledonia, Tonga, Tahiti or Vanuatu next...