So here I am in Samoa! I finally arrived yesterday morning after the flight from Sydney via Auckland. On Friday afternoon I managed to catch up with Ben Wilson who I know from his time at Reuters and is now working at the University of Sydney. A very impressive campus, it oozed an Oxbridge atmosphere. Unfortunately it took me longer than expected to get there thanks to a forgetful Sydneysider bus driver omitting to tell me when we had arrived - on the flip side I saw much of Sydney’s suburbs! I also checked out the centre of town, seeing Hyde Park and visiting the Museum: they have a good exhibition on indigenous Australians, interesting to learn of the recent developments around the Australian PM’s apology to the aboriginals (I travelled in the Northern Territories in 1993 so it brought back memories!).
Later that day I took the flight from Sydney to Auckland and then on to Samoa; arriving here yesterday morning - my second Friday of the week - for sunrise and an interesting bus journey into town with a chap who said he was a village chief and was very proud of how clean and democratic the island is! One of the first things I saw upon arrival in Apia, the capital, was the Soren Larsen - at least I’m pretty sure it is - moored in the harbour. It must be the same ship, how many brigantine Tallships can there be anchored off the coast off Apia!!? I was feeling shattered yesterday after the flights, but I decided it was best to keep going in the day time so I took some time to visit the town, have a long lunch and seek out a beach: the latter being easier said than done, I get the impression most of the beaches - where there are beaches - by the town are not public! (the thing to do if you’re here for longer is to get one of the beach side « fales », but my time didn’t really permit). Saying that I did eventually find a spot, until jetlag finally got the better of me and I crashed back at the hotel.
This morning I got up at the crack of dawn to see if I could get a local bus to the other side of the island: People here are very friendly, often disarmingly so, and at the bus station I quickly got into conversation. First up was a missionary who told me about a series of recent bus accidents and advised me not to be shy in telling a driver to slow down!! Perfect… One thing about Samoa is how religious the place is, there are churches everywhere with the range of denominations present. The missionaries did - and apparently still are - doing an efficient job. After the advice from the missionary I got chatting to two locals who quickly found out the bus I intended to get wasn’t actually running at 7am (yes that early) so I had a rethink and decided to head out west and see if I could get a boat to another smaller island nearby. This turned out to be more complicated than I had imagined, mainly because there wasn’t a fixed schedule of boats and I was a bit dubious about being stranded on an island one day before the cruise… so I contended myself with a trip part way round the coast and back. Lovely landscape and you drive through all the villages with the traditional houses, and even more interesting to watch the people on the bus. The driver loved Caribbean music varieties and assaulted his public with the loudest bass I have heard outside a nightclub!!! Two hours or so later I was just about getting used to it! On the way back, it felt like most of the local village population got on, sardines in a tin, but we made it back, despite the missionary‘s warning!!
Now I have come back to Apia and taken a walk out on a peninsula to see the Mulinuu burial grounds as well as British and German memorials. So far, not much success but I have stopped in a bar for a drink and lunch, and while writing this I am looking out over the South Pacific, bathed in sun (yes, for a change - it’s been raining!) with a few dinghies passing by. Bliss - except lunch is taking some time and it’s only a salad!
Rob
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