American Samoa by car

We keep thinking our time here is coming to an end so we finally rented a car to do our provisioning and decided to keep it a few days and tour the parts of the island that we haven't seen yet.  And what a beautiful island it is.  We got our maps together and Lonely Planet guide and off we went.  I think we've been on just about every paved road possible to drive on.  

What's really neat is as you get past the hustle and bustle (relatively speaking) of Pago Pago, you enter a whole new world.  There are traditional villages and the landscaping is gorgeous.  The rainforest bleeds down into some of the villages and you see various different kinds of trees and fruits.  One of the fascinating things is how many churches there are here.  And they're not all just Catholic like a lot of other islands.  We saw a Korean Baptist church.  Numerous Seventh Day Adventists, Church of God, Church of Christ, Assembly of God, you name, they have it, well, with the exception of Jewish or Muslem...haven't seen those.  But there are literally over a hundred churches here.  It makes the bible belt look like it needs a bit of a revival.  And everything really does shut down on Sunday (even the beaches).  The other interesting thing (of which I failed to take any pictures of) is that when someone dies (presumably of some sort of importance), they are buried in the yard.  And not just any old tombstone will do.  Some of the monuments were truly unbelievable.  We saw one that was 3 stories high, and another with a whole house built around it and lights on the outside (as in icicle, Christmas lights).  There are marble graves, painted cement graves, and even graves with stairs built into them.  Needless to say, it is very different from where we come from.

We spent a good amount of time driving around the National Forest here.  We were able to read a few park signs and call it a nice science field trip for Jake, justifying a day of skipping school.  We learned that  fruit bats are the only native mammals here in American Samoa.  And the breadfruit tree has almost as many uses as the coconut tree (which would boggle your mind)!

We were able to see the island at a very leisurely pace of 25 miles per hour.  That's the maximum speed limit on the whole island.  And everyone is very courteous, letting people pull out in front of them, or slowing down for a pedestrian.

Today, we did our final provisioning and stopped by the National Forest Office.  We stopped by there several weeks ago and they gave Jake a booklet for him to complete to become a Jr. Ranger here in American Samoa.  We had also offered up some underwater pictures from Andy to help with their publicity/spreading the message type thing.  So we dropped those things off and got Jake's certificate and badge, of which he was very proud.

As our trip here comes to an end, we reflect back and really think we've done almost all we could do here.  We've hiked just about every trail we know of, Andy has done his share of diving/snorkeling, and we can give directions to any major (and not so major) shopping joint you might need.  We've frequented the military exchange as well as gotten our fill on fast food.  I think it's about time to head on.  We're waiting on "one more package" and then we're off to Apia...Western Samoa.  From there we'll head up to Tuvalu, then off to the Kirabati Islands and finally spend the cyclone season in the Marshall Islands.  

Slippery Rock, American Samoa

I'm not sure who thought sliding on a big hard rock would be fun, but apparently, it's a popular place here in American Samoa.  Another family here (with older kids) invited us to go exploring with them on Saturday to this infamous "slippery rock."  After a long discussion with the bus driver and an even longer ride, he dropped us off by some water with a lot of rocks (very pretty water, very pretty rocks).  We had six kids and 5 adults and off we went in search of the slippery rock.  Well, they were all pretty slippery at first, seeing as it was raining and the tide was going out, but then we hit the mother load.  Every kid that stepped foot on it, fell.  Then the older kids got pretty good at running and sliding.  My worry wort of a self had stomach aches the entire time and lucky for me, my kid fell early and didn't think it was all that much fun.  We found a tide pool instead and eventually all the kids came to the tide pool to play.   They put on their masks and explored every crevice.  Rhett on s/v Solara found a few baby eels that occupied their time for a while.

That's Jake flat on his back on "Slippery Rock".  Looks fun, huh?
The big kids loved it, but I'm pretty sure this place would be
roped off in the States.

See the little guy jumping?  Imagine him
in that same pose  with a butcher knife.
Unfortunately, I missed the photo op.

There were some locals a ways away that were fishing and their kids were playing in a much smaller tide pool.  You could see them slowly inching their way closer, curious about our kids.  Eventually, they were right there and the kids invited them in to play.  At first it was kind of cool until we moms looked up and saw a little guy, about 4, on top of a big rock about to jump into the tide pool, that was all of 2 feet deep.  As if that wasn't enough to give us a heart attack, he was holding a foot long butcher knife!  No, I'm not making this up.  And away he went off about a 5-6 foot drop with all the gusto you would think a 4 year old would have, butcher knife and all.  I'm guessing he had the knife because his parents were fishing and someone was going to use it to clean the fish, but they had about 8 kids and apparently, it's easy to lose track of where the knife goes.  After a few jumps and hearing the crazy white people yelling "Knife!," the sister or mother or someone came over and took the knife away.  All was fun again and the kids played for another hour or so.  They jumped, they played 'Marco, Polo,' and basically had a great time.  Once the sun proved to get the best of us, we decided to head on back to Pago Pago for some ice cream.

All in all, it was a wonderful day and I'm so thankful there are other kids here and other people who like to explore.  Today is Jake's actual birthday so after chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast and time to play with his new toys, we're going to head into McDonald's for lunch and a nice swim in the local hotel pool (for $5/person they let you use the pool) with Dharma and Rhett.

Daddy and Jake putting together his new Hero Factory character this morning.

Jake with "Meltdown."

A few of the parts we had shipped in didn't quite work out for various reasons so we'll be here another week waiting on some mail.  I can think of far worse places to be :).

Getting comfortable

Jake and I at "Blunt's Point" an old WWII
site where you can see the old guns.

It appears we are getting pretty comfortable here.  We've been on several hikes, had a birthday party, met some kids and are even regulars at the library now.  Why are we still here?  We're waiting on some packages.  One of the benefits of American Samoa is that it has a US Post Office here.  I was lazy when I went home and mailed a few heavy items instead of carrying them in my suitcase.  I opted not to send them priority because not only was I being lazy, I was being cheap (to be fair, I saved $150).  Because of all of this, we've been waiting for 2 weeks for our packages.  At 3:00 am this morning I couldn't sleep so I checked the status of the packages and they said they were still in San Bernadino.  So I emailed my dad and asked him if he could go to the post office and see if he could find anything out for me.  I don't know if he did it but suddenly at 1:00 today, it says they were delivered to Pago Pago on September 2.... hmmm.  So Andy has gone to the post office to see if they're there.  We're crossing our fingers.

In the meantime, we've all met some new friends.  There's a boat here from Alaska, s/v Solara, with two kids (Dharma - 8, Rhett - 12) and Jake has been spending a lot of time playing with them.  Much like Jake, they haven't had a lot of kids to play with as they went from Seattle to Hawaii to Fanning Island to here.  Andy and I enjoy their parents as well so it's been a nice match.  The kids are adorable and so much fun to be around.  Robin and I took them all hiking to a waterfall the other day.  It ended up being a long bus ride and a hike up a road through some mean dogs only to find it's on private property in someone's backyard.  But here's where the Samoan hospitality comes in.  A guy came out of the house after hearing the dogs growling and told us he would take us up there.  So he did.  And he hung out with us the whole time, presumably to keep the mean dogs from coming up after us (some of them were his).  Who does that?  No one where we're from...invite a few strangers to your backyard, cancel your plans, show them around.  But that seems to be typical around here.  We didn't stay long as even though it was really nice, you still feel like you should probably hurry as you're interrupting their day and to be really honest, the dress here is somewhat conservative and I just didn't feel comfortable swimming around in any bathing suit, much less the bikini I had on.  So Robin and I watched while the kids swam until they got too cold and then we left.

Our "host"

Dharma, enjoying a brownie

Yesterday we had Jake's 6th birthday at Tisa's Barefoot Bar and Restaurant.  I tried to pick a place that would appeal to both kids and adults as there are more adults than kids here and I was pretty sure that's how the party would be as well.  Jake makes lots of friends no matter the age.  Luckily, the tide wasn't too high and the surf was pretty calm yesterday so the kids got to play on the beach the whole time.  Since Tisa's doesn't serve food unless you make a reservation, they allowed me to bring our own snacks as long as we bought drinks (never a problem for a bunch of cruisers).  So I made some brownies, brought some fruit for the kids and some snickity snacks for the adults.  We had about 15 adults and 6 kids there and everyone seemed to have a good time.  I know Jake did.  This was his first birthday in 3 years where there was actually more than two people present and they were under 40.

I didn't get any good pictures of the boys, but I did
catch Dharma and Mya having a good time.

Andy just pulled up and we have our packages, so we may be heading out early next week.  We need to fix some things at the top of the mast (hence waiting on the package with the parts), provision and get a few last minute things but other than that, we're ready to go.  I keep reading other blogs about Western Samoa and getting excited, so we're getting antsy to check it out ourselves.

Andy's run in with the law

Andy has been going out to a reef about every day to do a dive and take some pictures.  This has gotten to be a routine that he does in most of our anchorages.  Jake and I do school in the morning while he goes and takes pictures.

Yesterday, he headed out to his little "nemo" spot and three policemen on jet skis decided to come chat him up.  At least that's what Andy thought...
"Where's your life jacket, sir?"
"Ummm....I have my full wetsuit on and was going to do a dive.  I don't have one."
"Where's your dive flag?"
Andy quickly saw where this was going... "I guess I don't have one of those either."
"Where's your buddy?"
Well, shoot.... "Ummm... I'm a ex Navy Diver and I, uh, well, I don't have one.  I know it's a good idea, definitely, but not totally necessary."
"Who do you work for?"
"No one, I'm just freelancing, taking some pictures."
"Where's your boat registration?"
This is never going to end, is it?  "Ummm... well it's registered under the big boat back in the anchorage."
"OK.  Do you have a radio?"
"Yeah!!  I have one of those!"
At this point, Andy is pretty sure he's going to get dragged to the pokey.  Then the guy says, "Well, be careful.  If you get in any trouble, call us on channel 16 or dial 911 and we'll come help you out.  Have fun!"
"uh...Thanks!"  And off he went.

They turned out to be very nice but it was a quick reminder that we are back in the land of the US with the laws to go with it.  Had that been the Coast Guard...well, we're just glad it wasn't.

It turned out to be a very successful dive with more strange critters.  Enjoy!

Andy found Nemo in American Samoa (and friends)

Andy has spent the last few days cussing at the clownfish.  I guess they're very quick and very sneaky and are not the easiest things to take a picture of.  But I think they turned out pretty good.  Here are a few...

He found this other little fish too...don't know what it is yet...our new Fish ID book is in the mail!

Hiking in Am Samoa

I spent a day catching up with Andy and Jake and then what do you know, I left them again.  Several ladies were planning a hike in the National Forest, up to the highest point here in American Samoa and I really wanted to go.  It's one of those hikes where we wouldn't get to do it together because it would be way too much for Jake.  It's 3 miles one way and then depending on which way you go when you get to the top, it can be even longer down (as we soon found out).

Seven of us met on the dock early in the morning and caught a bus to the head of the trail.  We had a nice time walking up the fairly well kept trail, chatting each other up like women do.  There were some steep hills and muddy patches but nothing we couldn't all do fairly easily.  When we got to the top, it was truly breathtaking.  A few of the women had brought the handheld radios and called down to the hubbies to tell  them we were waving.  By this time, we had been gone about 2 hours so we told them not to worry, we would be another couple of hours as we weren't going back the way we came, we were going to keep walking down the other side.

Karen on s/v "Gigi"

The trail down was considerably harder.  There were ladders with ropes and contrary to what we figured, it was not all downhill!  There were ladders to go up as well.  Some of them were sturdy, some were a bit wobbly, but none were really dangerous.  Of the 7 of us, I'm pretty sure I was the youngest and about half way through was quite a bit embarrassed as I realized how out of shape I actually am.  These women were kicking my butt!  One of the ladies I was with towards the back kept apologizing to me for lagging behind and I finally told her that I really didn't think this was easy for anyone!  After 4 hours, we were all tired!  About hour 5 we started seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  Or rather the ocean at the end of the trail.  We finished the hike on the other side of the island a full 5 1/2 hours after we started.  We had turned our two hour hike into a full day.

This was one of the longer ladders, and
the most shaky.

My friend Mary Lee, told us to wake her up when the bus came.

"Rehydrating"

After relaxing (and rehydrating) for a few minutes we caught a bus and headed back to the dock.  I kept telling Andy how much fun I had and I think it was because we rarely all get together like that as women. We're usually as couples or family or one or two of us get together to go grocery shopping or do laundry.  But this group was a lot of fun as everyone was laid back, no one was overbearing or a know it all (something I have a really hard time with), and through the whole day, no one complained....not one bit.  As a matter of fact, we were all pretty upbeat...happy to be off the boat after all the wind and rain and enjoying the day with each other.

We've got another week or so here waiting on packages to come in, so there's a bit more exploring we get to do.  Andy has been diving and getting some more pictures of Nemo so I'll post those soon.

Man time in American Samoa

After a nice relaxing two week break, I’m back on the boat with my two favorite men.  I came home to find a clean boat, clean laundry and happy smiling faces…so it looks like they did fine without me. 

They went snorkeling and even went on a hike.  Andy said they hiked up to a site where there are some guns left over from WWII.  They went with a few ladies from other boats and had quite a time.  On their way back, they stopped at a local restaurant to have a drink and relax.

It wasn’t all fun and games though…there was a little excitement the second week I was gone.  The winds picked up to a consistent 25-30 knots.  I believe one time it even got up to 38 knots.  Boats were dragging everywhere and evidently, it was nothing but chaos.  We stayed still (don’t know if that was due to fabulous anchoring techniques or because our boat is probably stuck in a tank somewhere on the bottom…probably the latter) but it sounded like we were the only one.  At one point, Andy was going to bed and looked out the window to see a boat coming right by us about 10 feet away.  He got on the radio and woke the guys up and they got their engine turned on just before hitting another boat.  Andy said the chaos went on all week as the winds never died down.  To be fair to the boats who drug, this bottom is awful and even on a good day it can take 4 or 5 tries to get your anchor to hold, so I don’t think all of them had to do with poor anchoring abilities.  Throughout the week many people never left their boats for fear of dragging again.  When I got home, the winds had died a bit but were still around 20 knots.  It looks like missed the brunt of it as yesterday it all calmed down and now we’re only dealing with intermittent rain showers. 

So now it’s back to the old routine.  The boys have to give up their cigars and lounging around in their underwear and get some order back in their life…Mama’s home!