Amazing how time passes – we have already been in Samoa for 1 week.

 

We are finding it much warmer up here at latitude 13^oS which is around the same latitude as Darwin and we are guessing the water temp is getting close to 30^oC.

One advantage of being in marina world is the plug in power which makes it much easier to run the air conditioning which we are finding rather pleasant at times.

 

 

During our first week we have been adopted by Mr Taula who is now the official Mustang Sally driver in Apia.

On our first day here he arranged to take us down to immigration to get our passports stamped and then gave us a quick city tour including stops at the markets and supermarkets which are fantastic – mind you after provisioning in Tonga most things would seem pretty good.  Apia is a very clean and pretty – probably the nicest town we have found in the SW Pacific even the hardware store is neat and incredibly tidy.

 

Across the road from the marina is the Ooh La La Ice Cream shop which have a traditional night on Tuesdays which includes a Samoan Feast, dancing and Siva Afi or Fire Show which was fantastic. 

One of the real treats of the night was seeing the young kids putting on a display.  The reason why the performance is on Tuesday evening is that it is their training day so they stay on to after training to take part in the big show which they seemed to enjoy immensely.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

We organised to go on a full day tour which covered the east half of Upolu with Mr Taula on Thursday.

First stop was the Robert Louis Stephen’s Museum which is located in his family home which has been restored and incredibly well maintained.  The gardens are absolutely stunning.  We plan to come back here next week to do the hike up the hill to check out the final resting place of Robert Louis Stephens and his wife.

 

 

 

 

We also had stops at the Bahai temple (we had never heard of the ‘Bahai’ Religion but sounds interesting), Papapapaita waterfall and Togitogiga waterfall and swimming hole where I went for a swim.

Mr Taula then showed us around his families village and where he grew up before we headed off to lunch.

 

 

                                   Mr Taula and the Papapapaita waterfall

 

                                        Togitogiga waterfall and swimming hole

 

 

After lunch, which was at the beautiful beachside location of the Saletoga Beach Resort, we headed to the Sua Ocean Trench for yet another swim but this time in salt water. 

 

 

 

The final part of the day took us along the SE coast of Upolu which has some amazing beaches.  We were very keen to travel on this part of Upolu as we sailed past this area only a few days prior on our way into Apia.

 

 

 

 

Friday was spent doing some boats jobs which included giving Sally a much needed bath (now looking very clean and shiny) plus some repairs to the life raft mounts which support our life raft on the top of the cabin top – which has lost their rubber trims.  We had a very yummy meal over at the Gourmet Seafood Place (aka Fish and Chip shop) across the road where Mark enjoyed the Friday Night Lobster Special and I had a very tasty dish of Salt and Pepper squid which was cooked to perfection.  We followed up with an bit of a treat of NZ ice cream on the way back to the boat

 

Saturday we went for a walk into town and checked out the outrigger paddling competition. 

This afternoon we are off for a walk down to the Apia Yacht Club for sun downers and dinner which should be lovely.

 

Tomorrow morning we pick up our Rav 4 Hire Car and have booked a spot on the inter-island ferry for 8am on Tuesday morning which will take us over to the other island of Savai’i where we will spend a couple of days touring before heading back to Upolu late on Thursday arvo.

 

One last thing we must mention about our time in Tonga is that before we left we had a specially measured and custom made fruit bowl made for Sally by one of the ladies in the market which now proudly sits on a saloon table and proved the test of time when it didn’t move an inch on the 3 day passage to Samoa!