Amalau Camping

A little partied out from the preceding weekend, neither Sara nor I were sure we could muster the necessary enthusiasm for the Spartacus themed-party that most of the palagi community was going to this weekend. Thus, we jumped at the suggestion from our Aussie friends to go camping at the Amalau "resort" for Saturday night. Resort is used loosely, since the facility is little more than a collection of open-sided fales along the beach.

The campsite is on the beach in a small cove on the north side of Tutuila. The village of Amalau is on the hillside above the camp. This is easily one of the smallest villages remaining on the island. It only has three or four houses, all along the driveway in to the camp. That makes finding the camp a little challenging, since there isn't anything more a driveway and a few trashcans on the main road to indicate the presence of a the camp ground. On our own, Sara and I would never have found this place. That's the advantage of meeting some AmSam veterans.

The fales are little more than wood platforms with roofs and an electrical light in the middle. They were a prime place to hang out and read our books. We set up tents in the fales and used our memory foam mattress pad as a sleeping mat.

We showed up on Saturday afternoon and started setting up camp. We managed to work in some beer drinking, beach walks, cocktail hour, lawn bocce ball and barbecuing that afternoon. It was just like camping on the mainland, but it's on the beach in paradise.

We also forgot a few key items for camping, namely a pot and a barbecue. We managed to improvise a barbecue from a sawed in half oil drum. Not ideal for efficiency, but it let us grill our dinner and heat a pan for breakfast. The lack of a pot was a little more difficult. We ended up finding an old coconut that had be opened up and the contents drained. We ended up scrubbing it out and heating it on the grill. It took a long time, but we managed to make a pot of coffee in the french press and show our camp MacGyver skills at work. The coals ran out before we got to try it again, but next time we're going to work a little harder to remember the basics.

One of the highlights of the camping was our bonfire on the beach. Sara and I turned this into a bit of a ceremonial event. We had been trying to figure out what to do with our pallet since our shipment from the mainland arrived. We'd toyed with the idea of making some furniture from it, but once we figured out how many tools we'd need to purchase it didn't seem to make sense. With that plan blown up, we'd left the pallet in the corner for over a month. When camping came up, we knew we had a final use for the pallet - a beach bonfire. It was our symbolic cutting of the cord with our mainland life.

Sunday morning we were woken up by the local chicken population scratching around the camp for forage. The roosters were also making themselves known a little before sun up. Not ideal, as we'd been up late in the evening enjoying our bonfire.

The one negative to come from the weekend was on Sunday. When we woke up, the wind was raging hard at the camp. We'd hoped to go out to the Vatia tide pools, which were located at the point at the end of Amalau Bay, and snorkel back to the camp. However, with the winds whipping through hard, the visibility was shot. We tried to wait out the wind, but after a few hours of it being too windy to read a book we packed it in and made for home.