Sliding Rock, at High Tide

In the aftermath of the fa'afaine pageant we went to, we made plans with an Aussie couple that we've been hanging out with to go to Sliding Rock. I'd been to Sliding Rock my first weekend on island, but Sara had yet to be. The place has a reputation for being many people's favorite spot in American Samoa, and deservedly so.

We started off the trip with a lunch at our house. We were shooting to get to Sliding Rock a little before what Ben, our Australian marine biologist, told us would be low tide. During lunch some of our neighbors dropped by. We ended up inviting them to join our expedition. So off we went to Sliding Rock.

Sara quickly pointed out that she had never been west from our house. Since work and the major villages and shops are to the east of us, we'd never yet gone towards that end of the island from our place. Time to open up another horizon. We got to Sliding Rock and parked up the coast, to avoid paying for parking.

We opted to hike to the tide pools along the shore, instead of taking the path through the forest. It was a bit of a scramble up and down the lava cliffs.

What really made it worth it was beach combing for seashells with a marine biologist on our walk out. He was able to pick out five times the shells my untrained eyes could. What had been previously just pretty shells to me were now being identified by genus and species for us. That alone was worth the trip.

As we were making the walk out, Ben started to pay more attention to the large waves rolling in. He was also a bit worried that the tide was not anywhere near low. Too late to do much about it.

The highlight of Sliding Rock is a series of tide pools, that are protected by a large wall of lava rock, which will occasionally let larger waves surge through to feed to pools. When we arrived there there were a number of Samoans wading and hanging out. We parked ourselves on some rocks near the cliffs that lead up to the forest and started to unpack our things. Sara and Aussie Sarah took it upon themselves to hop into some smaller pools that were a little downstream of the main tide pools. While they were relaxing and enjoying the smaller pools, Ben and I were unpacking and getting our stuff situated for an afternoon of hanging out. And then, disaster struck.

Ben and I were in the perfect spot to see it all unfold. A large wave came rushing through the saddle in the outer rock wall that holds most of the ocean out of the tide pools. It inundated the closer tide pool and overflowed into the second pool. The next wave in the set was larger. It too blew through the gap in the breakwater, since the first pool was still swollen full from the first wave, the wave carried straight threw to the second pool. A Samoan standing on the rock partition between the pools stood there like a deer in the headlights. The wave came through that spot at 4 feet high. He was washed down the rock slope on his butt into the second tide pool, which was filled with lounging his friends. The surge from the second wave overflowed the second pool.

The third wave in the series was even larger. It overflowed both pools and pushed everyone in them floating down through the series of tide pools, where the Sara(h)s were soaking. Ben and I looked on from our dry vantage point. There was nothing we could do to help our respective partners as they were being washed towards the pounding surf and lava-rock cliffs that would meet them at the end of the tide pools.

Both girls were swept up in the wave. Sara was carried to the next pool down before she could use her feet to dig into the lava-rock. When the water receded, Ben and I stood came over to survey the damage. Sara and Sarah were both scraped up after getting caught in the waves. They both had been dragged over a fair amount of lava rock.

They fared better than the Samoans. We talked with them after everything settled following the waves. Several of them had large cuts and scrapes that were dripping blood onto the rocks we convened on. They quickly packed up and headed out to clean their wounds.

We stayed, despite the injuries and ended up camping out a high rock outcropping that was above where the waves could reach. After looking at the water, it was nearing high tide. Our intrepid marine scientist got it wrong. Must be because those Southern Hemisphere types have it all upside-down. Since anything more than quick dips in the pool was not in the cards, we did some sunning on the rocks and hung out. One of our later arriving neighbors hauled a cooler of beer and some dominoes out to the rocks and we made an afternoon of it.

Just another afternoon in paradise.