Ofu Coral

A little follow up on our July trip to Ofu. The coral reefs of Ofu were recently the subject of a study on coral bleaching, specifically how the coral there has avoided coral bleaching, despite the high water temperature.

We were able to enjoy the snorkelling there without appreciating the unique biochemistry that keeps it lush, but still pretty cool to learn.

Ellen + Kevin = Ofu

So I'd written about 4,000 words on our trip to Ofu and it all got lost. I'm a little frustrated with the BlogSpot layout and I'll just post the pictures, until I can overcome my frustration.

Northside Paddling Adventure

In early January, we opted to join a large group of our friends for a kayak adventure. We met up at Coconut Point, everyone was dragging ass (as usual...), but eventually we got loaded up and going.

We headed out to Fagasa, one of the few villages on

the north side of Tutuila. We pulled up to the small

boat ramp that one of the National Park marine biologists (who was leading the trip) regularly launches from. He introduced us to the matai, in Samoan chief, who lives next to the boat ramp. He was lounging in his lava lava and happy to meet us, since we are friends with the National Park guy, who he considers family. He offered to watch our cars if we parked next to his house. We moved the cars, unloaded and launched.

The paddle out was great, there were some large swells in the open water, once we got outside the mouth of Fagasa Bay. It was a beautiful way to see the island and it was great to out with a large group exploring the otherwise inaccessible North side of our island.

We paddled several coves to the west and ended up landing in Sita Bay. The route into the Bay was a little dicey.

To reach the beach, we needed to paddle in the ava, which is a narrow channel in the reef. The channel mainly serves as the drain for the basin of water that builds up behind the fringe reef as waves break over the reef. As a result, the ava has a strong outward current. This is further compounded by the waves breaking over the shallow reef. This is challenging, more so if you're not comfortable in a kayak. A number of members of our trip were rookie kayakers, so we had varying levels of panic following our paddle up the gullet of the ava.

Sita Bay was a cool place to explore. Our Samoa friend caught several coconut crabs and taught a few of us how to identify their burrows and how to grab them so as not to lose a finger to their claws that can crack coconut shells.

Sara did her usual seashell hunt and came away with some great shells, which is a great advantage to infrequently visited shores.

After a little rain, we launched back out to sea and continued west to Fagafue Bay. Most of our group landed here, but Sara and a prosecutor from our office did not want to brave another ava, so we decided to paddle back to our starting point. It was a beautiful day and stoked my fire to spend so more time kayaking while we're here.

Samoa Weekend

The weekend immediately following our mainland trip we had another off-island excursion planned to (Western) Samoa. Our Australian friends need to leave the Territory of American Samoa every 60 days for visa reasons, so they are regular travelers to independent Samoa. We figured they would be perfect tour guides for our first trip over to the closest major island to Tutuila.

With our itinerary in place we packed ourselves onto an 18 person flight. Seats were assigned based on weight. Sara and I were lucky enough to get seats together in the back of the plane. When they closed the door, there was a noticeable gap the whole way around the door. This was definitely not a mainland commercial flight. The flight was less than an hour by propeller plane, we didn't quite reach 5000 feet in elevation and also got some excellent views of both Tutuila when we were taking off and of Savai'i when we landed.

We were greeted on the ground by the slackest customs I have ever had the pleasure of being ushered through and were soon out in the sprawling metropolis of Apia, Samoa. Two of our party who had headed out earlier in the afternoon met us with a rented 16 passenger van and we were soon perched in our room at the Amanake Hotel. After a little time to relax and settle in we were off by taxi to enjoy the fine dining options of Apia.

We did dinner at an Italian food restaurant named Paddles. Dinner was some pasta on a lovely deck overlooking the harbor. The eight of us on the trip settled down to a lovely dinner of wonderfully prepared food, that looked more like a dish that you would get at a restaurant back home on the mainland than the usual level of service and food prep we have come to expect in American Samoa. Overall, a lovely evening spent out on the town.

Once the restaurant was given over to the night club we caught a cab back to our hotel and managed to catch the end portion of the France vs. England match of the Rugby World Cup in the hotel bar. We then managed to drink for too much on a patio and called it a night.

The next morning we piled into the van and headed out for some breakfast at the Sydney Cafe. Downtown Apia was packed with people doing their holiday shopping for White Sunday, as a result our driver, Aussie Ben, had to resort to dropping us off on a corner and driving around for 25 minutes to find a place to park, more like San Francisco than Samoa.

We had a nice breakfast on the patio with the constant bustle of people doing their holiday shopping. Afterwards we went and explored the traditional crafts market in Apia. Sara and I ran into two people that we had connections to at the market. The first was a woman who was selling beautifully carved and stained 'ava bowls. When we mentioned that we were living in American Samoa she told us about her tall pregnant friend who lives in American Samoa. When we asked if she was named Nikki, the lady responded with a resounding yes, turns out she was talking about the civil division chief in Sara and I's office. The other person we ran into was one of the Customs Officers that Sara and I have scheduled as a witness in a tax case. Even 5,000 miles from home you can run into all sorts of unexpected people you know.

We then headed to the store to stock up on supplies of beer and food for heading out to the far side of the island. We then took the road across the middle of the island. Along the way we stopped at the first of several waterfalls. I'm not about to try and pronounce the name, but anything spelled Papapapaitai deserves to be shared. The waterfalls were down to a trickle. Turns out that Western Samoa was experiencing the same drought that had been plaguing American Samoa for the past few months.

The next waterfall we stopped off at was even more of a disappointment. After a short hike in

we did not even get a trickle. The waterfall was completely dry. Instead all we got a drying out pond and the empty watercourse of a waterfall and river. It was an amusing stop and provided plenty of ammunition to rib our tour guide. So far for the day we were 0 for 2 in the tourist spots. It had to go up from here, and it did.

The next destination on our schedule was the Sua Trench. Not having done any research, I didn't have high expectations for a "trench." Thankfully I was way off. The Sua Trench is a volcanic sink hole that is fed by ocean water. The hole is about 100 feet from the rim to the water, but only about 5 to 10 feet deep in the water. It made for a cool and unique swimming hole, once you made the long climb down a steep ladder.

There were also caves that connected the sink hole with the ladder to a neighboring sink hole. It was an easy swim over to other sink hole. The water in the sink holes also were subject to quite a bit of tidal and wave influence. Our guide had even considered bringing a dive tank to attempt to explore the narrow underwater passage that led back out into the ocean, but opted to try that on another trip when he wouldn't be carting his gear around in a van full of people and luggage.

We spent a few hours lounging on the deck attached to the ladder in, exploring the sink holes and caves and swimming around the Sua Trench. It was a beautiful spot and I'm eager to go visit it again. Alas, we did have more destinations to see on that Saturday, so we braved the climb out, dried off and piled back into the van to continue our journey.

Our next destination was the beach fales we'd be staying at that evening. They were along a beautiful stretch of white sandy beach (something we don't have quite enough of in American Samoa).

The beach fales epitomize the traditional notion of what life on a small island in the South Pacific is like. They are a quiet little cluster of open huts sprawled out on a lonely stretch of beach. The bathrooms are across the street, but traffic isn't much of an issue, we only saw a handful of cars crawl by in our two days at the fales. The things to do there were, hang out on the beach, hang out in the communal fale or take a walk. It was ideal, relaxing weekend away. We made the most of the time there with some cocktails and reading at a table in the main fale. We also hit it off with a couple living in New Zealand, she was a German and he was of Indian descent, through London. They were living in London and we were able to relax and talk about all the pressing issues presented by rooting for squads in the Rugby World Cup.

One of the highlights of the night spent at the beach spent at the beach fales was the fia fia dance show the staff of the fales put on after a large communal dinner. If our camera hadn't been low on batteries, I would have some great photos to share. The dancing involves some traditional Samoan elements and some that are an invention of the 20th Century. The most dramatic part is the fire knife dance, in which one of the performers lights a blade on fire and spins it around. Like I said, quite photogenic...

We had another communal breakfast and spent a portion of the morning relaxing and reading and then it was off to Virgin Cove. The Virgin Cove beach fales are on a remote stretch of coast. The next beach over is where the two seasons of Survivor were shot in Samoa. They'd wrapped up shooting the last season there a few months before our arrival. I know if the shoot had still been going on my mother would be despondent that we didn't try and sneak over and get ourselves on the air. Instead we relaxed on the beach, enjoyed the sandy beach and read in our fales.

The fales at Virgin Cove were much nicer than the ones at the first beach fales. In place of tarps these had mats woven out of palm fronds. Instead of the huts being stacked close together on a beach, the lodgings were spread out amongst a sandy thick of trees and brush. Crab trails arced across the stretches of sand not designated as trails. It really was a beautiful spot to spend an evening. The dinner was under an awning and we had a menu to order off of. Overall a delightful evening, but much mellower than the fia fia show and party atmosphere of the beach fales.

Once we checked out the next day we did a long lunch stop at a resort that was built on a pier in front of a fancy beach resort. As it had been for the whole trip, the food was excellent and we were all eager to get cocktails, which is generally a hell-ish experience involving syrupy sweet recipes and often none of the right ingredients in American Samoa.

The highlight of the lunch was jumping off the end of the pier once lunch and drinks were completed. The pier ends near a freshwater up welling in the reef. The surrounding reef is shallow, but the hole that the freshwater is pouring out of is deep and jumping distnce of the end of the pier's decking.

We spent the first part of our last afternoon in Samoa diving into a little hole in the ocean. Not a bad way to spend our first weekend back on the island...

Coast Walk

Sara and I wanted to follow up on our previous weekend's expedition to along the coast west from our house. We did the previous hike with some friends who brought their five-year-old daughter. While sharing the waves and the seashell hunts with a kid that young is fun, it also slows you down quite a bit. Thus we opted to try the hike again, but this time as just with us and one of the criminal prosecutors from our office.

The hike picks up about a half a mile up the road from our house. A small dirt road turns off our road near the end of the airport runway and winds back around towards the coast. We parked at the house of one of the employees of the EPA (who we chatted with as he was heading out to another palagi's going away party) and started our hike.

The coast in this section is all tall cliffs of volcanic rock. The dramatic part is the way the waves roll in with full force and break against the base of these rocky cliffs. Along the route we were treated to blow holes that channeled the waves force up through old lava tubes or passages through the rocky cliffs. This can lead to large holes that boil over with white water on large waves or smaller holes that blow tufts of mist up into the air. Or my personal favorite which is a large void at the water line that fires a forceful gust of air through a vertical hole when waves break into the underneath passage. The air has enough force to blast plastic bottles placed in the blowhole forty feet high. These displays are quite unlike anything I've seen on the California or Oregon Coasts.

The lava cliffs also lead to some amazing formations. As the hike continues west from our village the cliffs get taller and the rock jetties turn into long fingers that reach out into the Pacific

and towers rise from the ocean. These formations make the coast walk zig and zag along the contours of the coast. The path hugs the edge of the cliffs and there are a number of interesting features along the way. A personal favorite of Sara and I's is a large cave that isn't visible from the cliff. The only way you can tell is from the vibrations you feel beneath you when large waves break. The whole roof of the cave rattles like a drum-head with a booming thud.

The walk continues for several miles, until is starts to wind down towards the beach in the village of Vaitogi. Here there is a pack of dogs that likes to lurk in the brush and put on a show of how tough they are. A few thrown rocks disperse them, but it's a constant reminder of one of the great public nuisances in American Samoa.

The previous times I had done this coast walk, we had either turned back in Vatogi and returned on the surface roads or retraced our steps along the coast. This time we pressed on and followed the road out to Larsen's Cove. I'd been to Larsen's Cove once before. It was after I left my shirt at Fagatele Bay and had to hike back in to retrieve it. I'd dropped by the beach known as Larsen's Two, since I was already out there on the Fagatele Bay trail and wanted a little extra hiking.

Turns out the all coral beach I'd seen on my previous hike was the much less interesting beach in Larsen's Cove. The trail to Larsen's One, which is accessible from east of Larsen's Cove is a little protected beach that has some spectacular sand and is protected from waves by the fringe reef. Only planning on hiking, I'd

neglected to bring my swimsuit. I regretted this situation when we got to the long sandy beach that it is Larsen's One.

Sara and our prosecutor friend made some time to lounge in the water. I took it upon myself to track down some good seashells. We also made ourselves a promise to either camp or barbecue at this spot in the near future.

After enjoying some beach time, all we had to was hike back to Vaitogi and wait for the prosecutor's boyfriend to drive out and pick us up.

This is a blow hole near the mouth of Larsen's Cove. The pan to the right shows the beaches of Larsen's Two and then Larsen's One.