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.

Yosemite

Totally unrelated to American Samoa, but Sara and I wanted to share this video on Yosemite to mark our (almost) 2 and 1/3 anniversary. While we're enjoying ourselves here in AmSam, we do miss our friends, family and favorite places on the mainland. Thanks for technology for keeping them as close as possible.

Yosemite HD from Project Yosemite on Vimeo.

Be sure to watch it on full-screen mode.

Mt. Alava Through Hike

Previously, we climbed Mt. Alava along the ridge trail that starts on the east side of the ridge. Wanting to try to improve on the 7-mile out-and-back-hike, we decided to start the hike on the northeast side of the mountains and turn it into a through hike.

To do this we started at the trailhead that I had previously gone hiking along a loop through the National Park and for the Vatia Tide Pools. It"s a small turnout off the round inside the National Park with a little fale and enough room to park a few cars. From here we ran into a group of palagi who were headed down to the tide pools. We instead started taking the path up the hill.

The trail up the ridge is well maintained and makes for some easy hiking compare to most of what we have here in American Samoa. The National Park Service is good at maintenance and the trails see a relatively high amount of usage, so there's less overgrowth and underbrush to worry about on this trail.

Another nice feature of this trail is the first bit is through heavily canopied forest, but the trail rises fast and you quickly get up to the ridgeline and get to see some spectacular views looking out on the north-side of the island. The ridge is great for hiking you get breezes from all directions and it's some of only cool air you can get outside on this tropical island.

This shot is of Vatia Bay and the rock formation known as the cockscomb. The trail keeps climbing and soon you end up on the ridge that runs down the spine of the island, Pago Harbor and the south side of the island on your left and the National Park and the north-side of the island on your right.

At this point, the chest cold that had been bothering the prosecutor, who'd joined Sara and I for our coast walk, began to take its toll. She and her boy friend opted to down hike instead of finishing out the through hike. We were sorry to see them call it quits, but we did get to continue with her french cousin who was visiting the island. He turned out to be a hoot and we ended up making plans to hang out while he's on the island visiting and beyond.

The trail also throws starts to get steep along the ridgeline. Since it needs to follow the contours of the ridge, the hiking trail needs to follow the ridge line. The Park Service has installed cable and faux-wood ladders to made these sections passable. This leads to some interesting assents and descents as you need to clamber up and down the trail using both your hands and your feet.

The sketchiest section is right before the summit. The trail narrows to less than a yard wide.

Both side fall away vertically. It's a smooth dirt path, but there are enough lava rocks jutting out of the ground to make it interesting. This is a section of trail that is not for the weak of knees. Someone in our group, I'm not going to name names, almost had to crawl. I lent out my trekking poles and they were able to navigate it under their own power. But it was a slow 30 yards of hiking.

The top has some spectacular views of the harbor. The old cable car system, they had in place to service the navy radio towers, fell down in a cyclone years ago. But the landing at the summit makes for a great viewing of the harbor and Matafao, the highest summit on the island.

The down hike from the summit along the service road was less exciting. We'd done this trail before, it's smooth hiking except when it gets wet, then the road either gets really muddy or the steep sections get slick. Our down hike was pretty easy. Just some good conversation with the visiting Frenchman.

The last little bit of work was to get the cars we left at the trailhead. It took a bit of driving, but we were rewarded on our way home when one of the people we saw going to the tide pools at the beginning of the hike called us up and invited us to make burritos using some fresh fish that one of the National Park Rangers caught on his charter boat back from the Manu'a Island Group. Nice reward for on the loner hikes you can do on island.

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.

Dinner Party and Hike

Had a coworker, her spouse (the Kiwi), a former coworker (the risk taker), his spouse and his son over for dinner last night. We had some eggplant parmesan, caprese salad, long bean saute and bread pudding. It was a pleasant evening, but the major thing to come from it (aside from a local plaintiff's attorney trying to execute a writ of possession earlier that evening for the governor's car, with my coworker and the AG stepping to put a hold on it) was the suggestion of a hike out at the National Park of American Samoa the next day.

After a morning of errands with Sara, she packed me off with the boys in the back of a spray-painted and glitter dusted pickup truck with the Kiwi and the risk-taker. We were off to try a hike/run in the National Park on the north shore of the island. I'm glad to have take the journey over the saddle between Rainmaker Mountain and Mount 'Alava in the back of a pickup. Too often my trips around Tutuila have been from inside an SUV. Riding around in the back of a pickup opens up whole new vistas that I never noticed. The volcanic peaks soar around you and the coastal road snakes underneath cliffs and between some stunning verdant slopes when there's no longer a roof to constrain your view. I need to keep this in mind when exploring transportation options here on the the island.

The road up to the ridge was steep. The risk taker was the driver, but being new to driving manual he ran into trouble when he came to a stop after trying to push third-gear too far up the hill. With some gentle ribbing from the more experienced stick-drivers in the truck bed told him how to get going again on a slope. The driver then proceeded to roll several truck lengths back down the steep slope and across the other lane. The Kiwi, took it upon himself to get the car headed uphill again and we managed to reach the ridge of the mountain,where driving responsibilities were turned over to the risk-taker again.

From the saddle between the two volcanic peaks, there is an amazing view down on the harbor and the Tafuna plains. I'm definitely coming back here for a sunset and a beer. If only I'd brought my camera on this trip...

Over on the north side of the island, it's almost all National Park that is accessible from the road to Afono and Vatia. We parked at one of the National Park turn offs and started hiking up from the coastal road. It wasn't until I was on the trail that I realized that both my hiking partners were wearing cleats. I was piddling away in my "barefoot" running shoes. This was OK for the uphill, but there was enough mud underneath the rain-forest canopy to make me leery of the descent. I couldn't think about that too much as we continued our ascent up to the ridge between Rainmaker and 'Alava.

The top of the ridge afforded a new sensation for me in American Samoa. It was slightly cold up there. I may have actually gotten goosebumps. After sweating my way through the last four weeks, it was a welcome sensation.

The foliage would occasionally open up to afford some tremendous views from the ridge. Overlooking the village of Vatia and the Cock's Comb to the north and Pago harbor to the south. Next time I take this route, I'm not making the same mistake I did this time and am going to bring my camera. The best spot had two benches that had an amazing overlook of both the bay and the village of Vatia.

The hike along the ridge was steep and muddy. The Park Service had placed several ladders with rope to make the trail passable. The ups and downs of the ridge were steep and narrow. Without these aids, descending would be a dangerous challenge, especially with steep drops on both sides of the ridge.

The hike down off the ridge cut off right before the steep slope of Mount 'Alava started to climb. The descent was steep and muddy. This is where the cleats my fellow hikers were wearing paid off. I had to pick and choose my steps, where they could crash right on through. I'm going to need to ship an old pair of my rugby or soccer cleats out before the rains make these trail impassable to any other type of shoe.

When Sara's leg gets strong enough, I'm dragging her on this hike. Once we reached the bottom of the trail we were in the village of Vatia. It's one of the more remote and poorer villages on the island. The local school kids used to have to hike over the ridge twice a day to attend school in Pago Harbor along the same trail we just down-climbed. Now that the road's gone in, their access to education slightly easier.

We had to fend off a few local dogs on our walk back along the road to the car. The routine for this is grab some fist sized rocks from the side of the road and if the dogs get too close, throw the rocks at the dogs. It becomes second nature after awhile.

We also had some local kids yelling "Hey Palangi" at us. They loved our casual greeting in Samoan of "Malo" in response. The hike back to the truck was less exciting, we walked along the road to the turnoff where we started. We made it back to the glitter truck with enough sunlight to justify a hike down to the tide pools below where we parked.

There were some cool archaeological sites on the hike down. A star mound, a rock used to sharpen axes and some terraces had NPS signs and descriptions on the hike down. At the bottom of the hike, we got to some deep and narrow tide pools. We jumped from the rocks surrounding the pools on both side and were even able to dive in the deeper spots. It was a great way to cool off and relax after our 5-mile hike.

We eventually made it back to the car after watching the sun set behind the Cock's Comb. The ride back over the ridge was a little chilly in the back of the pickup, especially since we were still wet from the tide pools. Once we made it back to the risk-taker's temporary housing at the hospital the Kiwi and I called our wives and begged forgiveness for hiking the day away and each got ourselves a ride home. Overall an amazing hike, now I just have to deal with my sore legs and blisters. I'll do it again soon, once I have cleats and a camera to do it justice.