NOAA Station

Following a wonderful umu meal at our friend Visa's house and a short side trip to feed our "take away" breadfruit to some stream fish, Sara and I decided to explore the NOAA observatory and weather station out on the Eastern tip of the island. A few of our friends had visited the facility a few weeks before and reported back that it was worth the trip. It had been a few months since we'd been out to the east end of the island, so we thought it would be worth the trip. The drive out there is full of interesting sights and well worth it.

This is only the second time I've been out to the Eastern tip of the island. It's a beautiful drive out there and I love how once you get past the canneries in the harbor, the island quickly transitions to small quiet villages that are dotted along the lonely single lane road.

The NOAA weather station that sits out on the Eastern Tip of the island is one of the few permanent presences of the federal government here in American Samoa. It has the unique distinction of being the spot with the cleanest air in the world. Or at least the place that NOAA uses air samples from to determine what the "clean-air" baseline is. I find this a little odd, since the people of American Samoa burn their trash and waste on a daily basis and a healthy majority of the vehicles on island do not have any pollution controls, but I guess when the wind is blowing in the from east, the air there has come from a thousand miles of open ocean to reach there.

The turn off to the Observatory is unmarked, but it's pretty obvious which of the dirt tracks runs to the top of the hill at Cape Matalua, the NE tip of Tutuila. We followed the road up past a few homes and came to the gate of the NOAA facility. The plateau of the mountain was filled with the observatory proper and a number of instruments scattered around the grassy area. Sara and I spent some time trying to determine what each's purpose was.

Once we had explored all the sciency things at the Observatory we came across one last highlight, the stairway down to the cape. It is a long wooden staircase, containing over 200 stairs at a 45 degree slope down the mountainside. The thoughtful designers even placed several benches in to make sure there'd be places to rest.

The climb down wasn't bad, but knowing we'd have to go back up was a tickling in the back of our heads as we headed down.

The Cape at the base was beautiful. It's a peninsula that was bare rocks covered in moss and grass with the crashing Pacific on all sides.

We hung out for a bit and just appreciated the remoteness and ruggedness of our little island. Well worth the trip out.

All that was left was our hike back up. Thankfully we've been doing enough hiking that it wasn't too much of a challenge.

Thankfully, all that was left to cap off this Sunday was a stop at Tisa's on the way back to our side of the island.