Apia, Western Samoa

Today marks the halfway point of the cruise, we have been on the ship for two weeks, and have two more weeks after today. We only have three more ports of call, Bora Bora, Moorea, and Tahiti.

Early this morning, we headed into the port of Apia, in Western Samoa. It was a mostly cloudy sky, and the sun was just appearing on the horizon as we were pulling into our berth. The captain headed into the small harbor, and maneuvered the ship around 180 degrees, appearing to barely miss the end of the breakwater. It was interesting to watch since the harbor was so small and narrow.

There was a Samoan dance group performing on the dock as we were tying up. It was very interesting, there were about 12 men and 6 women dancing, sometimes dancing together, sometimes just the men or just the women dancing separately.

Today, we are going on a ship’s tour. The highlights of the tour will be to see what is called a Kava Ceremony, which is a welcoming ceremony to welcome us to the the particular village we are visiting, and then we are scheduled to visit the Piula Cave Pool, which is a large freshwater pool that goes through a cave in the side of a hill.

Although the ship was docked at 7:45 AM, our tour does not depart until 9:30 AM, so we had plenty of time to get ready and eat breakfast without getting up too early.

We met in the Princess Theater at the designated time, and boarded the buses about 9:45 AM. Some of the buses were small, and appeared to be air conditioned. Ours was larger, and was not air conditioned, which was better for taking photos out of the open windows. There were a total of five buses for this tour.

There were rain showers in the area, and once we started out in the bus to our first stop, it really started to rain hard. It was about a 20 minute drive before we stopped at a church, which had a large covered open area out front. This was the location of the Kava Ceremony. The village chief and elders gave some greetings in the local language, which  of course, we did not understand. This lasted for at least 10 minutes, which probably seemed longer since we did not know what they were actually saying. They were all dressed in various types of traditional ceremonial garments.

Once the greeting was completed, we were offered some of the traditional drink, which is Kava. It is made out of some type of root, and does not have much taste, other than bad.

After that, we went outside to see where they were cooking the food in a traditional Emu, which is hot coals buried in the ground. They were going to be serving some fish, and also some type of vegetable, which looked like spinach. There was also some other type of cooked root, which had no taste. We were also given a coconut, which had been sitting in ice cold water, and they punched a hole in the end and inserted a straw for us to drink the cold coconut milk from inside the shell.

The fish and the vegetable were very good. We ate all of the food out of weaved palm frond bowls, that had a banana leaf in the bottom that the food was placed on top of.

While we were eating, they had some of the women perform traditional Samoan dances.

When that was completed, we headed back to board the buses to drive to the Piula Cave Pool. Out tour guide explained a lot about the houses that we saw in all of the villages we passed along the way. Like in American Samoa, they all bury their dead relatives in the front yard, so you see a lot of above ground burial vaults of various types and sizes in front of most all of the houses. The also each have an open air guest house in the front of the main house.

Everyone seemed friendly, and waved at us as we drove by. There were some beautiful tropical gardens around most of the houses we passed. It was Saturday, so most of the locals had gone for the day to the city of Apia to shop since it is one of the largest cities. There were not many stores in the small villages themselves, so according to our guide, everyone usually piles into the local buses and goes into the larger cities on Saturdays.

Most of our bus ride was along the coast, so we were able to get some good photos, although since it was mainly overcast, the water was not very colorful like it typically is when it is sunny.

After about a 30 minute drive, we arrived at the Piula College, which is a college for religious ministry. On the grounds of the college is the Cave Pool. We walked though some of the gardens, then walked down some steps to the pool, which was spring fed, and therefore, really cold (to us).

We set down our gear and headed in for a swim. We did not go all the way through the cave, it is not lighted and gets really small at the far end where you exit. The water was about 6 ft deep in areas, but luckily, less deep in the actual cave. We headed part of the way in and took some photos.

The hardest part was getting in and out of the pool, the rocks around the edges were very slippery, even with shoes. There were some steps, but they did not go all the way into the pool, and of course, the ones near the water were slippery as well.

The cave pool was located right along the coast, next to a seawall. We dried off and headed over to look out into the ocean. By this time, the sun had finally come out, and made the entire area come alive with color that we had not seen while it was cloudy.

After about an hour at the pool, we were loaded back onto the buses for the ride back to Apia. It was much more scenic since the sun was out, but since we had been on the ocean side of the bus for the ride over, our same seats were now on the inland side of the bus for the ride back, and were not able to get many good photos of the coastline as we drove.

Once we arrived back in Apia, we rode through the city and were shown some of the hotels and other special buildings. Apparently, the tour was also supposed to go to the Robert Louis Stevenson house, but the tour guides did not have that as part of their listed itinerary. There were some unhappy people on the bus, but they calmed down once they realized it was an issue to resolve with Princess, not the tour guides who were just doing what they had been told by their company. We were more upset with not visiting a black sand beach which was also described in the itinerary, and which we also did not do. We will ask Princess about the exclusions when we get a chance to go to the tour desk, most likely tomorrow.  Follow Up:  We were required to fill out a complaint form at the Princess Tour Desk on the ship explaining what had happened on our tour.  Eventually, we were given a 20% credit for the tour cost since it did not visit all of the listed areas.

We arrived back at the ship at about 2:30 PM. We wanted to go to the town to look around, but it was quite a walk all the way around the harbor to get there, and we only had an hour before everyone was to be back on the ship. We were scheduled to leave at 4:00 PM. We did look around at some of the vendors who had set up tents right outside of the ship, but did not see anything to purchase.

We got back on the ship and headed to get a bite of lunch. It was a really nice and sunny day by this time, so we headed to sit in the sun deck chairs and watch the ship depart the harbor.

The view was spectacular since the water is so clear and blue, and the entire island is surrounded by a shallow reef.

The ship is now heading to Bora Bora, our next port stop. We will be at sea for two days to travel the 1,200 nautical miles to get to Bora Bora.

We waited for the sunset, and were able to get some good photos of the sunset from our balcony.

We opted to head to the dining room tonight for dinner, so after we showered and dressed, we headed to the Sante Fe dining room at about 8:00 PM for dinner. It was an enjoyable dining experience once again with our waiter Georgina. The head waiter for that section came over and offered to make us a special pasta dish with scallops and shrimp, which we accepted.  It was very good.

There was not much going on for entertainment tonight, so we headed back to the room to download the pictures for the day from the camera and to work on the postings for yesterday in Pago Pago, and today in Apia.