Vaisala Hotel

Oh hi! Continuing on our way we passed though yet more beautiful villages...yes more! The churches seemed to become bigger, more elaborate, more like hideous wedding cakes...and in this case just very, very mildewy. We loved the blue painted corrugated iron roof though!


I was excited about our first visit of the day to Pe'ape'a Cave to see the white rumped Polynesian swiftlets, quite specific, no? We do love our wildlife spotting and this did seem suitable random. At the family's garden we followed the guy down some steps and straight into a cave, that passed under the road.


Tiny swiftlets were nesting in the crevices of the cave roof. Some were flying around in the dark recesses making high frequency sounds (like bats) to negotiate their flight.


A fluffy booom on a tiny nest...


An empty tiny nest...


Oh no! Who should be sitting on this egg?


We were pleased to establish that unlike the fruit bats, no one was actually eating the swiftlets...a bit too small, and safer for it, hopefully.

Looking across the jungle straight to the sea. To the left of this pic was what was fast becoming a a familiar sight, a family were living in an open sided fale on the lava rocks, taro poking out all around. It looked so incredibly hot and hostile in comparison to the rest of the landscape!


A communal fale on the lava rocks.


More beautifully scented frangipani.


And here we were at the Vaisala Hotel, our destination of the day. We were really impressed with the beach...but looked at several odd rooms before selecting the least odd of the bunch. A funny, but familiar process where the person on reception only ever brings one key at a time...we chose the fourth room that we looked at, after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, lol.


'Lets get in the sea!!!'


Ok, after some lunch then.


Great views of the private beach from the restaurant.




Another furry friend, this one quite elderly and looking quite hopeful at Wiji with his fish and chips!


After our hilarious snorkelling wildlife spot at Vacations, where Wiji tried to drown me by making me laugh so much, I decided to test his powers of observation before we got too far out in the ocean. Previously he had spotted a new creature and needed my help to work out what it was...oooh exciting, no? No. Actually totally priceless! It was turquoise thong from a broken a flip-flop, but he was convinced it was something else...LMAO...'What is this sea creature, love?' Lol.






'God, why does she keep picking them up?' Wiji and the hotel in the distance.


Amazing!


The snorkelling at Vaisala beach revealed the most enormous sea cucumbers that we had ever seen! What can I compare it to...errr, a double yule log?


Did Ben grow any romanesco?


Finally a clam! The hotel, like many other places was full of decorative clam shells lining the pathways. Shame that they are all actually dead. A bit of a Damien Hurst 'forms Without life' scenario.


This beauty had a great spot and beautifully coloured lips that it sucked back in the moment Wiji approached...




Out a little bit more...'Say prunes, please'.


There were some larger upright coral formations that were interesting to explore...




Swim Wiji, swim!






The action was quite a way off from the beach...We even did some proper swimming as well as mucking about!




Finally, after all our snorkelling antics, I was sooo pleased to spot these red and white shrimps in the hole in the rock. I had previously seen them in salt water tanks...they are gorgeous creatures. In the hole below them is a large fish trying to hide.


This coral seemed to glow green underwater...but not in this pic.


Pic of the day for hilarity was won by Wiji, who spotted this eel poking its head out of the hard coral.


Its difficult to see in this pic, but there was a dense shoal's of tiny khaki fish hiding in the coral.




Enormous and wierd too!


Wiji demonstrates how big they were.


Fish friends...the one with the black spots hoofs up the sand and the other one waits to sift through it.


A beautiful, but tiny fish with a spanish dancer style set of flowing fins.


A very tiny fish, a bit like a catfish, that we enjoyed watching. It came out to stand guard over its hole and watched us.


Christmas tree anemones!






Lots and lots of Picasso fish!




Just odd.


More christmas tree anemones and eel holes in the hard coral.


Looking back at the hotel as the thunderstorm rumbled over the landscape...The hotel looked great in the distance, and had survived several cyclones, only to be rebuilt several times.


Our final choice of room had a great balcony view over the ocean, perfect for chilling out after the snorkel and seeing the sunset.






Back again and waiting for dinner. The very camp chef quizzed us about our meal requirements, then when they emerged he had made his own choices, funny hey?...It was still delish though.


At dinner a few more guests emerged from somewhere and so did a string band who were great! Check out the string base (stick, string and helmans mayo bucket).


Here's a little vid of one of their songs I really liked...


Wiji really liked the cat. It did have a lovely singing voice.




We had a great sleep, on an actual bed too! But horror of Horror's, cheesy paw paw was the main star of the comp brekky...Aaarggh! Wiji had decided that he actually liked it with a squeeze of lime! O-K cheese freak!

It was here that the teenage waitress (Sarah) got a chance to question us...'Where are your children?' Lol. And before Wiji arrived 'where is your husband'. A very irritating question, especially when asked by men. Naturally a mistake to say 'I'm not married'...unless they are REALLY fit! Aaah, I am really amusing myself with this one. Whatever.


The sun really came out and made the beach view from the restaurant very tempting...A good place to put the guests at the start of the day.




But we had to go and continue our journey around the island...In the words of one great philosopher... 'Maybe tomorrow I'll wanna settle down, till tomorrow, I'll just keep movin on'. Lol.


The restaurant circa 1950. It had some great pics of before and after various cyclones. DIY pictures that are actually justified, rather than just plane boring.


I like this one best, the first effort. Less concrete, less sprawl and all the original trees standing upright. Looks a bit bond-baddie secret lair.

Vacations Beach Fales, Savai'i Island

We were only 3/4 of an hour late heading back to our car rental agency, and by the time we arrived we had decided we would like to keep the little beast if they would allow us to take it on the ferry across to Savai'i, the other main island of Samoa. Fortunately they were super cheerful and were quite happy for us to keep it for another 4 days, throwing in the 1 free day that customers receive with a 6 day rental. Bonus!

We headed back to Apia central to try and get us on the ferry that afternoon, but sadly found it was fully booked for vehicles. This meant we had to stay a night in Apia and get on the first ferry the next morning at 10am. This was ok really as it gave us a chance to upload some of our blog entries and generally sort ourselves out a bit. For some reason all the hotels seemed totally booked up and we ended up staying at the Samoan Outrigger Hotel that only had posh air con rooms. Oh go on then...we both slept very well on their super comfy bed.

The next morning we got bitten to buggery eating their complimentary brekky outside next to the pool, but the experience did include me having the opportunity to create a honey and banana panini-type sandwich with their bizarre bread-squashing toasty-machine. A resounding success in my eyes.

We arrived at the ferry port a good 3/4 of an hour before it was due to leave, but somehow this still resulted in us being right at the back of the queue of vehicles. While I went and purchased the additional ticket for my passenger, Clairy snapped this great shot of one of the port officials checking her out surrounded by local kids with big strings of stinky fish that they were waving in everyone's windows in an attempt to sell.


Getting the car on the ferry was quite an adventure, as it required a number of attempts by the crew to fit all the vehicles on. I was initially guided in forwards and then asked to reverse off again and go in backwards. Then a huge lorry arrived late and we all had to move around once more to make room for it. Finally after all this they realised there was no room for the foot passengers to squeeze through so we were all moved out one last time and guided back in again. Clairy misheard my response to her question about how long the ferry was going to take, and assumed it was just 15 minutes and not one hour and 15 minutes. After 45 minutes she was quite concerned that there was something wrong, but eventually we cleared up that bit of confusion.

We swiftly headed off from the ferry port in Salelologa town on Savai'i, the biggest settlement and still quite tiny, and headed straight for the beautiful beach at Si'ufaga for some lunch.

Clairy snapped a few piccies before we got stuck in.


The colour of the lagoon was stunning.


Admiring the view.




It was absolutely boiling and the water looked very inviting, but we were both well peckish so we headed up to Perenzo's restaurant for some food.


In the middle of the restaurant was this brightly painted wooden sculpture. Clairy liked the fishies.




It had a lovely shady view over the lagoon.


After this we kept going north and eventually reached the first of a number of huge lava flows that stretch across the island dating back to the last major eruption of Mt Matavanu in 1905.


It stretches off for miles.


The lonely planet suggested that instead of rushing through this desolate landscape...'It's worth lingering and letting your imagination try to re-create the fiery events that occurred here'...I think I accomplished it pretty well.






It is quite amazing the way the various plants and trees appear to grow directly out of the porous rocks.


Our next stop on the journey to our first accommodation on Savai'i was at the site of the LMS church that was destroyed along with a number of villages in the 1905 eruption. We parked up and found some local women preparing the materials to make some pandanus mats. One of them took our fee and guided us down the path to the church. It was quite a sight.


The way this huge tree had spread its roots through the rear door looked quite incredible.


But once inside the church things were even more strange.


The lava had only entered through the front door of the church.


It was really quite strange. God really had it in for this church I reckon. Our guide was super friendly and chatty.


Huge gnarly cracks.




We then walked on with our guide who was quite taken with Clairy and kept patting her on the arm as she asked about where we were from. She said it was nice that we were able to visit countries like Samoa, but felt it was sad that Samoans didn't really get to go on holiday themselves. Tru dat. This was all said with a lot of laughter.


She took us to the 'Virgin's Grave'. Here the lava apparently went all around but did not cover the grave of an extremely virtuous Chief's daughter.




On the way back she chuckled as she told us that just the women from the village had created the cement path over the lava, and that they had done it all without any tools, and this was why it was covered in hand prints.


After this we carried on to our beach fale at Vacations resort. The place seemed very nice, and our fale was large and attractively built. The only down side to the place seemed to be the insanely enormous stereo system (complete with vast separate bass unit), that was banging out dreadful Samoan pop at full volume for most of the time we were there. It really didn't help to create a relaxing tranquil atmosphere.

The beach looked very pretty, but was very shallow for swimming.


We did manage to get a decent nights sleep here though as the mattress in the fale proved comfier than most and the temperature dropped to a quite bearable level after about 10 at night.

The next morning the sun was up with barely a cloud in the sky so it was time to take some more piccies.

Here's my island girl!


The beach looked stunning.


A nice booom orientated pose for me.


Allright, there were some clouds, but they weren't getting in the way.


The deck on which we had our brekky.


Every time I left Clairy in our fale, when I returned I would find one of the local teenage lads who's job was to sweep up leaves propped up on his rake outside chatting to her. I think he may have been a bit smitten. He would quickly get back to work and pretend he'd been doing nothing of the sort on my return.

For some reason this may have encouraged me to run amok with his wheelbarrow.




There's my lady peeking out the fale.


Right on the beach.


The view from inside. Nice.


After such an energetic photo session, we needed a bit of a lie-down.


What a handsome couple.


'Enough pictures now Clairy!'