Sunday

Sunday, 7 February in American Samoa

Greetings from Pago Pago (pronounced pango pango) in American Samoa. We had a nice day. The weather was good but hot and humid. We took a tour of the island. The buses were ancient school buses painted outside in wild colors and decorated with real flowers. The inside of the bus had wooden bench seats, wooden floor and wood even on the ceiling. There were no windows but some plexiglass halfway up where windows should be. Needless to say there was no air conditioning and they were uncomfortable to say the least. (It's amazing that we spent money on such an uncomfortable ride.)

What is our impression of American Samoa? It is like a rainforest all over the island and when you come into the harbor you face a sheer cliff which is covered in jungle. The tour we took was to see village life in Pago Pago and sure enough we drove through lots of villages. The houses were built of cinder blocks with corrugated iron roofs. There were lots of flowers growing wild but the little villages were poor looking with fairly unattractive shops. We did notice that the island was full of churches and there were a lot of billboards warning youth against drinking, which we assume must be a problem on the island. The tour guide told us that there was a 6:30 curfew in the villages on Sunday evening and no one is allowed out after that. The idea is that the family gets together for evening prayers and then the youngsters can get to bed early for school on Monday. We finally drove up to a village in the hills and they had little set ups of village life as it must have been or maybe still is in some areas. They showed us how they cooked outside over a stone fire with the food wrapped in banana leaves. They also showed us things like how they roast the cocoa beans, how they do their washing etcetera. The cocoa, which is their national drink was delicious. They put on a dancing exhibition for us which was interesting. One guy climbed up a tree to get a coconut and showed us how getting the milk out of a coconut was done. To sum it all up, they were very hospitable and it was interesting to see what village life was really like.

Our tour guide, a high-school senior sang us a couple of songs in Samoan and English. We enjoyed her singing to us. It was rather sweet.

We weren't sorry to return to the ship after riding over the bumpy roads on this school bus. We are supposed to finish up the day with a barbecue on the top deck but they had to move it inside because of the rain. We have no Monday this week because we cross the International Date Line about 11:00 tonight which will put us into Tuesday an hour later. So, that's Monday gone. Never mind! We will make it up on the way home. That about sums up American Samoa. Next stop is Lautoka in Fiji.