Arriving in Apia, Samoa
By Lothar. Filed in Samoa |
Our first impressions of Samoa were received in complete pitch-black darkness. The wild and crazy cab ride from the airport to downtown Apia: few lights, numerous small and big churches, locals on bikes or on foot in the street, with our driver swerving around them. The dogs, sleeping in the street, have to look out for themselves. Then one scary moment: all of a sudden, our cab driver pulls into a dirt path. Are we going to get robbed now? No, he pulls up to his ramshackle “house” and gets one of his business cards to give us, so that we can call him for all our transportation needs during our stay on Upolu. Now we know our first Samoan :
Alefaio Faasoa of Samoa.
We will use him again, after I tell him that he will have to drive at a more leisurely pace, so that we actually see some of the villages and tropical scenery.
We are going to bed at the Hotel Kitano at 1 AM, which is 34 hours after we had left the LAX Marriott. Only half an hour later, our phone rings! Carsten is calling us with news about Sonja having abdominal pain. Carsten had diagnosed it already and all I could do is to tell Sonja to see her physician the next day.
We finally are going to sleep, until the roosters wake us early the next morning. After a downtown walking tour in heat and humidity, we relax at the Kitano’s pool and garden. We are so tired that we go to bed at 4PM and sleep right through dinner time. We wake up at midnight and have bread and water in our room, the only food we can find at this hour. This is how we spent our first day here!
On Wednesday, June 27, the rooster is on island time and lets us sleep until 7:15 AM! We get a feel for Samoa, by reading the local paper, the “Samoa Observer”. We always enjoy reading about other people’s lives and everyday problems, while traveling in a foreign country. Sometimes their concerns and obstacles could be so different from ours at home and other times amazingly similar!
We get a little exercise in the pool and then tour the house of Robert Louis Stevenson, which is located on beautiful grounds above Apia.
Stevenson, the author of “Treasure Island”, moved here in 1890, trying to get some improvement of his tuberculosis. He had this grand home built here for his family and called it “Vailima”, which now is also the name of the local lager brew.
The museum also has a nice picture gallery, showing old photos of natives, taken during the German colonial period between 1899 and 1914. It is strange to see the photos of dark-skinned, naked Polynesians, with the caption under the pictures (in German) : “Our New German Citizens”.