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In true “Gabi Fashion”, ( I remember one birthday dinner a couple of years ago was a Thai dish from a fast-food stand in a Walmart parking lot in Wuerzburg), we are spending her birthday very unceremoniously.
It is Sunday morning, July 1st, and the church bells next to our Siufaga Fale on the island of Savai’i are waking us. For breakfast, we have coffee and bananas on our front porch. The only present, I can give her, is a Birthday Card with a DVD and Trivia about the year 1954.

We have a rental car for the day and are picking up Katrin and Hans ( a German couple, we met here; they are here on holiday from Sidney, where they work) at Lusia’s Fales.
We go exploring the South Coast and end up with a fairly strenuous hike from the coast into the jungle. It is uphill, in heat and humidity, for about one hour ( in Flip-Flops!), until we reach the Ancient Mound, called Pulemelei Stone Pyramid. It was constructed with black lava rocks and the base is overgrown with vegetation. We have a great view of the palmtree plantations, jungle and shoreline in the distance. Birds are the only animals, we encounter.
Now we can say, that we visited the oldest archeological structure in all of Polynesia. It saw human activity between 600 and 1600 AD.
An added bonus is, that our rental car is still there, where we had left it with the local Samoan, who had collected the “entrance fee”.
Gabi’ birthday lunch is a tailgate party. Unfortunately, the Isuzu Rodeo’s tailgate swings to the side. So we eat on the lava rocks, with views of the waves of the South Pacific crashing against the cliffs below us. ( We could have left our snorkeling gear at the hotel!)
On the menu for the occasion: pickles, peanuts, carrots, tomatos, papayas and very greasy canned Corned Beef on white bread. We flush this down with Vailima Lager, “The Produce Of Samoa”. Happy Birthday, Gabi!
Next on the agenda is an afternoon nap in the fale, being helped along by the noise of another tropical rainshower. The heat is robbing us of any energy and I cannot motivate Gabi for a dinner out. So we are finishing the day with a quiet dinner on our porch : hot dogs ( heated in the water kettle) with mustard and cut up pickles(the relish), processed cheese slices, tuna on white bread and more tomatos.
I am glad that I married a wife, who does not have any high demands for her to be happy.
We toast to her birthday with an Australian “Queen Adelaide” Sauvignon Blanc.
Only the Best for my Queen!!!

This entry was posted on Monday, July 2nd, 2007 at 1:44 am and is filed under Samoa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.