Savaii, the big island

What can we say about Savaii?  In a word, Awesome.

We left Apai Somoa for Savaii, no wind, we motored, charged the batteries and made water.

We anchored in Matautu Bay, nicely positioned between two reefs.  This made for some good snorkelling.  We decided not to go ashore as we couldn’t really see a place to land the dinghy.  So we stayed aboard and snorkelled twice each day.  Some new fish identified, always a good thing.  The bad thing was our first siting of the crown of thorns, a member of the starfish family that is out of control and damaging the reefs.  We saw more than one!

Sonsie of Victoria (Jim and Isabel) joined us in the anchorage and snorkelled with us.  We went to their boat for drinks and appies, we got rowed over and back (we had not launched trouble), which was a treat.

Then we headed down the coast to Asua Bay.  We had the waypoints from the compendium and had read tooooo many guides as the entrance was a treaky one and the charts are wrong!  We followed Sonsie in, which always makes things easier, not more than a .5 knot current, but it is really the side on waves and swell before you are actually in the channel that is the issue.  But we got in with no problems and anchored in 7 meters.

We arranged a tour with a guide named Sam.  Unbelievable!  We started going counterclockwise around the island, the first stop was the canapy tour.  A walkway has been built between 2 bayon trees, and then kind of a tree house in the tallest so you can see to the coast.

  Next we stopped at the gaints foot print.  This is the right foot print, apparently the left is in Fiji! 

 

 

 The coast road is really very beautiful.  We long ago gave up counting the number of churches, as they are one, two or three, max 6, in each village!  (The good news is that they are also cyclone shelters.)  The fales and lands were very well kept, such flowers, such colours.  We went to the blow holes, now this is a calm day, but Sam timed it just right when he threw in a basket of coconut shells and they flew at least a hundred feet in the air! 

 

We skipped the waterfalls as a tour coming down said it was muddy, so we were onto lunch.  This was at a lovely place called Louisa’s cabins.  Very relaxed and lush setting.  After lunch we went to the local market and Frankie’s supermarket, something cruisers always need to do.  We carried on by the ferry dock and onto John Williams tomb.  He brought Christianity to Samoa and is well regarded.  Our next stop was the church and virgin’s grave.  The storey is that when the volcano erupted in 1905-1911 the lava flowed past the church and went in the front door.  As to the virgin’s grave, everything else was covered in lava, except her grave.  As we were passing villages Sam was saying this is a marine reserve, see the stakes.  Then the same thing at the next village, until we finally figured that they are voluntarily conserving their resources!  These people should be running the UN!  Our last stop was Sam’s home.  A major Fales in Avao, the town we had been anchored in front of when we were in Matautu Bay!  Beautifully kept grounds, they have a normal house lived in by the extended family and a round fales in front for the family gatherings and a place for guests to sleep.  We finished the circum navigation of the island just before sunset.  A long but very good day.

Cheryl got a year older!  This was celebrated with blueberry pancakes for breakfast and stuffed porkchops with callalou stuffed with coconut milk on the barbeque.  Not to mention the last bottle of Palo Alto!

We prepared a picnic lunch and took our snorkel gear to the moto beside the entrance to the Bay.  We walked around the moto (that didn’t take long) then went for a snorkel.  Very shallow water, so easy to see the fish.  Some lovely stag horn coral, hosting many fish, but we didn’t stay there long as the current seemed to want to pull us out the pass.  We had some picnic foods and our last bottle of rose for lunch!

We had to send a form off to Fiji and the local telephone company has such poor internet that we had to take a bus into town to send it off.  This was a lovely 3 hour bus ride!  We got to see the entire west, south and east coasts again.  And again on our trip back!  We also bought Noni and Somoan coffee, so not a wasted trip!

The resort we were anchored in front of Va-i-monoa Seaside Lodge was very accommodating.  They were happy to let us leave our dinghy on their dock or beach.  The staff was lovely!  And the food was good, the wine even better!  On our last Sunday they did an Umu demonstration, which is a traditional method of cooking. Cheryl got to help make a basket, we made packages of Callaloo, stuffed with coconut milk and onions, which is then wrapped in a banana leaf, then wrapped in a breadfruit leaf.  If you do it right, it all stays together and they it ‘thrown’ on the fire.  A variety of lamb pieces and taro where also put on the fire.  These things were then covered with layers of banana/palm fronds/breadfruit leaves and are left for say 45 minutes.  Then all the leaves are removed and the food is ready!  The taste of the fire is part of the food.  We put the callaloo on slices of taro, lovely.  And tried lamb flaps!  Tastely, but not much in the way of meat.

 

One evening we had some questions to ask Sale, the owner, he invited us to join him and a friend of his for a glass of wine and sashimi of yellow finned tuna caught that day!  We had a great conversation.  Turns out they know people in the cultural show in Apia and we went on from there!

We met a lovely lady, Jacqueline, a Kiwi doctor getting away for a bit.  We shared many fish stories, Jacqueline has tried to impart more knowledge to us.  She laughed when she heard how we were gaffing fish, then she explained how we should do it.  We don’t know if we will be any better as we didn’t catch any fish on the passage to Fiji, even though we spent probably an hour in a fish boil.  Jacqueline came on board for lunch one day, Callaloo Soup and rum punch.  Both were enjoyed by all of us. 

We have been watching the weather each day and it looks like we will leave for Fiji on Monday.  Until then we will continue decreasing our wine supply, it has NEVER been so low.  We get the shakes worrying about finding some in Fiji, but we are only allowed to take in 4 bottles of wine OR 2 liters of alcohol.  Hmmm.