Pago Pago, American Samoa (February 1, 2016)

Reading Length: Afternoon Cuppa Tea

Kristin Reporting!

Our ship tour began at 8:40AM. It was a bus tour that took us to several scenic spots to take photographs. 

The first was in front of a rock which I believe was called ‘Flower Pot Rock’. In this picture you can see Davin in front of the rock formation in the sea.

Second was to “Senator Daniel K Inouye Industrial Park” which is apparently a nice picnic and date park with a nice view of the mountains and sea. In this picture you can see me in front of the water with some beautiful mountains in the background.

Third was to an overlook which the high school calls ‘Sliding Rock’—at low tide the kids use the rocks like a natural slip ‘n’ slide. In this picture you can see the beautiful water colors and the churning water as it crashes on the rocks.

Fourth was a beautiful black sand beach, as the picture shows!

Then finally to a village for a demonstration of many of the traditional Samoan ways of life-- basket weaving, cooking food in a river rock and banana leaf oven, traditional dress, and making 'Cocoa Samoa' which tastes just like hot chocolate but is not made with Cocoa-- it's some kind of other plant that tastes similar! 

And it was really good! Not better than cocoa though. The picture below is of the fruit that they make ‘Cocoa Samoa’ with!

We also got to try tuna fish cooked in coconut milk, and 'Samoan spinach' which was made out of some kind of leaf that was marinated in coconut milk in the traditional oven I mentioned before-- the Umu. Both of those were really tasty! Then we got to try 'Bread fruit' and some kind of banana. The breadfruit was "soooooooooooo weird!" It really tasted like a bland bread without salt, but it is a naturally grown fruit! The banana was horrible! Yeach! We also got to try coconut meat and shell, also horrible, and papaya, which was just okay, not worth eating, but not nasty either.

In this picture you can see a woman who has just finished making a broom!

After the bus dropped us back at the ship, we set off on our own to find postcards and snorkeling equipment. We needed snorkeling equipment because we received a notice on the cruise ship that they would not be supplying snorkeling equipment on the Tonga snorkel! (How ridiculous, right? But it clearly stated this in the fine print.)

We found a water sport rental store, and explained our situation. The owners were willing to sell us some of their snorkeling equipment! We each got a mask, snorkel, fins and carrying bag for $25.00 a set! They are used but look to be in good shape. I think we got a really good deal. I think the couple just wanted to help us out because we explained how we had signed up for a snorkel tour in Tonga and they weren’t going to supply any equipment! 

They asked where we can from and we told them, “San Diego.” The man said, "Where in San Diego?" and I'm thinking, He must know something about the city to ask that. "East County, from El Cajon." I replied. And he said, "I just got back from being stationed 4 years at the San Diego naval base, and my brother is still there living in El Cajon!" Too funny! Of all people to randomly find to help us out of our predicament, it was a man born and raised in American Samoa, who happened to just get back home from spending 4 years in San Diego, and knew, of all places in the world, where El Cajon was!

We ate lunch in a cafe by the sea-- DDW's Beach Cafe. We shared an entree of "DDW's Chicken Curry". It turned out to be like Japanese Curry and it was very good-- but a little too salty. All I had eaten all day was a banana (for breakfast) and the samples at the village, so I thought it was delicious! In this picture you can see Davin with our delicious curry lunch!

We then visited a few different stores and eventually bought some decent postcards. American Samoa is truly not a main tourist destination! You can tell this about a place when it is difficult to even find postcards available for purchase! We checked all the stores near the water equipment rental store with no luck. But we did buy a box of Jello Chocolate Pudding which will be the adventure for tomorrow (?). We have the box, there are bowls and milk upstairs, and spoons for "whisking" (?)... I'll let you know how that goes. Lol! 

Ultimately, we had to walk back to the ship, pass by, and head down to the “downtown” area and still it didn’t look good for our postcard hunt. But, tucked behind a farmer’s market we found a little souvenir shop that actually had postcards for sale! 

On the way back to the ship, we found a photo opportunity with the ship in the background! In this picture, you can see me in front of the Pacific Princess!

We returned to the ship and dropped off our purchases, quickly changed into swimsuits, applied sunscreen and headed off with our snorkeling gear to go for a quick swim. We only had an hour left til "all aboard" at 4:30pm. 

The water here is actually warmer than the air. The ship captain has been telling us this every day for the last 3 days. With this swim outing, we got to go in the water and find out for ourselves! You can walk right in, no cold shock, nothing, it's like going into a bathtub. But, it turns out that's not a good thing when the air is disgustingly hot and humid, and the water is also hot! My god! It's not refreshing at all! But it feels better than being out of the water, but almost anything would feel better than that! It turns out that there IS such a thing as ocean water that is too warm. So far, in all of our experiences, the water we went in at Cabo San Lucas in late November was the perfect temperature-- and Cabo is quite reasonably located for us to vacation to again in the future!

The visibility where we swam was terrible, but we got to try out our new snorkeling equipment and Davin collected some garbage from the sea floor to help out the environment! In this picture, you can see how bad visibility was and also see Davin doing some garbage collection work!

D got a little sunburned from our walk, but I didn't because I wore long sleeves to protect me from mosquitoes with the Zika virus. We didn't notice any bugs at all though. I think it was a warning similar to how we technically have West Nile in San Diego, but we basically don't worry about that either as we also hardly ever see a mosquito. 

I almost forgot to tell you-- we were so stupid! We never charged the new camera's battery after we bought it in Hawaii! We just popped the battery into the camera when we were in Honolulu to "test" the camera that day to make sure it wasn't defective. The battery worked out of the box. THEN WE FORGOT IT WAS NEVER CHARGED! Ahahaha! Moron siblings here. So today, we got on the bus and got pictures at the first stop and then suddenly the camera says to us "battery life depleted"! I used the GoPro for pictures after that. It was just lucky that I brought the GoPro with! I only brought it in case we saw some great panoramic views. That's what I think the GoPro does best, besides underwater video. Anyway, it saved us, so we still got to take pictures today. Phew!

Cool factoids: 

The people here own the land they live on completely so they can bury their dead family members right outside their houses in the front lawn! And that is what you see all over the place in American Samoa. In this picture you can see some graves.

Overall, the country seems rather economically depressed. There are a lot of closed store fronts, most homes are in disrepair-- paint chipped, patios falling apart etc. There are stray dogs wandering around. But everyone is friendly and seems happy! They seem very religious and Christian churches abound—it seems as if there are almost as many churches as there are graves! (Hmm, that’s a pretty macabre simile…) In this picture is one of the many churches.

There are tons of community houses as well-- even more than there are churches!-- which are used by each village which is usually made up of one tribe of people. In this picture is one of the community houses with its pointed roof.

The weather here is disgusting! Ever since we were 1 day north of the equator, the humidity rose to maximum. It HAS to be 100%. When you take your camera or video camera from inside to outside, the lens fogs up immediately! Even when I was in Japan, which had high humidity in the summer, I don't recall ever having my camera lens fog up... The cameras have to acclimate to the temperature and moisture and then they stop fogging up. It's ridiculous!

In many ways, I liked American Samoa more than Hawaii, but it is just too far away to go out of the way to visit it again on purpose. Only by chance if we ever do another world cruise someday.

The good news is, the more that I see the world, the more I'm convinced, we live in exactly the right place in it! Good ‘ol San Diego!

Til Next Time!

Kristin Tenhunen, World Adventurer

Next stop: Nuku’alofa, Kingdom of Tonga on February 4, 2016