the other Samoa: Apia again

We went back to Apia for the rest of our trip; the draw of semi-urban-ness was just too much to resist!

We stayed in a fancy hotel: Manumea Resort. It has real walls (unlike our house), hot water (unlike our other "hotels"), a pool with a lava rock waterfall, traditional designs carved into the doors, an indoor/outdoor bathroom, and an ocean view. I've never stayed somewhere that nice so I would have been impressed anyway, but coming from our screen-walled housing for government employees and all its resident critters, it felt like heaven!

We went to Palolo Deep.

We weren't impressed with the snorkeling there, but the sunset sure was beautiful!

Of course, no trip to Upolu is complete (at least for a nerd like me) without a tour of Vailima, Robert Louis Stevenson's Samoan home.

Tired and happy, we headed back home - just in time for the Arts Festival!

the other Samoa: the vegetable market

The vegetable market was a lot of fun. The touristy stuff is sold at the nearby flea market - we spent lots of time there! - but, obviously, the vegetables and food are sold at the vegetable market so it tends to be more of a local hang out. We saw Samoans playing checkers, drinking kava, and just relaxing while we were there.

These things are used to strain/squeeze the coconut cream from the coconut meat.

We've had this poky looking fruit before. It's tart and sweet - grainy like a pear, but mushy like a banana, and really juicy. I've heard it called a Samoan apple, but I don't know what it really is. It's good though.

I love how the bananas are sold by the stalk at the market. At our roadside stands here, I've only seen them in bunches. When we cut down our own and have a whole stalk, it takes forever to eat all of them. They ripen from the top down so it's actually possible to eat them all without them going bad. We just don't want any bananas for a few months afterwards!

the other Samoa: Apia

After being on this island for eleven months straight, we finally went somewhere else!

I know eleven months on a tropical island doesn't sound too bad to those of you who don't live here, but it's a long time to be confined to a small place where you've been on pretty much every road and you're out of new places to explore (not completely out because I've been purposely saving some, which may be lame, but it's absolutely necessary).

So we went to check out the other Samoa, Upolu island. The other Samoa has one main thing of interest: Apia. A "big city" with stoplights and roundabouts and tourists and coffee shops and shopping and restaurants and all kinds of glorious things.

If I were coming directly from the US, I'm sure we wouldn't think Apia is big with its 39,000 residents, but that's not much smaller than the entire population of our island so it felt huge. And it was wonderful to see new people and places and things. Because we're so starved for city life, we planned to spend most of our time there. It was great!

The Curry House was delicious - I highly recommend it for anyone going to Apia.

And the Cappucino Vineyard was delicious too! They even had live music. We felt sooo sophisticated (even in our grubby island clothes. Speaking of grubby island clothes, we realized that we have them. Everything we own is somehow stained, faded, or otherwise showing signs of extreme wear. Funny that it would take a trip off-island for us to notice. Because here, we look just like everyone else. In Apia they have tourists. And tourists have way nicer clothes. I had no idea how easy they were to spot. Crazy.).