Samoa

Welcome to Paradise…

           So after we spent several hours in an airport, and I mean several hours (pretty much two days, it was a little bit ridiculous) we got on the plane to go to Samoa. Now this was a littler plane than we were use to, but it was still nice. We still had personal tv’s  so all was well. I pretty much slept the entire way though, because we had been up for almost 24 hours or more straight! I was exhausted! I woke up about 30 minutes before we landed. The pilot came on and said, “We will now be starting our descent.” I looked out the window, and I was a little bit nervous, because all I could see was water! We kept getting closer and closer to landing, and still all I could see was water! I was a little bit freaked out! Then a little farther down we began to see land so I felt better! The water though was the most pretty blue I have ever seen! I couldn’t even believe it was real!

                The plane landed and it was a really smooth landing, and we got our stuff and get ready to leave the plane! Don’t worry we got to leave the plane on the little steps! Also this is the smallest airport I think I have ever seen! It was crazy! It looked like a little cute bed and breakfast! It did not look anything like an airport! Especially when the past three airports you have been in are Auckland (Big), Sydney (Huge), and LA (Gigantic). It was just such a laid back feeling. We got off and we stand in line for customs. There is only one person there to check our passports so it took quite a while! But while we were standing there, our pilots came through, and you could tell we were in Samoa!

                We finally got to the front of the line to have our passports checked, and we walk through the next door, and there is a little Samoan band singing and playing Samoan music! It was so great! I loved it! I felt like it was the Full House Episode where they go to Hawaii and they walk in and there is music playing! It was really fun! We get our bags, and then we have to go to the next customs where we claim items or not, well we claimed items since we all had candy. We go to the person, she asks “What are you claiming?” We all answer, “Just candy.” We open up one bag show her our candy, and she says, “Okay, you guys are good to go!” We didn’t even have to send our bags through a scanner! I thought Auckland security was nothing, well Apia’s is even less! It was really funny!

                We got to the front of the little airport, and we get a shuttle from the funniest guy! He’s just the classic Samoan! Laid back, over friendly and not a care in the world! Just taking his time and doing whatever we want! It was hilarious! As we drove into Apia, he told us everything about everyone! He goes, “Here, everyone’s business is everyone’s business! You have to know about everything going on.” It was so funny! We got to see his house, his garden, and so much more! We drove along the coast line all the way into Apia (Mainly because that’s the only road). I am so still floored at how blue the ocean is!

                We got to our hotel and we checked in. We have two private twin rooms, with private bathrooms, air conditioning (which is a big deal), and it provides us with breakfast every morning. It’s not quite as nice as the hotel in Sydney but it’s working!

                We get our stuff all settled in and we decide that we want to go to the beach. So we head down to the beach where the front desk person showed us. She goes it’s about 6km that way and points down the road. So we take off down the road. Well first off you have to understand, we all have the gorgeous tourist beaches in mind. We get there, and it’s a lot farther than we expected, and it is a pretty tiny Marine. Ha ha! We go in and we swim and we spend the rest of the night there. It was really pretty there though. Even though it was little it was really pretty.

                Now that we had seen the closest beach, we weren’t sure what we were going to do, pretty much our plan was to spend every day at the beach, but this beach wasn’t suited for that at all. So we were all a little worried about what we were going to do. We started to head back into town (Decided we would stop at McD’s for dinner), and we are walking along the road. Now there are signs all over the place that say beware of stray dogs! I have never seen so many stray dogs in my life! There are heaps of them over here! They are rather scary!

                So we are walking into town, and these two house dogs escape their fence and start following us. We think, “Oh it’s okay, if we walk far enough they’ll turn around and go home.” We silly us for thinking that! We kept on walking about 3km they are still following us! This is when it got a tad bit scary! So we now are passing the place where all the stray dogs were, now the dogs that were following us were scared of these dogs, and the stray dogs start barking and gnashing their teeth! The four of us are creped out! We were about to get attacked by the wild dogs, and we didn’t know what to do! AGH! So we ran over and hid behind a bush! Which would have worked, except the trained dogs followed us! We were about to freak out and then a policeman walked by us, and helped us out! He was laughing so hard at us, but we were grateful he helped us!

                We get into town, and we are trying to find our way back to our hotel (Which shouldn’t be hard, because there are only about 5 roads literally), and we get ourselves so lost! We were so scared! We were being honked at every place we went, we were constantly getting whistled at, we were hot, tired, and lost. All of these things were not a good combination! We finally make our way back to our hotel and we were so scared! We all came in our room and just broke down! We had no idea how we were going to be able to stay here for the rest of the time! We tried to think of everything we could do! We thought about changing out flights, we thought about calling someone,  we thought of everything! But here was the catch! We had no internet, no cell phone, no phone, no cell service on our home phones, and had no access to anything! We calmed ourselves down and decided we would watch Ferris Bueller’s Day Off! Well good news is we were all exhausted enough that we fell asleep within about 5 minutes of the movie! This was a relief!

                So that ended the first day, and we were completely unsure of what we thought about Samoa! The airport was great, and the beach and the swimming were rather fun, but then the city and the dogs we were terrified of, and had no idea how we were going to get around for the next day!