To escape the freezing winter on the South Island of NZ Marcell and I had decided to fly to Samoa for our midterm-break vacation. Because it was much cheaper for us to depart from Christchurch Int. Airport rather than Dunedin, we had planned a little road-trip up to Christchurch. So on Friday 21. August Marcell, Alex, Nicole and I departed from our flat in Dunedin and started our journey towards Samoa.
Our first stop on the way north were the Moeraki Boulders, perfectly shaped natural spherical rocks.
Nicole, Alex and me relaxing on the boulders and enjoying this beautiful day.
To make the most out of our trip to Christchurch, we took a second break in the beautiful town of Timaru and visited one of the most thrilling and unique museums I´ve ever been to: The Steampunk HQ museum. It´s completely different from what a normal person might expect a museum to be like. Maybe you´ve heard of "steampunk-style" before or maybe it is completely new to you. But either way you should have a look at these stunning pictures below. It was really a one of a kind experience!
From quite plausible and maybe even useful to absolutely weird and crazy ideas you can find pretty much everything in this museum you could possibly imagine.
This was the last room of the museum, called "The Portal": a room fully lined with mirrors and lights that gave you the feeling of hovering somewhere in infinity.
We arrived in Christchurch at 8pm, had a delicious dinner at an Indian restaurant and stayed the night at my kiwi-host´s house. Our flight departed at 6am the next morning and after 7 hours of flight and a layover in Auckland we arrived in Samoa at around 3pm. After an adventurous drive from the airport in Apia to the Taufua Beach Fales, the resort where we would stay for the next 7 nights, located on the other side of the island, we were extremely hungry and had the first of many very tasty Samoan dinners. After we finished dinner, around 15 Samoan boys and girls from nearby villages performed a Fia-Fia-Night for us guests at the resort, a traditional Samoan dance-night.
View from our fale (which is basically a very sparely furnished hut located directly at the beach) onto the turquoise ocean. The most beautiful view out of a room I´ve ever had!
Swimming in a 29° warm, perfectly blueish/turquoise sea was probably the best activity we´d done in weeks!
During a walk on the beach we found several coconut-trees and spontaneously decided to climb one of them and pick some fresh coconuts. After drinking the freshest and most delicious coconut-milk we´ve probably ever had, we broke the coconut in half and sipped some brown rum out of it.
The weather wasn´t perfectly fine on every single day and we had two quite cloudy days. But on an island where you have 30° Celsius air-AND-water temperature that´s not a problem. In fact we were quite glad about it because the sun was pretty intense being so close to the equator and it´s way too easy to get sunburned here!
Another picture of our terrific white/golden sand beach. We stayed here pretty much all day for the first four days, going for a run at the beach, swimming in the ocean or just relaxing at the beach and enjoying the last rays of the sun in the evening while sipping delicious (and very cheap!) cocktails.
Our original plan was to rent some kayaks and paddle out to this beautiful little island. But after flipping over several times due to the high waves breaking at the reef just a few hundred meters out there, we decided that it was a bad idea to paddle out any further. So we did some kayak-surfing instead.
View onto the beach of our resort a little further along the coast.
In order to purchase some sunscreen at a local shop we went for a walk to the closest village that was located a little elevated on a hill right next to our resort. As you can see the roads are really tiny here on Samoa but nevertheless the locals do their best and plant heaps of beautiful flowers and trees next to the road.
We spent all seven of our evenings/nights at the resort. Ake, the granddaughter of the owner of our resort, had a great time playing card games with us.
For the last two days we decided to get a rental car, which in fact was pretty hard to get because they only have rental cars in the capital city of Apia, which is on the other side of the island, two hours of drive away from our resort. But we managed to get one and it turned out to be a great decision as the following pictures might prove.
Our first destination was a waterfall close to our fale, which´s name I can´t remember. Frankly spoken the Samoan names are incredibly long and full of vocals and extremely hard to remember.
The waterfall was basically located in the garden of the landowner who charges 5 Samoan Talas (1.50€) for every person that wants to see the waterfall.
Our next stop were the Togitogiga waterfall. Although the fall itself was not as high as the first one we´ve visited in the morning, it was way more exciting because you could literally jump down the falls into the pool located in the middle of the falls, climb out of the pool and jump down the next fall into another pool. You can see more of that in the video embedded at the end of this blog-post. It was really amazing!
After having a one or two hour break at the Togitogiga Falls we moved on and visited a nearby lava-field. Unfortunately our camera got completely wet as an enormous wave broke directly in front of us, crippled the flashlight of the camera and some of the pictures we took that day are somehow flipped around and can´t be rotated any more... Sorry for that!
Me posing in the gorgeous garden in front of the only Bahai-temple on Samoa. Bahai is apparently a new religion that evolved a few years ago and gets to get quite popular in Polynesia. And although I´m not very religious, as many of you might know, it was still very interesting to learn about a new religion, visit their lovely garden and see their concept of a temple.
Our first destination on the next (and unfortunately already our second-last) day was the To Sua ocean trench. A path through a stunningly beautiful garden led us to the trench itself: A gigantic natural hole in the ground filled with seawater.
We climbed down the ladder and explored the trench and an adjacent cave. And to our surprise we even found an underwater-tunnel connecting the trench to the open ocean. After gauging about it for a few minutes, we decided to do it: to dive through the tunnel out into the open ocean. And although it only were six or seven meters to dive, it was a crazy but nevertheless worthwhile and amazing experience! Out there in the ocean we found a wooden ladder leading up the cliff for a few meters, providing a perfect platform for jumping down into the water.
Back from our little trip through the underwater-tunnel, we changed our cloths and stayed for a couple more minutes in the gorgeous garden surrounding To Sua, trying to enjoy the peaceful atmosphere here as much as possible.
Me in front of another waterfall we found on the way to Apia, the capital city of Samoa. This time we were able to get closer to the waterfall and took some nice pictures of the waterfall, the lush vegetation of the surrounding rain-forest and the garden of the owners.
One foot away from the edge of this 100m high waterfall amidst the tropical rain-forest of Samoa. A truly unique experience!
A little romantic hut right next to the waterfall in the neat garden of the "owners" of the waterfall.
One of the few main-roads in Samoa, leading through the forest, winding up and down some former volcanic hills. I guess that´s pretty much what some parts of Hawaii must look like. Not all parts of the roads are concreted yet, so it´s not surprising that a drive across the island takes you at least two hours.
Next destination: The Sliding Rocks. Located within 10 km of the center of Apia, this attraction offers some natural sliding rocks. The combination of water flowing down the rocks and algae covering them, makes these rocks so slippery that you can literally slide down these rocks into a natural pool located at the end of the rocks. Unfortunately they had not enough water by the time we visited them so we weren´t able to slide down all of them. But that´s what a creek in the rain-forest should look like!
Something every visitor to Samoa should definitely do: snorkeling! So after having an enormous amount of fun at the sliding rocks we moved on and drove to the Deep Marine Reserve to rent some snorkeling equipment. You can see more of the stunning underwater-environment of Samoa in the video at the end of the blog-post.
Eventually our last evening approached and it was time to say goodbye to this amazing island. But not before experiencing an amazing sunset and drinking our last cocktail on Taufua Beach.
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