travel - James Borrowdale

travel
+Samoa
treasured
island
From below the water’s
surface or from above,
every direction in Samoa
contains something to
arrest the eye.
T
he traffic moves with near-comic languor in Samoa – not that
it matters. As I made my way around much of the two biggest
islands, ’Upolu and Savai’i, countless villages passed by at a
pace commensurate with their sleepiness; piglets, dogs and
chickens had time to scoot across the road unharmed, and I had time to
acknowledge the waves that followed being identified as a visitor.
On the eastern coast of Savai’i one day, after a morning downpour,
the cloud loomed stubbornly, dark grey against the green jungle. The
sparse distribution of villages – only about 60,000 people live on the
island, one of the largest in Polynesia – soon gave way to the occasional
thatched-roof fale overlooking clearings that seemed in danger of losing
the battle against the encroaching jungle. From little farms, bonfires sent
grey smoke into the steamy heat.
But it was in the sun – and all but one of the days I was there, in
the rainy season, were sun-drenched and seriously hot – that Samoa
was at its finest. The jungle stretched up into clouds that never quite
left the islands’ mountain centres, and the reef-encircled water was
a perfect blue, with breakers foaming in the distance and families
perched beachside.
I passed bare-chested boys with bunches of bananas slung over their
shoulders and glinting machetes in hand, and girls with smaller children
on their hips. Church after church – big and grand against the fales of
which the villages are composed – slid by the window, as did the relative
modesty of Mormon temples. When the aircon wasn’t quite refreshing
enough, roadside coconut stands were on hand to finish the job.
The ocean is hardly ever out of sight from the encircling roads, which
means many of Samoa’s most amazing spots are easily accessible – the
Alofaaga Blowholes on Savai’i, say, through which the ocean shoots
giant plumes of spray, or the lava fields, also on Savai’i, where a 1905 to
1911 lava flow displaced villages, inundated churches and left a weird
moonscape in its wake.
But best of all was the To Sua ocean trench. It is one of Samoa’s
most famous sites, on the southeast of ’Upolu. The name translates as
“big hole” and that’s all it is: perhaps 30m deep and about the same
in diameter, it was formed by a sinkhole with a connecting tunnel to
the ocean beyond – a pool of seawater sits at its bottom. But To Sua
supersedes its statistics; more revealing is that, according to Samoan
mythology, this is where departed souls would meet, huddled around
the edge and tossing their voices across the cavern.
Floating on my back in that deep pool, the outside world was reduced
to the green-fringed circle of blue sky above. There was a certain quality
of light, like a very fine mist, and the air itself seemed visible. The high
walls draped their shadows across the water; the coconut trees around
the edge dappled the remaining morning sun and then, double-dappled
This page: Lalomanu Beach
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+Samoa
stay
travel
Aggie Grey’s Lagoon
Beach Resort & Spa (aggiegreys.com/
resort) offers large, ocean-facing rooms
and is 10 minutes from the airport – the
perfect way to start a holiday. Le Lagoto
Beach Resort and Spa (lelagoto.ws), on
the northern tip of Savai’i, offers nicely
appointed beach fales and an incredible
buffet. On the southern coast of ’Upolu,
Sa’Moana Resort (samoanaresort.com), is
one for the surfers. There’s an impressive
break just offshore, and staff have excellent
local knowledge of the rest of the island’s
best surf spots. Coconuts Beach Club
Resort & Spa (cbcsamoa.com) offers a range
of rooms, including luxurious over-thewater fales. The sunsets are incredible,
especially when accompanied by the
lapping of waves from below, and there are
the beautiful grounds to explore.
do
If you are serious about exploring
Samoa’s under-populated but highly
regarded waves, Surf X (samoanaresort.com)
is the outfit for you. Run out of Sa’Moana
Resort, the expert guides cater to the
non-surfers among us, too: I explored To
Sua with a Surf X guide – a nice mix of
adrenalin and relaxation.
AquaSamoa (aquasamoa.com), handily
located at one end of Aggie Grey’s
sprawling grounds, will get you under
the water in record time. Expert dive
instructors offer the full range of PADI
courses.
Clockwise from above: The sun sets beyond the island of Savai’i; one of the countless number of church facades; a sea turtle; Savai’i locals;
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
KiaOra
“The jungle stretched
up into clouds that
never left the islands’
mountain centres, and
the reef-encircled water
was a perfect blue,
with breakers foaming in
the distance and families
perched beachside.”
by the water’s surface, the sunlight painted the
mossy rock walls with moving webs of refracted
light. The water was cool against the sweltering sun:
fresh-water springs flow into the trench, cooling
the bath-like ocean. I sat on a half-submerged rock
and watched the rising sun chase shadows from
the surface, listening to the crabs scurry across the
rock beneath a veil of vines as birds flew across the
electric-blue firmament.
The water flows gently back and forth as it moves
with the ocean beyond. To flow out with it, the trick
is to position yourself near the wall closest to the
ocean and wait for the current to change. Then to take a couple of deep
breaths and a final very deep breath, feel the water tug at your body,
duck under, and follow the submarine chute towards the ghostly blue
rhombus that marks its terminus. The ceiling of black rock dips near its
end; with a final flick of my fins I passed this little lip and followed my
guide, Surf X’s Kelvin Kay, to the surface, to a cavern separated by walls
of rock from the open ocean on one side and the trench on the other.
A spectral light glowed through the water and glittered on the rock
above, and the choppy ocean echoed in the chamber. I trod water in the
gloom before diving through another much smaller tunnel, leading to the
ocean. The surf rolled in against the rocky coast, and ducking my head
under, the ocean floor fell steeply away into the depths.
A couple of days earlier I had explored those depths. Twelve metres
under water, with a tank on my back for the first time, I reflected that
only two hours before I’d never touched a piece of scuba equipment in
my life. I had woken that morning to a tropical deluge – I entered the little
shack from which AquaSamoa operates soaked by the pouring rain,
and did my hour’s practice in the swimming pool as a steady drizzle fell.
But I left the weather behind when I first slid down through the depths
of a horseshoe-shaped coral bowl known as Ed’s Den, just outside
the encircling reef off ’Upolu’s northwest coast. Dive instructor Joseph
Lamon, from Fiji, preceded me, pointing out spots of interest.
the impressive Alofaaga Blowholes on Savai’i.
ai r n ew z eala n d . co . n z

KiaOra
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travel
+Samoa
He picked up a sea cucumber, grey and boxy and roughly the
proportions of a tiny shipping container – a comparison that lost its
worth when it wriggled in my hands. Orange conch shells nestled in
the coral, the fleshy slugs inside them bristling away when overturned,
and schools of anthias fish, of a surreally intense purple, darted about.
I eased under rocky arches and overhangs, the water’s surface a grey
ceiling on the world, even as it is a floor of sorts on the more familiar
one above.
Half an hour passed like a couple of minutes. With my air running low
we returned to the surface. While I’d been absent from it, the day had
improved. The rain had stopped and the cloud had lifted; the islands
of Manono and Apolima were now visible, as was an outline of Savai’i
in the distance. The driver of the boat roused himself from where he’d
Above: Sa’Moana Resort. Below: To Sua.
been napping on the floor and helped me out of the water. The juice of
a fresh coconut washed the salt from my mouth as we motored back
to shore.
My last full day in Samoa was a Sunday. On the way to Lalomanu
Beach, on ’Upolu’s very south-eastern tip, we shared the road with
parishioners in their Sunday best, on their way home from church
in the back of utes or on foot on the side of the road. According to
mythology, the Samoan goddess of war, Nafanua,
prophesised that a new religion would one day
“Magic
come to dominate Samoa; this, and the zeal of the
early missionaries, meant Samoa was well primed
turned white as I
to accept Christianity, and it has long been at the
drew my hand across heart of the country’s society. The somnolence
of the villages – Sunday is very much a day of
it, and schools of
rest – where families sat fanning themselves deep
anthias fish, of a
in shady fales, and the emptiness of Lalomanu
Beach, seemed evidence enough of this.
Lalomanu Beach was devastated by the 2009
intense purple,
tsunami. The disaster killed nearly 200 people
across the Pacific, and the photos show this idyllic
darted about.”
stretch transformed into a nightmare of scattered
detritus and shredded coconut trees. It was hard
to reconcile with the perfection of the scene that day: a perfect whiteContact samoa.travel
sand beach dotted with fales, the black reef preceding the breakers
beyond, and the small uninhabited island of Namua just offshore. The
water was warm and clear, with only the gentlest remnants of those big
breakers reaching the beach. A tsunami warning system has now been
samoa
installed, but for the victims of the disaster, who had never considered
the possibility, the beauty turned almost instantly to terror. Some have
rebuilt on higher ground and the jungle has reclaimed many of the lots
that line the road to the beach.
Air New Zealand offers
daily non-stop flights from
On that Sunday, however, the water was nothing but inviting. After
Auckland to Apia, with
lunch and a swim, the only questions to answer were how long to
connections from across the
read before I napped, and for how long that nap would be. Despite my
domestic network.
best efforts, the answer to the first question was about two sentences,
while the answer to the second was as long as it took for the sun’s
movement to rob me of the shade. It woke me some time later with its
heat, and I suddenly needed another swim.
Story James Borrowdale
coral
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ai r n ew z eala n d . co . n z

KiaOra
Photographs Getty Images, Corbis
surreally