Up at 4 am to catch the red eye, only for it to be delayed by 40 minutes which saw me anxiously googling alternative means of getting to Samoa if we missed the connection for our flight in Auckland.
In the end we got to our gate in Auckland before they even started boarding, which was lucky as all the Air NZ flights were booked out for the next week and otherwise we’d have had to fly via Fiji which would have added significantly to the expense as well as delaying us by a day. Kiwis are all desperate to escape the winter it seems.
We had a spare seat between us on the flight to Samoa which I took to be a sign of good luck until Simon remembered he’d actually paid extra for it. I watched “Lara Croft tomb raider”, the 2018 version which had an actress in the starring role who was considerably less pneumatic than Angelina Jolie. Enjoyable although with much of the action occurring in the titular tomb, which was dark, so it may not have been the best choice on a tiny screen with lots of reflections (I had commandeered the window seat and it was sunny up there above the clouds).
The arrivals procedure at the airport was very smooth, which contrasted with the car hire process. This was entirely manual, with everything laboriously copied into a notebook by hand. I felt sorry for the couple with a baby waiting behind us, especially when the car hire representative then followed us out to review our car and carefully noted down all the tiny scratches on it. I was a little bemused that he would bother doing this, as they were all pretty insignificant – until we got round the far side, where there was an enormous ding across several panels, where the car had obviously hit something side-on at some speed. Seeing that, I was quite pleased he was being so fastidious.
We then drove off across the island to our resort, with Simon at the wheel and me in charge of navigation. Five minutes in I had us caught up in a heaving school pick-up zone, requiring a multipoint turn for us to extricate ourselves, which I think I successfully managed to blame on a flaw in google maps. Apart from that, the roads were not too busy. Most people seemed to drive fairly sedately, with a tendency to straddle the centre line which might be to avoid falling coconuts and running over dogs and chickens, rather than an attempt to stop anyone from overtaking.
The houses were fairly basic but well maintained. All of the biggest and most elaborate buildings were churches, of multiple different denominations it seemed.
We checked into our resort and then I had a nap until happy hour, which runs from 4 to 7 at the beachside bar. This tiny venue is well located, on a little promontory out in the surf, but has a very basic menu.
I had the cocktail of the day “Green leaves” which I deeply regretted. From there we went for an early dinner, a tactical error because this is when all the families with young children were also eating. I am out of the habit of hearing children whining and crying and running around. It was most un relaxing. The meal was fine, although both of Simon’s top two entree courses were off. Who would have thought raw fish would be so hard to come by on an island? In the end we both had scallops from NZ.
It took the wait staff half an hour to tell us the lava cake was no longer available, and then an anxious waitress came back to ask me if Simon wanted coke in the Cointreau he had ordered to go with dessert. I was tempted fleetingly to say yes just to see his face. Anyway, the berry meringue we shared was nice, and we got back to our room relatively dry in spite of the rain. Well, I had an umbrella, but it was fairly small, and there was no point both of us getting wet trying to share it.
A pretty nice first day on holiday. And now I’ve just got back to bed from answering a knock on the door, it was the diffident waitress from earlier in the evening, she had to chase us all the way back to our room to sign our bill. Oops.