Today was our last day in Apia.
After breakfast we drove an hour to the ferry terminal which is a couple of kilometres beyond the airport where we arrived almost a week ago.
The ferry took about an hour to get us from the main island of Upolu to the sister island of Savai’i which is actually bigger – one of the biggest islands in the (South?) Pacific according to Simon. The only wildlife I saw from the boat was a number of flying fish, taking off in fright to escape from the ferry itself it seems.
On arrival we had decided to drive in the opposite direction from our accommodation in order to see one of the tourism highlights of the island – the Alofaaga blowholes. These were indeed impressive, although they didn’t take up a lot of our time to visit, even including the gnarly access road. Thank goodness for rentals!
My theory on blowholes is that there is a continuum between waves splashing against rocks (Ho hum) all the way through to blowholes (internationally famous, gee whiz! That’ll be ten tala each, please). I got right up close and personal with one blowhole, ending up covered in salt spray and putting myself at risk to get excellent video records. Unfortunately I didn’t take any photos I can put on this blog…maybe I can extract an impressive still somehow…just leave it with me.
Google maps told us that we were virtually equidistant from our accommodation if we went left or right i.e. we could not have got further if we’d tried, which meant two hours more driving for poor Simon until we got to our resort. It was only 97 kms but it’s very hard to keep up a good speed as previously mentioned. The drivers on this island were if anything more erratic than on the other. Safest to give them plenty of room as they drifted gently about the roadway.
This island seems to have less roadrunners, dogs and cats but more pigs, horses and bicycles, and the same (excessive) number of fales and churches.
Simon has done another fantastic job of booking our accommodation (having said that a giant cockroach just scuttled across the floor). Our fale is metres from the beach, and we arrived here just in time for sunset cocktails at the bar. Bliss.
