The Samoan Islands seem destined to get me up early. This morning at 6 as we were pulling into Apia, the capital of Samoa, less than 100 miles from Pago Pago, Suzi got up to use the toilet. When she flushed a fountain of water sprayed from where the toilet joined the wall, and it kept on coming. Fortunately, it was incoming water rather than outgoing water. The bathroom is a module with a sill at the doorway. At the water rose Suzi made a dam of towels to keep the water inside the toilet module. The dam did not completely hold so our stateroom carpet got a little damp. My shower scuffs floated across the floor. We called Guest Services. I got dressed to run down a deck to use the toilet that serves the Ocean Bar. There is no public head on our deck.
A steward came with a shop vac to suck up the water, then the plumber. It was our good fortune that we were awake and dressed when we heard drumming outside. We went to the balcony and saw a welcome performance of Samoan drumming and dancing which Suzi thought was a cross between Hawaiian Hula and New Zealand Hakka.
We had planned to go snorkeling with friends at a beach about 5 minutes’ walk from the port. You can only swim over the reef for a couple of hours around high tide, which was at 8:50. I called John to tell him we wouldn’t be joining them. I was concerned we may have to move rooms. We went up to breakfast while the stewards were working in the room and after breakfast, went to the Samoan Visitors’ Bureau table near the pool to change money and get maps.
The Visitors’ Bureau postcards and stamps. We promised a friend we’d send postcards. But like other postal services from small countries, Samoa Post is not accepting ANY mail for the U.S. because of the executive order ending di minimis shipments to the U.S. (Shipments of under $800 used to be exempt from duty). The USPS set up temporarily set payments ranging from $80 to $200 per piece of mail based on the tariff rate from the country of origin. This would be in place until they could work out a system of determining the true value of a parcel. The rule was not supposed to apply to post cards, letters, and documents but the implementation of the executive order was chaotic so many post offices just stopped sending any mail to America. Bigger countries, like the UK, worked out agreements with the US and resumed sending letters and postcards but some smaller countries, like Samoa still do not ANY send mail to the US. Samoans could not send Christmas cards to their cousins in American Samoa.
When we got back to the room Guest Services told us the toilet was fixed. We are dubious because this is about the third of fourth time we have called the plumber in two weeks. Up until now it was a slow leak onto the floor. Perhaps the eruption allowed them to find the real problem. We live in hope. But we were out by 10 AM, too late for snorkeling, but the skies had cleared and we took the shuttle into town.
The shuttlebus driver heard Americans and Kiwi’s teasing each other about driving on the ‘right’ side of the road. He told us that until 2009 Samoa drove on the right (a legacy of German rule at the beginning of the 20th century) but because many Samoans who had worked in New Zealand and Australia brought back cars with the steering wheel on the ‘wrong side.’ they shifted. In 2011 Samoa moved the International Dateline to the east so they lost December 30. They did this so they would have 5 working days in common with their main trading partners, New Zealand and Australia. This puts them in a different day but the same time as their cousins in American Samoa. Both countries speak Samoan and English, but the driver joked that they spoke English with different accents and their Samoan was growing apart with Kiwi or Yankee accents and colloquialisms.
We wandered downtown Apia.
The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception is beautiful, with a wooden ceiling of geometric patterns, colorful walls, and stained glass.
Striking is the reflection of the stained glass on the polished stone (marble) floor. I thought of St. Paul (I Corinthians 13:12 “Through the Glass Darkly.”
Next to it was “Immaculate Coffee,” a coffee house and religious artifacts shop run by the cathedral with motifs from the Sistine Chapel painted on its ceiling. It was air conditioned and Suzi and I indulged ourselves with a Coke.
The city center has municipal and government buildings and a market,…
…but but what intrigued me was a clock tower memorial for soldiers who fell in World War I. New Zealanders built the clocktower in the 1920s, but Samoa entered the war as a German colony. New Zealand quickly occupied Samoa, so Samoans served on both sides. Some served in New Zealand’s Māori Pioneer Battalion and some with German forces. Did the tower commemorate both? No, the winners decide.
Back at the ship I needed a quick swim, so I jumped into the pool, with my hearing aids on. Kevin had given me a hearing aid drying box. It worked and I’m wearing them again. While they were drying, we went out to the local crafts’ market, and I found a Polynesian whale’s tale pendant for Suzi.
We sat in the Crow’s Nest as the tide was running out and watched reefs emerge quickly from where there had been ocean just a few minutes before. At 5 PM we sailed out at low tide, through a gap in the reef, heading for Fiji.
