Adventures of Sea, Sky and Turf

Dedicated to everyone who made my x-mas visit home so wonderful, especially my family and friends.

Alright, its official, we have entered summer here.  For those of you who are confused, winter in the northern hemisphere is summer in the southern hemisphere.  And summer here means rain, rain and more rain. Typically Samoa doesn't get to hot, rarely does the temperature rise above 92 degrees.  However, after it rains, it can get incredibly humid and if the wind isn't blowing that humidity can be such a drag.  There are days where i go through 3 sets of shirts when working in the field.

Recently i got to go on a work trip to the Manu'a islands with my co-worker Mila.  These are the outer islands of American Samoa.  There are very few people on these outlying islands and it can be incredibly difficult to get there.  Only cash is accepted so you typically leave with a lot of it in your wallet to cover all of your expenses.

We left on a monday from the airport here on the main island of Tutuila.  You ride in one of these dinky little planes that sits maybe 15 and you have to get weighed before they give you your boarding pass, i know its because they need to balance the plane but having to get weighed for a plane ride is not the nicest of experiences not only because you realize how much weight you've gained but also because you know your getting on a plane that could tilt and fall out of the sky if someone decided to have that extra big mac the day before. 

We were bringing a lot of stuff as we were going to be surveying while were there.  I found out that our checked baggage was overweight.  After choking over a whopping $52 we got on the plane.  The flight over to Manua takes about 50 mins and on a clear day you can see the Manua islands from Tutuila.  The landing was a little rough but we made it in one piece.  Sadly, all of our luggage did not.  Now this was surprising to me as not only had i paid for the extra luggage but also that this airport is hardly the bustling hub that you typically lose your baggage in.  There are maybe 4 flights a day so there really isn't any excuse.  The piece of luggage that they forgot to bring was the one piece that we really needed, our surveying rod.  After calling the office on the main island, they gave me some sob story about how they tought it was going to Western Samoa.  They said that they would put it on the next flight arriving wednesday.  Whatever.

We were picked up by our host family, someone who i had met through my connections with the park service.  He was very nice and drove us and our stuff over to the dock where a fishing boat was waiting to take us to the two smaller islands.  The reason you have to take a boat is because the airline that flies to the Manua islands never kept up their only plane that was capable of landing on the islands tiny runway, as a result you are required to take a plane to the larger of the 3 islands and then take a fishing boat to the smaller ones.  The fishing boat captains make a killing off of you charging your $150 one-way!  The ride there is always better than the ride back, this is probably because you are going with the waves.  We arrived on Ofu around 3 pm.  Got picked up by the National Parks guy Carlo and were dropped off at the lodge.

Its hard to describe how isolated these islands are.  There are maybe 15 cars on the whole island.  And maybe 500 people total.  My goal was to sign up 3 clients on this island but to my surprise, Mila went crazy and we were working until 7 pm signing up a total of 6 clients.  That night we played a couple games of pool before calling it a night.

The next day we started surveying.  It was an interesting experience because without a surveying rod or surveying flags you have to improvise (which is kinda the name of the game here in Samoa).  We found a big stick and established a baseline using my hip.  We tied a piece of surveying tape to the spot on the stick and used that as our baseline.  Then for surveying flags we had to go hack down the forest and get sticks that we could stick into the ground to show the client where they needed to plant their grass.  Not being that handy with a machete, one of our clients took pity on me and decided to help us out.  With his help we were able to survey all 6 clients in record time, even if it was pouring rain during the last half.

That night we were approached by a traveller named John.  He had been on the island for a couple of weeks taking photographs.  I guess his job is a proffessional photographer and he has a studio or something.  He asked me if we were heading back to the larger island tomorrow or not.  I told him that we were but probably not until 11am or so.  He said that he needed to get on the 11am flight and therefore needed to leave by 7am or so.  Being the nice guy that i am i re-arranged my schedule to have our boat driver pick us up at 7am seeing as we were done with surveying on this island anyway. 

 

The boat ride back the next morning was rough, it always is going back.  Thankfully dramamane and sleeping usually works for me.  We arrive at the boat dock on Tau and are picked up by our host Junior.  John asks me if i would be willing to give him a ride to the airport.  Seeing as we were going that way anyway i told him fine.  We stopped at a store that is run by the airline lady so that he could check what time he was supposed to be at the airport (the flights have erradict schedules and you typically don't know when the plane is going to leave until that day).  She told him be there by 10 am.  Seeing as it was 8am i asked him if he would be alright coming with us to do some of our work. He said he didn't want to be stuck at the airport for 2 hours.  After a little bit of driving we arrived at our homestay in Fitiuta which is a couple mins from the airport.  At about 10:20 AM he asks if we can give him a ride to the airport.  We get there and low and behold he is too late, they have already weighed everyone, balanced the plane and sent the manifest into Pago.  This guy lost his cookies.  He was screaming at the airline lady and blaming me for him being late!  After all i've done for this guy he has the audacity to blame me for his misgivings.  After clearly explaining to him that making a scene wasn't going to help his cause and making sure he understood that his missing his plane was not my fault and that i was NOT going to pay for his accomodations for the next 2 nights, the plane arrived.  Naturally without our surveying rod, great!

The next 2 days were uneventful, we surveyed, we swam, we ate.  On friday we arrived at the airport early to make sure that we were there on-time.  We got our bags weighed and then ourselves.  I set up my hammock and took a little nap before hearing the plane land.  As we were boarding i noticed that all of our bags were not loaded yet, i asked the pilot who said that "we are overweight as it is, gotta leave some of it behind."  I convinced him to leave my bag and take the contracts with us.  We got on the plane and the pilot tired once to take off but had to abort.  He tried a second time to take off and again had to abort.  And just for good measure he tried one more time to take off but had to abort.  Turns out that there is a shimmy in the nose of the plane preventing a safe takeoff.  There was a faint hope that the mechanic might come and fix it before dark fell but as the sun was getting lower and lower that hope faded faster and faster. 

Now i had heard a rumor that McConnell Dowell (a local construction firm that was building a brand new road and sea wall for an island of maybe 15 cars) was finished and had chartered a boat to take their equiptment back to Pago.  So i went to the store and with my last $20 bought some beer, that night, Mila and I went to the construction house where everyone was playing pool.  After a couple of drinks i managed to figure out that the boat would be arriving at first light and would depart once all the equiptmemt was loaded. 

That morning we went to the boat dock and saw the boat.  I went on board to talk with the captain who said that he couldn't allow us passage with them unless he got coast guard approval first.  Well geez, the coast guard is my upstairs neighbor so i called him about 8 times before he finally answered and gave the approval to the boat captain to take 12 people so long as he didn't charge.  The 12 spots filled up quickly.  Loading took the better part of the day and right around 1 pm we saw the government plane flying into the airport.  Like some mass exodus out of egypt everyone who had been waiting on or for a spot on the boat bailed to go to the airport.  Can't say i blame them, a 1 hour plane ride or a 9 hour boat ride, which would you choose?

I decided that even if i did get on the plane, all of our stuff wouldn't.  I figured the boat was going to be the sure thing and the plane was going to be a maybe.  At 2 pm we loaded up and right as we were pushing off everyone's phone's went beserk.  Turns out that everyone who bailed for the airport were not able to get on the flight due to the fact that plane is required to make a test flight prior to taking on passengers.  They all begged the captain to wait for them, but the captain was not about to break his schedule.  Sure enough right as we were leaving the boat dock cars were flooding into the harbor.  Men were grabbing their hair and throwing stuff on the ground, upset that they had missed their only escape from the island until next thursday.  I felt bad for them but had a sick sense of self-gratitude for going with my gut about riding the boat. 

The boat ride was uneventful but nice.  The wind was at our back, the sea was calm.  We were only doing about 7 knots but that was because we were so heavy what with all the equiptment on board.  The crew were incredibly hospitable.  They invited us up into the wheel house were i got to drive the boat.  We then went downstairs and watched a movie.  It was clear that everyone had seen this movie too many times because they all knew when the suspensful moments would come up and were very vocal with their "oooohhhs" and "ahhhhhs".  They even fed us, turkey tail and cabbage, yum!

We arrived in Pago 9.5 hours later at around midnight.  The next morning i got my refund from the airline company and blew it on groceries!

It was definatly my biggest adventure to date in Samoa and my last with Mila, she has now gone off to Las Vegas to live with her family.  Nothing went as it was supposed to but that is sorta the name of the game with these islands.

Phew, long blog, my hands are tired now.

Until next time.