5513 This is the vertical 'flowerpot rock'. It appears to be floating in the air because the sun was behind it and to lighten it us so you could see it, the background of the picture disappeared.
5516 Diana on the beach in front of the horizontal 'flowerpot rock'.
5562 Loane Viliamu Monument and Church. The monument is the dark, rounded top tablet covering the left side of the church door. The bus on the right is our transportation. A wooden passenger compartment mounted on a truck chassis with a cab front. Windows open because it has no air conditioning.
5564 Inside the Loane Viliamu Church. The wooden ceiling is beautiful and you can see the high shine on the tile floor. There's a balcony behind the arches on the floor above the side aisles. A very pretty church.
5588 D on the Leone Coast, site of the first missionary landing on the island. The village cemetery is just behind me.
Nov 18 – Cross the International Dateline. Today we crossed the date line, that magic bump in the ocean that signals one of two things, you're either going to completely miss a day or you're going to live one twice a la Groundhog Day.
I spent the day goofing off because I knew I'd get a do-over tomorrow. Actually, I did go around the ship taking some picture of the flowers and the upper decks where I never go. They have Club HAL up there but since there are no kids on the ship, it's empty. There's also a place called The Oasis where adults are not allowed or anyone under 13. The sign at the gate says "Teens Only". It's a nice little space with a waterfall and some metal palm trees plus a game room, computer lounge and video game room. That's probably where they hood up the Wii.
The cast gave an encore performance of 'That's Life'. A show built mainly around the Rat Pack. They had songs that were big hits for Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and of course, the Chairman of the Board, Frank Sinatra. Lots of jazz stylings from the band. It's was a good show.
Nov 18 – Groundhog Day. Today I decided to buckle down and write some on my journal. Guadalcanal threw me completely off schedule, just as Viet Nam did last year. Thinking about my Dad being on that island for months, in the heat and humidity, fighting a well-entrenched, determined enemy, not to mention the bugs, one or more of which gave him the malaria that plagued him until the middle '60s. There was so much I wanted to write that I couldn't write at all. I know that seems silly but it's true. The show tonight was Marty Henne and while I like his voice and certainly like the stories he tells about the songs and songwriters, I didn't go to the show.
Nov 19 – Pago Pago, Tutuila, American Samoa. We haven't been here since 1991. It will be interesting to see what changes have been made in 22 years. Last time we were here, they were hit with a bad typhoon about 2 days after we departed. I know they've had at least one intense storm since then and a powerful tsunami a few years ago. Some of the changes were probably not voluntary. The missionaries were very successful here. The vast majority of the residents are Christian, mostly Protestant.
Today we are heading out to see some of Tutuila Island. The fact that they are church people here was supported by the churches we saw. In 15 minutes, we passed 18 churches, 14 of those in the last 12 minutes before our first stop. Since we were driving about 35 miles per hour and saw 14 churches in 20% of an hour, we were traveling at the rate of 70 churches per hour, twice the rate of our miles per hour. Yes, I know that doesn't mean anything but it's a great factoid anyway. Actually, what it means is that we were seeing a church every half mile, on the average.
While driving along the coast, we passed the famous 'Flower Pots'. They are two small upthrusts, one in the water and one at the beach. The one is the water is a vertical cylinder and the top is completely covered with trees and plants. The one on the beach is a horizontal cylinder with the long side covered in plants and trees. The story is that once they were two star-crossed lovers who were forbidden to be together. They attempted to flee the island but only one made it. That's the upright cylinder in the ocean. The other died in the attempt and that's the one on the beach. I can't remember which one died but I think it was the lady. Pretty bad storytelling, huh?
We drove past a McDonald's, the large satellite dishes for the phone and cable service, the airport, the Army Reserve base and Carl's Jr. where our young guide, 23 years old, said they have his favorite burger on the island. It's their equivalent of the Six-Dollar Burger in the states, which of course doesn't even cost $6 if you get it as a combo, and I agree with him. For a 'fast food' burger, it's good. Sorry In-'n-Out and Whataburger fans, they don't measure up, although they're at the top of the fast-food burger chain list too. To me, not much else at Carl's Jr. is worth eating and their French fries are not good at all. Now if you're talking about fast burgers that are not members of a chain, Biggie's Burgers in San Clemente is hard to beat although I have to admit that there are 'local' places all over the US that serve wonderful, sometimes very unique, burgers, so no hate mail please!
We did pass two jet skis trying to pull a beached whale out of a small cove that ended in a seawall supporting the road. They were not having much luck. Later I heard that a boat showed up and tried to help them but when we drove back, later in the afternoon, the whale was still there but covered up. From the smell, I'd day it was dead.
Our first stop was at the Loane Viliamu Monument and Church. He was the first missionary to come to Tutulia in 1832. He was born Tottenham in England in 1796 and died here in 1839. It's a Western style church with two square towers flanking a single entrance with a peaked roof over the nave. Inside the ceiling over the nave and apse is wood. It's done in mahogany and a very dark wood. The two are set in various patterns and have with green and yellow tile around the connections for the chandeliers. The two side aisles have balconies above them. The balconies have arched openings between the pillars supporting the clearstory. The clearstory has square windows set turned 45˚ so one corner points up and the opposite one down. Each is done in stained glass and everyone is different. It's a pretty church and worth the stop.
From the church, we continued west to the Leone Coast, the site of the first missionary landing. We then turned south to reach our main destination, a Samoan village where we will see some dancing and get to sample some food cooked in the traditional hot rock 'oven'. One the way in we stopped at the village's traditional cemetery. It overlooks the rocky seacoast and is a beautiful sight and site. (I've always wanted to do that, and today was the day.)
We were welcomed to the village by man and women in their colorful Samoan shirts and lava-lavas. They had a small booth selling some local items, lava-lavas, bracelets, necklaces, fans and carvings, plus water, soda and beer. They had places seats in the shake of the large trees facing a raised platform on which a fire had been started. A young man climbed a tree near the stage and dropped down a coconut. The older man husked it by pounding each quarter onto a pointed stick and then pulling the husk away. Four operations and he had the cleaned coconut. He threw it back to the young man who cracked it and poured out the water. He then used a sharpened stone attached to the top of a short post to grind out the white meat of the coconut that he squeezed to get coconut oil.
They built an oven like the one I've described before. First a fire set atop river rocks, wood removed, stones dusted, food on rocks, large leaves on food, time, done. They had pre-made, tuna with coconut juice, spinach with coconut juice, bananas, taro and the brain like structure that's inside the coconut but not the white meat sticking to the shell. I'd never eaten that before, it was good. The tuna in coconut was great, as was the spinach. I've gotta try that when I get home. Just tuna and coconut milk baked in a large leaf. They didn't add anything else.
After eating, they had set up several pavilions were we could view traditional activities or try some local items. They had one area where they had some fruits and coconut items for us to try. They had some of the coconut center to try raw as well as the white meat of the coconut. Raw the center part was not very flavorful and soft. Certainly nothing objectionable about it.
After the young man sounded a conch shell horn, they performed several dances for us. First, a single lady performed the 'Getting up in the morning' dance. She pantomimed her actions in the morning in time to the music they were playing. Some of the things were easy to identify others were not. Perhaps those things were female related preparations.
The next performances were by three ladies and a man. Two of the ladies were plus-sized women but they were the most light-footed, graceful dancers you'd ever want to see and the largest one was the most graceful. The other lady and man were typical Samoan size and also very graceful. This quartet performed about four different dances all in the style of early hula, not so much hip shaking as graceful arm and leg movements with a warm smile on their faces.
For the last dance the 18 year old village princess came out and asked for 3 male volunteers to come up to dance with her. Each of the men was given a lava-lava to wear for the dance and they were asked to mimic her movements. She knew the steps and the hand movements but they lacked the style and grace of her elders. The young coconut tree climber ran through the dancers with a huge leaf, whipping it on the ground and howling. Everyone got a laugh from his antics. He seemed to be really enjoying himself. I know we were.
It was a very nice show by the entire troupe and it was nice to have a low-key and very warm welcome by the local people. Their smiles were genuine as was their desire for us to have a good time and learn a little about their culture.
Then it was back to the port by a different route some of the way to enjoy the island's scenery and listen to local legends told by our guide.
A very nice day indeed.
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