Third blog copy from Oriana

Third blog copy from Oriana Saturday February 7^th

A day on land at last as we arrived on Friday at Pago Pago, the capital town of American Samoa and very hot it was too even at 8 am when we moored in the very pretty natural harbour. We decided to do our own thing and explore, so we walked into the little town and the first thing we saw was the carved totem pole/statue, very elaborate as you can see in the picture.

The people here are very friendly and happy despite not having any great income, no need for air conditioning, most houses having no windows to let the cooling breeze flow through. They are also the most religious crowd we have come across, many churches of all kinds of denominations and posters everywhere urging the population to live clean lives, give up drugs, not have sex before marriage, not to beat wives etc.

Sue was more adventurous and decided we should jump on a local bus, despite the fact we had no map of the island no idea where it was going! It had open windows, reggae music playing and the driver wore a sarong. Off we set having agreed a $2 fare with the driver and it proved to be the best thing we could have done. In all we must have gone around 20 miles on a tour of the island. The driver stopped at places he thought we might be interested in and even waited outside a small shop while we bought a cold drink. The other passengers were quite unperturbed by this and all waited patiently while we took photos. In conclusion we enjoyed it so much we stayed on the bus for the return journey, giving the driver $10 for the whole 3 hour trip which gave us a very good oversight of Samoa. We even noticed that most of the locals bury their nearest and dearest in the front garden, next door to the house so they are not forgotten, quite neat really.

Sue said it was one of the best days she had enjoyed on this trip and a couple of photos give you a flavour of the scenery.

It was good to get back on board for a late lunch and cool down after which John had to work as we staged the quiz, “Those Radio Times” in the evening after dinner. This proved very popular as the passengers wrestled with their knowledge of old signature tunes, variety shows and so on, all to win a Oriana bottle of wine and a $5 personal radio which John had picked up in a “bargain” store on shore.

Next stop is Fiji on Monday, where we will try to post this and catch up with emails from those of you suffering the large amount of UK snow. We are actually about to lose a day as we cross the international date line so we go from 12 hours behind GMT to 12 hours in front of it so for us, Sunday 8^th of February is the day that does not exist, weird or what!!