07/16/2025 – Livin’ the Island Life
Today, we lived life like a local. We casually bummed around and took it easy. We drove to the other end of the National Park of American Samoa where we wandered around and found a short trail to a nice viewpoint overlooking the coast. At the trailhead, we chatted with two other couples, one before our hike and one afterwards. We had a lot in common with both couples. We like to travel, hike, and visit national parks and other beautiful areas. One couple was from the Dallas area and came to American Samoa to visit the national park – just like us. The other couple was from the Czech Republic (or is it called Czechia? Even they did not know) and had been to many of the same places as we have been. When we told them about planning a trip to Churchill, Manitoba next year to see polar bears, beluga whales and the northern lights, they were jealous as they have wanted to go there for a long time as well. They also told us a story about getting pulled over while driving here in American Samoa. The officer asked what the big hurry was. Apparently, they were going 32 mph in a 25 mph zone! We’ve heard about those Czech racers. Dave got his rental up to 28 mph zone once and it was white knuckle time for both of us! It was nice talking with people with similar interests. We then went back to the hotel to nap and lounge around the pool, just like a local.
07/17/2025 – Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on my Head
Today, our last day of our trip (before the 28 hours over two nights of travel to get home), we decided we would go for a nice, last hike in the park, eat a late lunch, shower at the hotel around 5 pm (we opted to pay extra for a late check-out), drive to the west side of the island to watch our last tropical sunset, eat a nice dinner, and get to the airport early so we can address any issues. What a great plan! Of course, great plans sometimes meet greater obstacles.
We drove to the trailhead and were surprised to see about 5 cars already there. It turns out, most of them were park workers. We started out and were anticipating great ocean views. As the skies turned darker, we figured we were in for a little shower. Along the way we met a nice young lady from Pennsylvania (by way of Angola, NY so she is a Bills fan!) just after it started to rain. She advised us that there was a large muddy area up ahead where she had turned around. We chatted for a while and then charged ahead until we found the bog. We turned back – not wanting to get our feet wet. Ha! As the rain became torrential, we felt like we were more swimming than hiking. (BTW – our feet got more than wet…) The hike was still enjoyable, and we saw two HUGE snails, a lizard or two, a Large Marine Toad, and the largest ferns ever on our saunter. We did not see many birds or flying foxes (as the fruit bats are often called), probably because they can’t fly so well when it is raining cats and dogs.
We made it safely back to the car and watched as the clouds parted and the sky became bluer the further we drove away from the trailhead. We then opted to go back to the hotel to change out of our new swim gear. Luckily, the hotel has a guest laundry room and we dried most of our stuff, most importantly including our sneakers which we will be wearing for our trip home.
After a brief respite we headed out again to explore a new area. We opted to head a different direction and felt we should check out the west side of the island. We found a place called Turtle and Shark which had the best ocean view of our entire trip. It was a lot of lava rocks and sand, with waves crashing all around. It was awesome. We saw crabs scuttling about the lava rocks trying to avoid the crashing waves and lots of turtle tracks (hence the significant of the name), but no sharks. Soon we decided to head back to the hotel to wash up and pack for the last time.
