It was a beautiful sail in – the island appears almost deserted until you get closer and around Breaker’s Point into the Harbor. Unfortunately it was pouring as we sailed in. One of those tropical downpours that you associate with the S. Pacific. It cleared a bit as we docked, but just as we were getting ready to go meet our group for our beach tour, it started raining again. As one of the ladies on the tour said, it was like having a bucket of water dropped on your head! We were concerned of course, because we were heading for a beach – but as we learned later – the harbor gets a lot more rain than anywhere else on the island. When the clouds hit the mountain facing the harbor, called the “rainmaker mountain”, go figure!, it always rains. But as we were getting ready to go ashore, it did clear up – and during our little tour it never really rained again!
We had contracted with a tour to “Tisa’s Beach” through our Cruise Critic Group. Tisa and her crew collected us from the ship (ended up with about 50 of us on the tour) and took us in 5 mini vans for a tour of the island. We drove up over a pass in the mountains with gorgeous scenic views, through the National Park where we saw little cave bats, frigate birds and navigational birds, through a couple of villages (where everyone was at church) then on to Tisa’s Beach and Barefoot Bar. The entire island is just gorgeous with verdant lush forests and incredible beach and shore landscape.
This first thing that struck us was how amazing it is that this little island of 16,000 people sitting 2300 miles southwest of Hawaii is actually an American territory. They fly the American flag very proudly, it’s certainly not that. It’s the fact that the island is so remote and tropical that it is hard to grasp that you are basically in part of the States. Everyone lives in a village that is comprised of their extended family. There is a large gathering place in each village, like an open pavilion with columns that hold up the roof. The number of columns corresponds to the number of chiefs in the village. Extended families stay in the village forever, and they are buried there as well. It is an extremely religious island, with more churches per capita than anywhere in the world. (That kind of figures since it was the missionaries who actually settled the island first.) To that point, we arrived on a Sunday and there was barely anything open. Everyone was at home, or at church for the day.
Our van driver, Candy Man, Tisa’s business partner, was incredibly knowledgeable about everything and gave us some great information about the island, it’s culture, the people and the lifestyle. There is a huge Starkist plant here that employs 3000 people. Supposedly they can 3.3 million cans of tuna a day. Yes, a day – we’re having trouble with that fact too, but that’s what he said! The island just recently started trash collection – only 2 years ago. If you have power, you have trash collection and it’s billed to your power bill for $3/month. Also, TV is a fairly new item here – only sine 1960 has there been any TV transmissions. Not everyone has TV, but basically if you can afford a car, you probably have TV and maybe air conditioning.
Also, in reading some material later, we found that Pago Pago only has about 6200 visitors per year. And that number has been falling since 2000 when their main hotel went out of business. Now there’s a few B&B’s that are opening and one hotel with 150 rooms near the airport! Talk about prime place for investing! It definitely has a resort-type quality, secluded, beautiful, lots of swimming, snorkeling, hiking and sun fun available. All it needs is the resort!
Tisa’s village has 22 people living there and she is the acting Chief, as she is the eldest on the island. Her father is actually the chief but he is off island now. When we arrived at the beach, it was packed! Being the only beach open because it is Sunday, all the taxi drivers were bringing ship passengers there. We had a reserved area at the bar, which was great. An old tiki hut with a full service bar (all beverages served out of coolers with ice!) and a small restaurant kitchen in the basement of Tisa’s house. The beach was lovely – in a protected cove with a large reef barrier, you could walk hundreds of yards out in the water and still be at knee depth. We stayed closer to shore as we neglected to bring our water shoes on the trip (duh!). But, closer into shore was lovely, we just floated in about 2 feet of warm water and tried not to drown as little wavelets came in off the reef. Harold and Meryl were on the trip with us, and they snorkeled a bit (with borrowed gear) and said it was great. We were happy to hang out in the shallow water with our beer and wine getting sun and chatting with other ship passengers.
Stayed at the beach for a couple hours then headed back to the ship. Wandered the little market set up outside the pier, then retired to the cabin. And I mean retired! I had had so much sun and fun, I took my first nap on the whole trip! Ed managed to stay awake and read on the balcony!!
Woke up in time for sail away – which was beautiful. Then on to dinner and more wandering around before bed.
We had contracted with a tour to “Tisa’s Beach” through our Cruise Critic Group. Tisa and her crew collected us from the ship (ended up with about 50 of us on the tour) and took us in 5 mini vans for a tour of the island. We drove up over a pass in the mountains with gorgeous scenic views, through the National Park where we saw little cave bats, frigate birds and navigational birds, through a couple of villages (where everyone was at church) then on to Tisa’s Beach and Barefoot Bar. The entire island is just gorgeous with verdant lush forests and incredible beach and shore landscape.
This first thing that struck us was how amazing it is that this little island of 16,000 people sitting 2300 miles southwest of Hawaii is actually an American territory. They fly the American flag very proudly, it’s certainly not that. It’s the fact that the island is so remote and tropical that it is hard to grasp that you are basically in part of the States. Everyone lives in a village that is comprised of their extended family. There is a large gathering place in each village, like an open pavilion with columns that hold up the roof. The number of columns corresponds to the number of chiefs in the village. Extended families stay in the village forever, and they are buried there as well. It is an extremely religious island, with more churches per capita than anywhere in the world. (That kind of figures since it was the missionaries who actually settled the island first.) To that point, we arrived on a Sunday and there was barely anything open. Everyone was at home, or at church for the day.
Our van driver, Candy Man, Tisa’s business partner, was incredibly knowledgeable about everything and gave us some great information about the island, it’s culture, the people and the lifestyle. There is a huge Starkist plant here that employs 3000 people. Supposedly they can 3.3 million cans of tuna a day. Yes, a day – we’re having trouble with that fact too, but that’s what he said! The island just recently started trash collection – only 2 years ago. If you have power, you have trash collection and it’s billed to your power bill for $3/month. Also, TV is a fairly new item here – only sine 1960 has there been any TV transmissions. Not everyone has TV, but basically if you can afford a car, you probably have TV and maybe air conditioning.
Also, in reading some material later, we found that Pago Pago only has about 6200 visitors per year. And that number has been falling since 2000 when their main hotel went out of business. Now there’s a few B&B’s that are opening and one hotel with 150 rooms near the airport! Talk about prime place for investing! It definitely has a resort-type quality, secluded, beautiful, lots of swimming, snorkeling, hiking and sun fun available. All it needs is the resort!
Tisa’s village has 22 people living there and she is the acting Chief, as she is the eldest on the island. Her father is actually the chief but he is off island now. When we arrived at the beach, it was packed! Being the only beach open because it is Sunday, all the taxi drivers were bringing ship passengers there. We had a reserved area at the bar, which was great. An old tiki hut with a full service bar (all beverages served out of coolers with ice!) and a small restaurant kitchen in the basement of Tisa’s house. The beach was lovely – in a protected cove with a large reef barrier, you could walk hundreds of yards out in the water and still be at knee depth. We stayed closer to shore as we neglected to bring our water shoes on the trip (duh!). But, closer into shore was lovely, we just floated in about 2 feet of warm water and tried not to drown as little wavelets came in off the reef. Harold and Meryl were on the trip with us, and they snorkeled a bit (with borrowed gear) and said it was great. We were happy to hang out in the shallow water with our beer and wine getting sun and chatting with other ship passengers.
Stayed at the beach for a couple hours then headed back to the ship. Wandered the little market set up outside the pier, then retired to the cabin. And I mean retired! I had had so much sun and fun, I took my first nap on the whole trip! Ed managed to stay awake and read on the balcony!!
Woke up in time for sail away – which was beautiful. Then on to dinner and more wandering around before bed.
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