Leslie and David's Wanderings: 23 March 2024 The National Park of American Samoa

Today is our second Saturday March 23 as we crossed the international date line overnight going from Western Samoa to American Samoa. We arrived in Pago Pago around 8 am and were the first ones off the boat and over to the Best Tours tent to meet up with our tour. There were 5 other couples off the ship on the tour including two couples that are on their quest to see all the national parks. As we waited for everyone to gather, the dancers that had greeted the ship as it dock came over to get out of the sun and get some drinks after a very energetic dance and singing routine. One of the other couples said this was national park number 63 for them and the other couple said this was their 48^th. So we had fun exchanging tails of our park adventures and thoughts of which were the best and worst. Our tour guide, Gertrude, led us to a rickety looking home made bus. It was a Ford F-350 that they had cut the cab and bed off and strapped on this homemade bus body. The seats were hard wood and there was no air conditioning, just open plastic windows. Our first stop was the national park headquarters/visitor center. There we got our passport stamp (our 57^th NP) and the required park hat and tee shirts. We had expected to see a park movie, but they no longer showed it because someone had complained it made the natives seem bad. But the exhibits were interesting and the building was air conditioned. The park was created when the villages agreed to lease large plots of land to the National Park System for 50 years in 2008. The park was created to protect the rain forest, fruit bat habitat, and sea turtle nesting sands. After listening to Gertrude describe the culture on the island and how most of the people on the island live off US Government subsidies, we decided that the land was leased more as a form of government hand out to the villages. There are very few hiking trails and the park is run by the American Samoa government, not by the national park system. Our next stop was at a tree, on private property, where the vast majority of the fruit bats hang upside down during the daylight. No one knows why this tree is the only one they hang out in. Next, we drove past the main employer in the islands, the Starkist Tuna packing factory. The smell of old tuna was almost overwhelming. Then it was up to the top of Afono Pass where we had a nice view of the harbor below and the mountain called “The Rainmaker”. The “bus” had a hard time climbing up the steep road to the top of the pass. Then we drove down into the village of Afono and then over another steep ridge to the village of Vita. Near the top of the ridge we stopped for a view of the Pola Island and Vatia Bay. Shortly past the village, the road ended at a National Park sign. We all piled out, got national park sign pictures and then walked out toward Pola Island on the remains of an old roadway . We saw an old WWII pillbox on the shoreline reminding us that this was the front line of the war in the Pacific in 1941. We walked out near Vai’ava Straight National Landmark, but the tide was coming in so we could not get too close. Then it was a half mile walk back to the ”bus”. The heat and humidity was taking its toll on some of the older folks on the tour with the heat index up near 110F. Then we drove back to Pago Pago and stopped at a market, but most of the folks declined to get off the bus. Leslie and I went in, but Gertrude soon came to collect us as the rest of the group wanted to go on. Our next stop was at the tour company building (also doubles as a gym) to have some fresh fruit and fried bread fruit chips. Then we were given a demonstration on how they weave baskets out of coconut tree leaves and how they open coconuts, and make the coconut milk (all of which we got to sample). Then they took us to the Flower Pot Islands with a stop for David to run into a grocery store and buy some toothpaste for Leslie. On the way back to the boat, Gertrude stopped the bus a couple of times to collect some other cruise ship passengers that were out on their own and having a hot walk back to the ship in the heat. We arrived back at the ship soaking wet from our own sweat. Our cabin was not very cool, but it was better after being in that heat. Cool showers help bring back our energy in time to go to the martini bar where we met another couple, Jim and Sharon, that were fulltime RVers in a nice class B. We had fun exchanging experiences over cocktails.