Pago Pago-American Samoa

I, yet again had another Island drive. The bus was a funky made up short bus. Ya know, the kind you had to take going to kindergarten.ok, Maybe you didnt but my school had those busses for the really young kids. It was made up cool though. On the inside it was - well the sits were barely there. Lol. Everything on the inside was colorful. Open air, not to bad. It didn’t bother me. Pleasant passengers.



Our first stop was Fatima Futi. It is a pair of rocks in the ocean that’s really close to the shore. I thought it was cool. You can swim right next to them. The story behind it: The king of Western Samoa at the time restricted people to this one island. This one couple wanted to leave. Once the king found out that they left, he turned them into these giant rocks before they got to the other island. There’s more details, but that’s the jest of it.

We than headed to the ava ceremony. Now, I didn’t know what to expect about this Ava ceremony, but it was interesting. All the Ava ceremony is, is this peppery plant they make into a drink, and they present it to the head chief, than others at the ceremony. You can do a blessing and this drink gives you power. Its good for the body the locals say. It was really hard to shoot this ceremony. It was a giant place, but it had these giant pillars around the whole area. I got what I could. Wasn’t that bad, but the pillars were a pain. Add the crazy amount of passengers that attended and I had a real challenge picking out a spot to shoot.



After the ceremony they did a few dances. I like the dances. I am always a fan of seeing them. They had such energy. The guys dances were awesome. Very nice dudes. They also loved the camera. Lol. They were hams. I wasn’t expecting that.

Afterward, we headed to the first church that was built in American Samoa. Nate ended up going to the same spot, so I didn’t put it in my edit.

All in all I liked Pago Pago, American Samoa. The guide was really nice. Oh! I cant forget this: ya know how they say the Samoans are big people? Well they weren’t lying! Lol. Big peeps, the kids too. Crazy! It was very clean there, I noticed. Some islands you don’t see it being very clean and organized. Oh, something else I noticed, they have no cemeteries there. They pay no taxes on land. All the land you own is yours, and it can't be taken from you. So, when a family members dies they bury them in the front yard. I saw some elaborate graves too. The higher the status the family member has in the family, and in the village the bigger the grave.

This port was what I needed after dreadful Tahiti. Lol