Sunny Samoa

We didn't touch down till the early hours of the morning, we were both excited about warm weather that neither of us were too tired. For our first two nights we stayed in a beautiful place called 'Hidden Gardern' in the islands capital Apia, a selection of huts surrounded by a dense tropical garden. Breakfast was included in the price and was possible the nicest we had since being away, it included fresh fruit (from the garden) and rounds of toast. Eti who runs the place is a local legend who knows everything about the islands and he helped us plan our time.

Bright is beautiful

We had a very civilized first day that involved in relaxing snorkel in the local marine park and a good bite to eat in one of the capitals nicest restaurants at lunch. The weather was fantastic and was warming our frozen New Zealand bones, the only problem was we weren't used to walking in the sapping heat and found it hard going. To make matters worse every time we walked some where we had to carry stones incase a pack of feral dogs thought we looked tasty.

Look at that sand!

On our second day we headed over to beach fale (traditional Samoan huts) on the other side of the island. We were greeted by Christmas carols blasting out of the resorts massive hifi. It was nice to be back on a beach again, we quickly settled back into the life of not doing much except for going for the occasional swim and drinking (in Mark's opinion) the best lager in the world, Vailima.

After a few days of this hard life we decided we needed to relax some more and headed off to the islands top famous beach. The only way for us to get there was on the public buses, and these were an experience and a half. First of they don't look like normal buses, they're half wooded and appear to be coloured in by children with bright wax crayons. Inside there is a hierarchy as to who sits where, the older you are the closer to the front you sit and every time some one new gets on the bus people shift round and swap seats. Things get more interesting when all the seats have gone as people then tend to seat on each others laps even strangers and Samoans are not particularly small people!

Palm carving

After our crazy bus journey we arrived at Lalomanu, the beach here was stunning and was the paradise that we never found in Thailand. The sand was almost pure white leading down to the clearest and bluest of waters and the beach was fringed by palms. To make things even better there was a massive reef only 10 metres out into the sea.

Finally we had to say goodbye, we were both pretty shocked at how beautiful Samoa was. We originally just planned it in as a final week of sun but it offered so much more with it's fantastic people and easy going way of life. We were both sad to leave especially as we would be back in the UK in only a few days time.

Paradise!

Scary sea monster