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As seems to be the theme on this trip, things did not go quite as we expected. After our somewhat strenuous morning in and around Suva, we had a nice afternoon reading and getting ourselves ready for a strenuous night of eating and drinking great wine. Our departure from Suva was accompanied by the same brass band who greeted us and we had watched a second ship arrive, load and depart behind us. We saw yet another ship dock towards our departure time and also saw them lower the huge hook on the crane to be squirted with WD-40 and then the whole crane picked up its stands and trundled down to unload the new arrival. When we got to La Reserve at 7pm, since we did not want to be the first there, we found ourselves with a choice of sitting at the "GM's table." Since we know Damien LaCroix pretty well by now, that was an added pleasure. There were 2 other couples, who already knew each other from a previous La Reserve dinner on this cruise, one from Charlotte and one from Toronto (the Canadians have done 7 Oceania cruises, so know a lot of folks as well.) It was a great meal as always, although much too much food and wine for Daryl. We finally called it quits about 11pm, late for us, as we knew we were signed up for a 6 hour sail and snorkel day in our next stop, Lautoka.

We were scheduled to be docked by 8am and on excursion at 8:30am, but at 8:30 the captain announced that he had been trying to get into the narrow entrance to Lautoka since 5:30am and the 35-40 knot winds were making it impossible, so we were going to make yet another change and simply spend an additional day at sea, heading toward Pago Pago, American Samoa. We had sort of backtracked to Lautoka, so had to head back east toward Suva again and do our immigration stuff at sea near Suva, via the pilot boat. We apparently also picked up some entertainers for the lounge the same way, so we did a lot of looping around and it looked pretty strange on the map they show. It was also pretty choppy with heavy swells of 15+ feet, which affect even a ship of our size. Days at sea give us a chance to read, so we don't get too worked up about them, but we had enjoyed Fiji and would have been happy to spend another day there.

This crossing of the International Dateline is a tricky thing. It is sort of like being caught in the movie, "Groundhog Day", as we ended up with two whole Thursday, March 20s, one at sea and one for our next stop, Pago Pago. Daryl was confused when she made up the itinerary and also when dinner reservations for March 20 were for the second version and not the first. So she did a little tap dancing with the friends at the dinner reservations desk to get us into Red Ginger for the first shot at March 20.

We arrived at Pago Pago on schedule, if not before, as we had plenty of time to get here. The dock is a little shorter than our ship, so the aft end, where our cabin is, kind of hangs out from the dock by a fair margin. Pago Pago is no Suva and American Samoa is definitely no Fiji. American Samoa is an unincorporated U.S. Territory of 5 islands and 75,000 people. They are hoping to pass a law in 2 months that automatically makes American Samoans American citizens. Unlike our last two stops, there is no real infrastructure, no major city center, no corporate presence of anything US. We saw a marking for IBM on the city map, but it is the IBM laundromat. There were three excursions offered from the ship and you could get a private excursion if you hooked up with someone at the port, but everyone ended up on vintage buses with all wood interiors, including the bench seats, and pieces of plexiglas which you slid up and down into and out of a slot for a window...and everyone ended up at basically the few "sights" there were to see. The buses and almost all of the businesses on the island are owned by families who live together in compounds to form villages, so the guys who owned our tour buses were related to the tour guides (a loose term at best!) who were all related to each other and the families whose villages they took you to for a look at "authentic" village life. Everyone was happy and considered that they lived the best lives on a "beautiful little island." The men mostly wear the skirt-like sarong and do all the cooking, cleaning and raise the children, while the women are always the official Princess in each family group and handle the talking during the visit and the dancing and singing. We made a few photo stops in the bus and went to a village where all the tour guides were in the family for a demonstration of umu cooking, etc. We were all sitting in an amphitheatre area listing to an explanation of how they use all parts of a coconut, when the skies opened up and all 100 of us from 4 of these buses had to get into the village guest house, a bandstand like structure, where they did an abbreviated demonstration of things they had planned on us moving from house to house to view. They gave us a cocoa drink to taste, which they claim is better than Starbucks, but which is a grainy combination of roasted then somewhat pulverized "chocolate fruit" seeds boiled in water. The foods were breadfruit, chicken, tuna in coconut milk, spinach in coconut milk and fresh fruit, served on a small piece of banana leaf on another small piece of aluminum foil.

After the village visit, we made a few other photo stops and Vinca pointed out all the big sights which turned out to be the Cost 4 Less food store, some restaurants, various high schools, a city college which he attends, the airport, the golf course, etc. He had us learn (not very well either) a song in half English/half Samoan, had us repeat many words in Samoan, and sang to us himself, and explained some of the customs. American Samoans believe very strongly in family so they bury their relatives in sizeable tombs in their front yards and all members of a family live in a village or family compound. However, he seems to be living away from his family group right now as he is at college and also does tutoring or teaching. Apparently, the "talking chief" of a village can make rules for his own village group. So if he says no fun on Sunday only church, you go to church and if you don't you pay a $500 fine or feed the village for 2 months.

While enjoyable enough, we are not putting American Samoa very high on our "must return here" list as we might Fiji. We will be interested in finding out what Western Samoa is like tomorrow. Vinca says they are not "the land of the free" like American Samoa, but we will see how else the two differ.