We recently went back to the South Pacific, this time visiting Samoa. One of the highlights of our trip was renting a car which allowed us to explore the entire island at our own pace. The island is not that large with only a few roads which was perfect for exploring and not getting lost. When we picked up the car I inquired about a GPS, and the guy looked at me like I was crazy, saying simply "it is not necessary." The only challenge really was just making sure that I always turned into the correct lane and went the correct direction on the round about as they drive on the other side of the road. The scenery begged for me to stop, so every few miles we would pull off on the side of the road to take some photos from different lookout points and of the picturesque villages...Samoa is simply beautiful!
As we drove around we came across signs on the main road pointing towards waterfalls. As most of the waterfalls are on private property you had to pay to view them.
It would not be a stretch to say every village had a church and outside of the capital city, they were often the largest building in the village.
Many places that we have visited have free range chickens running around, but Samoa also has countless "free range pigs". With so many pigs running around, we would often have to pull over on the side of the road to let the pigs cross and we often found ourselves just staring at them with huge grins on our faces. No pigs in HK! 
Downtown was fairly small with mostly government buildings and a few shops for locals. As the world famous New Zealand All Blacks rugby team was going to be playing the Samoan national team the following week, Samoan flags were being put up everywhere, along with the black flag of the New Zealand All Blacks.
While driving around we saw many local busses. As most locals get from their villages to the capital by the public bus, I made the central bus station a must see. Like the jeepney in the Philippines, most of the older busses in Samoa are very colorful and have religious sayings on them like "Jesus has risen".
One of the sites we stopped at was the turtle pond. The first time we stopped at the pond we were expecting a stand to buy some turtle food... whatever sea turtles eat, but were surprised to find some people there feeding the turtles bread! After picking up a few loafs of bread we went back to the pond. As soon as we got close, the turtles started coming towards us.
Our resort has a cultural show one night with a buffet of local foods, local dancing and a fire show. There was plenty of Samoan food from fish with coconut cream to a whole roasted pig. I did feel a bit guilty thinking this little guy was probably running along the road with his friends a day before...
Boarding the plane I got a bit melancholy as I looked out at our Air New Zealand plane. ANZ has taken us to French Polynesia, Fiji, New Caledonia, Cook Islands, and now Samoa. This will be our last trip the the South Pacific for a while, at least we have enough memories to last a lifetime!
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