Lifou is the largest of the Loyalty Islands that make up a province of New Caledonia.  We arrived here on January 27, the first of two ports in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia.  Fewer than 10,000 people live on this island, about 95% of whom are Kanaka, a Melanesian ethnic group whose ancestors arrived more than 3,000 years ago.  It was first spotted by Europeans in the early 19th century and received Christian missionaries around the middle of the century.  The population today is overwhelmingly Christian, including Protestants and Catholics.

    Lifou was once a large coral reef that was uplifted by tectonic forces into an island.  Its surface is mostly flat, no higher than 60 meters above the sea, and there are no rivers or standing water on the surface.  But as we tendered ashore this morning we could see that its shores were lined with very dense green flora.

     An open sided structure had local vendors and musicians to entertain cruise passengers waiting for excursion buses.  This was very helpful because it was a gray day with intermittent rain (and hot and muggy at the same time).  After a longer wait than we would have preferred our bus arrived and we climbed aboard.  As we drove down the road to our first stop we passed a church and a cemetery and several rather isolated houses, but few (if any) neighborhoods.

     Departing the bus we had a pretty good walk through a forest to reach the botanical gardens.  Many colorful flowers and interesting trees were to be seen there.  Vanilla, brought here from Madagascar, is grown by many of the people here and our engaging guide, Flo, gave a talk about how it is grown and cared for in this environment; very labor intensive.  We were served cups of vanilla tea while we were there.

     Driving on toward Jokin we passed many traditional grass or palm leaf huts.  People live in some and some are used for ceremonial purposes.  Even some people living in houses still maintain a traditional hut nearby for ceremonial activities.

     Our final stop was the village of Jokin.  Our guide Flo, who lives here, explained that this was the territory of her tribe, also called Jokin.  She said there are some 39 tribes in the Loyalty Islands, each with its own language.  They communicate with each other in French, which is widely spoken (it is, so to speak, the lingua franca of the area).  We were here mainly to see the Cliffs of Jokin, which was the featured attraction on our excursion and is owned by this tribe.  The cliffs are certainly beautiful, but the water in this area is even more so.  The water is really clear and you can see rocks and coral sitting on the bottom even from a cliff top.  There is a mostly wooden stairway from the village down to the water, but there are more than 200 steps (and another 200+ to get back up) so we passed on that.  The view from the observation platform at the top was plenty.

     In the middle of the village was an unusually large grass or leaf hut.  We were told that this belonged to the chief and was used mainly for ceremonial functions.  We were invited inside, which required bending completely at the waist because the doorways were so low.  Apparently this is done to ensure that anyone entering had to bow low to the chief as they came in.  Several visitors had some trouble entering and Mary chose not to because of her knee issues.  There were two openings and we were asked to enter only through the left one because that is the tradition.  A huge scaffold made of tree trunks and branches had been erected in the middle of the room because the leafy thatch of the roof and walls were being replaced, a task that must be done about every five years.  If I (Rick) remember correctly the chief had another hut to live in that was not far away.

     This is, as we have seen, an island thick with flora so it was no surprise to find many interesting plants on the grounds of the village.

     We were invited into an open but roofed structure, sort of like a porch, where we were given headbands braided from leaves with red flower buds in the front.  Mary put hers around the crown of her hat.  There was also a small buffet of delicious fresh fruit and each of us was given a cup of (if I remember correctly) coconut water.  Sitting on some rocks nearby was a woven turtle.

     Last we were shown the village church.  Very simple design, inside and out, painted orange with a cemetery outside (the large tomb with an obelisk was dated “1847 – 1892”).  Apparently the people of this archipelago are very devoted Christians and we saw quite a few village churches.

      We drove all the way back to the bus loading facilities on the hill overlooking the tender dock, then returned to the ship.  We spent the night sailing to our next (and last) stop in New Caledonia.

     January 25 found us in Lautoka, the second largest city in Fiji (population more than 70,000), located on the opposite side of the island of Vitu Levu from Suva.  This is sugarcane country and Lautoka is known as “Sugar City.”  Having spent the first two Fiji stops in town we decided we would rather get out and see some of the countryside and some local fauna today.  So we joined a HAL excursion to what was billed as Kula Eco & Wildlife Park, where you could see birds and animals of Fiji.  The description didn’t mention that there would be a two hour bus ride each way!  We left around 9:00 AM. 

     As mentioned above, it was a very long bus trip through the countryside and a few small towns, made longer by a lengthy stop at an upscale art and handicraft store (with some very nice things at not so nice prices).  When we arrived at the park we were surprised to find the sign at the entrance said “Kula Wild Adventure Park” instead of Eco & Wildlife Park that was in the excursion description.  It was pretty apparent from the name and the ambience inside that this was a facility aimed at families with children, including several elaborate playgrounds and signs geared toward youngsters.  The place also offered a zipline and a large water slide.  We saw a lot of colorful Fijian birds and a few animals, although most of them were in cages (albeit large and relatively unconfining ones that visitors could walk through).  Still, it was apparent that the staff there cared about the animals and were quite serious about preserving and caring for them.  The park dates back to the 1980’s when it originated as a bird park.

     Our tour began just inside the entrance where there were several large and colorful Crimson Shining Parrots in relatively small individual cages.  These parrots are endemic to Fiji.  Nearby was a green iguana named Kevin (we think) who was there to be held and petted by visitors.  There are two species of iguana endemic to parts of Fiji, Central Fijian Banded Iguana and Fiji Crested Iguana; this one was a Banded Iguana.  A seasoned entertainer, he got along fine with Mary.

     A shallow concrete pool in this area was home to several Hawksbill sea turtles, a critically endangered species found in oceans worldwide.  The name comes from the bird-like beak they have in lieu of a flat mouth.  They have been widely hunted in the past for their shells, used to make decorative tortoiseshell items, but today they are protected.

     We walked through the dense and well maintained rain forest to the bird houses.  Betel nuts are addictive and slightly intoxicating items that are chewed like gum or tobacco by many people in the Pacific area, often leaving their mouths colored brown.  We were shown one of the plants on which they grow.

     Among the first birds we saw were barn owls, Sulphur Crested Cockatoos and some more Crimson Shining Parrots.  A sign said most of the parrots here were donated by illegal owners who had kept them in small home made cages with insufficient diets and brought them here because they were sick.

     Fiji’s only endemic mammal is the Fijian Monkey-faced Bat (also known as Fijian Flying Fox).  It was discovered in 1976 living in a forest on Fiji’s second highest mountain peak.  We saw a few bats hanging in an enclosure and understand that these are flying foxes, which are critically endangered with a total population estimated around 1,000.  Outside in some trees were quite a few bats hanging about but these were too many to be flying foxes, who live in the wild on a different island (Taveuni).

     We saw some more Fijian Banded Iguanas.  The males are banded but the females are completely green on top.  Near the park entrance we had seen an impressive iguana (possibly a crested iguana) about 9 feet long and made apparently of concrete.

     The Collared Lory (also called a Kula) is Fiji’s national bird.  It is a parrot and often found in mating pairs.  They seem to have a lot of bright red birds around here.

     The White Faced Heron can be found throughout Australasia.  They have lived in this part of Viti Levu since 1997.

     We walked back to the area near the entrance where we were served a light lunch.  There were many nice flowers in the forest and we also walked past a Baka Ni Viti twisting around a host tree.  Birds enjoy its fruits and drop undigested seeds into other sorts of trees, which are usually killed as the new tree grows around it.  At one point we walked on a wooden bridge over a picturesque stream and looking down we saw a brightly colored Muscovy Duck swimming in the water.

     After lunch we reboarded the bus for the long drive back to the ship, made longer by several lengthy delays for road construction operations.  Among other things, we passed (in the moving bus) what looked like a small mosque labeled Fiji Muslim League.  Muslims first arrived in Fiji among the indentured servants imported from India to work in sugarcane fields between the 1870’s and 1916 and today they make up about 7"% of Fiji’s population.  Muhammad’s birthday is a Fijian national holiday.  The Fiji Muslim League, which operates schools and mosques, was formed in 1926.

     As we drove along we noticed a number of residential neighborhoods in which one or two houses had a red pennant flying above on a long pole, mostly made of bamboo.  Our guide told us these were Hindu homes and it was mandatory for them to fly a red flag.  We were pretty shocked by this, since it sounded like the Nazis requiring Jewish businesses to paint a star of David on the front.  It turns out that either the guide was wrong or we misunderstood him.  The Fiji government does not require these of Hindus at all.  Instead, these are sacred Hindu prayer flags called Jhandi that identify a sacred space.  So they are associated with Hindu homes, but are placed there voluntarily to signify spirituality.

     We mentioned in previous episode the large community of ethnic Indians in Fiji descended from the indentured servants brought here by the British before World War I to work in the sugarcane fields.  The area we were passing through is an important sugarcane territory so it is not surprising that we encountered a colorful Hindu temple.  We think this was in the town of Nadi and is called Sri Siva Subramaniya Temple.  That is the name of the largest Hindu temple in the Pacific.  It was opened in 1994 on the site of a previous temple that had been there since 1926.  We stopped for pictures but did not have a chance to go in.

     Last but not least we drove past the Sleeping Giant mountain.  Named for a legend about a warrior king who was permitted by deities to rest here after defending the area for many years, the mountain looks strikingly like a man lying on his back.  If you look carefully you can see a nose and an open mouth in the head on the right, a large stomach in the middle and his feet pointing to the sky on the left.  Located in the foothills of the mountain is the “Garden of the Sleeping Giant,” 50 acres with more than 2,000 orchids along with, among other things, rainforest walks and lily ponds.  It was established in 1977 by American actor Raymond Burr of “Perry Mason” and “Ironsides” fame on TV, along with many movies, to house his huge personal collection of orchids and is open to the public.

     We returned to the ship and sailed away from Fiji before dinner for a sea day to rest up before our next port.

     We spent January 24 in the Fiji capital of Suva on the island of Viti Levu.  It was a very rainy day & we got pretty wet walking through the city with our friend and table mate Karen.  

     Fiji is a country on two large islands and several hundred smaller ones, only about a third of which are inhabited.  Most of the population is on the two main islands with about two thirds (almost 600,000) on Viti Levu.  Fiji has been inhabited for 3 or 4,000 years and Europeans first visited in the 18th century.  Fiji long had a reputation as a violent place rife with cannibalism, but modern research suggests that at most there probably was occasional ritual cannibalism involving defeated enemies in warfare.  From the 10th to the 13th centuries Fiji was part of the Tongan empire and in 1874 it was incorporated into the British Empire. 

     British planters established plantations but the locals did not want to work there.  A system of slavery in all but name (it was called “Blackbirding”) was established in which natives of other Pacific island were captured, brought to Fiji, and then (if they survived the journey) sold to the planters.  Prisoners from the battles to pacify Fiji were also sold into slavery.  From 1878 to 1916 more than 60,000 Indians were brought to Fiji to work on sugarcane plantations. Some were able to return to India after their term of indenture (5 to 10 years) but most ended up staying in Fiji.  Still today their descendants constitute close to 40 % of the population and there is enough ethnic tension that many of the Indians have left in recent years to return to the country of their ancestors, in which they have never lived.  Fiji achieved independence in 1970 but unrest continued with several coups, the last (so far) in 2007. 

     Suva has been the capital of independent Fiji since 1977.  It is by far the largest city in Fiji  with a population near 100,000 (186,000 in the metropolitan area) and in addition to being the political capital it is the economic and cultural center of the country as well.  We left the ship in mid-morning to see what was to be seen.

     Our first stop was at a handicrafts market, set up like an indoor mall with a long row of small individual shops.  There were many interesting things to see, most notably items carved from wood.  But going from vendor to vendor, all selling the same or very similar wares, always makes us wonder what is made locally and what is imported from China, which has a lively trade in tourist items throughout the Pacific (and elsewhere).  These Chinese goods are hard to distinguish from genuine local crafts, which makes it hard to pull the trigger on a purchase if much money is involved (not to mention we already have too many things we have purchased abroad waiting for space to be displayed in our house).  So we did a lot of looking but didn’t buy anything here (actually we bought very little on this entire voyage).

     We walked through Ratu Sukuna Park, which sat between the road and the water.  It opened in 1955 on land recently reclaimed from the sea.  In front of the sign is a stone monument to Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna, one of the prominent founders of modern Fiji.  The park had undergone an extensive upgrade in 2024.  It is a very nice park with many flowers.

     The first building of interest we came to on Victoria Parade, which appeared to be the main boulevard in town, was the Suva City Carnegie Library.  Originally opened in 1909 with a grant of 1500 pounds from prolific library supporter Andrew Carnegie, it was extended to its current size in 1929.  During World War II the building was used as an American navy dental unit.  The building was renovated in 2008 in preparation for the library’s 100th birthday.  And truth be told, it looked like it could use another renovation, at least inside, since it looked a bit drab and understaffed when we visited.  A picture of Andrew Carnegie looks down over the library patrons from the stairway landing.

     The Grand Pacific Hotel was considered one of the premier hotels in the Southern Hemisphere after its opening in 1914.  It was built by a New Zealand steamship company to house its passengers and was designed to have the ambience of an ocean liner so the passengers would feel like they had never left the ship.  It became a social center for Suva over the years, hosting many balls and famous guests (including Queen Elizabeth, James Michener and W. Somerset Maugham).  The hotel was sold in 1958 and thereafter was painted pink to resemble the Royal Hawaiian Hotel we had visited in Honolulu.  The hotel was closed in 1992 and served for a time as a military barracks.  But it was restored to its former five star condition and reopened in 2014 in time for its 100th anniversary.  We visited the first floor of the hotel and waited on its portico for a heavy downpour to end (it didn’t, just slowed down some) before continuing on.

     Across Victoria Parade from the Grand Pacific was Albert Park (named for Queen Victoria’s husband), a huge park that is an important sports venue.  As we passed there was what appeared to be a soccer team in front of the stands looking like they were there to practice, but the rain put a stop to that.  In 1928 Sir Charles Kingsford Smith landed in this park during the first trans-Pacific flight from California to Australia.  He stayed in the Grand Pacific where a ball was held in his honor.

     To the left of Albert Park we could see the large Government Buildings and their clocktower.  This Art Deco building complex, opened in 1939, houses the Prime Minister’s offices, the High Court, the Parliament and several ministries.  The clock tower was also built in 1939.  We had walked past the front entrance facing Victoria Parade before we reached the Grand Pacific Hotel.

     We walked on in a drizzle (by now Rick’s umbrella had helpfully lost its ability to stay open) to Thurston Gardens.  This was a very nice botanical garden just beyond Albert Park.  It was the site of the original indigenous village of Suva, which was burned in 1843 during a local conflict with many inhabitants killed (and reputedly eaten).  The gardens opened here in 1879 on the initiative of Sir John Thurston, who was governor at the time.  A clock tower and bandstand were built in 1918.  We walked through the park to the Fiji Museum located on its grounds.

     The Fiji Museum holds the world’s most important collection of Fijian artifacts, dating back as far as 3700 years.  It originally opened in 1904 in the old town hall.  From 1936 to 1954 the collection was housed in the top floor of the Carnegie Library and since 1955 it has been in its current building in Thurston Park.   Next to the museum is a clock tower and there is a snack bar on its veranda.  When we arrived a good number of people were on the veranda, partly to get out of the rain but mostly because the electricity was off in the museum and no one was being admitted. 

     It wasn’t too long before some of the lights came on in the museum and we were admitted to look at the collection.  But the lighting was still pretty dim and although the explanatory signs were (thankfully) in English, many were for some reason placed so low that it was difficult to bend over far enough to read them.  Why do museums (and other places) do that?  Upon entry we first came to a large double hulled canoe, the type of vessel Fijians traditionally used for ocean travel.  It is a careful replica of this type of boat, built in 1914.  Nearby is a large canoe with a single outrigger, probably also used for ocean travel.

     An interesting nautical item of a different sort was the rudder from the original HMS Bounty.  The mutiny on the Bounty is a famous story, recounted (not always accurately) in books and movies. In 1789 Lieutenant William Bligh was the captain of this ship, on a mission to Tahiti to gather breadfruit trees for transportation to British colonies in the Caribbean to feed the many slaves there.  Some of the sailors, led by Fletcher Christian, were disgruntled by Bligh’s version of discipline and staged a successful mutiny near the island of Tonga.  They put Bligh and a couple of dozen loyal crewmen into a small open boat and set them adrift, then sailed to Tahiti to pick up some local people and on to isolated Pitcairn Island to hide from the British.  To further avoid detection they set the Bounty on fire and what was left of it sank in the bay.  The remains of Bounty’s rudder were recovered in 1932 and given by the British to Fiji, where it was on display when we visited the museum.  Some missing pieces were broken off by souvenir seekers during the time it was stored on Pitcairn Island before being transported to Fiji.  (As an aside, Bligh managed to sail his open boat more than 3,500 nautical miles to Batavia, now Jakarta, in Indonesia without losing a man to the elements.  During this legendary trip they sailed through what is now called Bligh Water, the passage between Fiji’s two main islands, during which Bligh became the first to chart the coast of Fiji).

     Other interesting exhibits that caught our eyes included a whale’s tooth (tabua), highly prized and used as money in Fiji, a 19th century helmet made from a porcupine fish, a 19th century dancer’s headdress from Vanuatu and a pair of very tall wooden pillars carved into a man and a woman.

     We have seen bark cloth under several names on other islands and in Fiji it is called Masi and made from Mulberry bark.  Various decorating techniques are used on different islands but only in Fiji is this kind of cloth decorated by stenciling.  Making masi cloth was considered women’s work.

     There was a good bit more in the museum of which we have no further pictures.  There was a very interesting room dedicated to the history of the Indian community in Fiji, and quite a bit more.  The museum was, in our opinion, quite worthwhile and we were happy that they managed to get the lights working again so we could view it.

     We walked all the way back to the ship, stopping at the crafts market again because Mary had her eye on a necklace, but the whole market was closed.  We were pretty wet by the time we reached the ship so we had to change clothes before dinner.  And we sailed away to our third and last stop in Fiji.

     We spent January 23 in Savusavu, the first of three stops in Fiji, a country we had never visited before.  The name is pronounced with emphasis on the 1st and 3rd syllables (unlike Robin Williams, when he emphasized the 2d and 4th syllables while intoning “Nanu nanu” on a popular TV show you might be old enough to remember).  Originally settled by Polynesians around 1700 BCE, Europeans arrived in the mid-19th century and it became a trading post for sandalwood, copra and sea cucumbers.  It was incorporated as a town in 1969.  Located on the island of Vanua Levu, the town has fewer than 3,500 people with little in the way of notable landmarks.  We often explore new ports on foot and with the town’s small size this seemed like a good plan.  So we tendered to shore to see what was to be seen.

     The weather here was unreasonably hot and humid so it turned out we really weren’t going to walk very far.  It was a good thing this town was so small and had nothing we felt we really needed to see.  The island of Vanua Levu has a reputation as a natural paradise, surrounded by good beaches and snorkeling venues, with some nice seaside resorts.  And maybe that is accurate, but that’s not what we experienced.  This was basically a one street town and apart from a waterfront park near the tender dock and a reasonably interesting craft store, that street was mostly lined with small glass front businesses and traffic.

     There was at least one other street running parallel on top of a hill and there is supposed to be a small hot spring there where people cook food.  But we have seen hot springs like that before and it was really too hot to go uphill to look for this in the oppressive heat.  So we didn’t.  The one notable thing we found in our walk was the local library, always a highlight of our city walks.  This one was a glass storefront like the businesses along the street and it was closed so we couldn’t go inside.  Upon examining the orange notice taped inside the glass door we discovered that it advertised an event to be held in . . . 2023, two years before.  From this we concluded that this library is closed permanently and we had no idea whether it might have reopened in another location.

     So that was it for us.  We walked back to the dock and boarded the tender to go back to the ship.  From the tender dock there was a nice view of the water and the shoreline.  The tender pilot was climbing through a hole above his seat as we waited for others to board, presumably looking at the view but mostly escaping from the heat inside the metal boat.  If we return here we will look into better options to spend a day on this island.

     Having left Pago Pago on January 21 we arrived in Apia on the morning of January 23.  Two days is a long time to sail the 80 miles to Apia, but the real reason for this calendar discrepancy is that we crossed the international date line between these ports and moved ahead a day.  So we didn’t have a January 20 at all.  We found ourselves docked in another large harbor.

     The Samoan archipelago was divided into German Samoa on the west and American Samoa on the east in 1899.  Western Samoa remained under German hegemony until 1914 when New Zealand troops landed at the beginning of World War I and took control without resistance. About 20% of the population died in the Influenza epidemic of 1919, which the Samoans blamed on New Zealand (it has since been established that influenza was brought here on a New Zealand ship).   Although political tension continued, Western Samoa remained under New Zealand control until it gained independence in 1962.  In 1997 it adopted the name “Samoa,”  over the objection of the American Samoans.  In 2011 Samoa changed its time zone to ease trade with New Zealand, which moved the international date line to fall between the two Samoas.

     The independent state of Samoa consists of two large islands and a number of smaller islands, most uninhabited.  Apia is the capital of the country and by far its largest city with a population exceeding 35,000.  The city itself has no central government, but is made up of some 45 communal villages.  Like American Samoa, the island of Upolu on which Apia sits is very lush and green.  All of our ports up to now had been US territory, so this was the first one for which we needed a passport.  This was our first visit to Apia and we booked an excursion to show us the highlights.

     Robert Louis Stevenson lived here for the last few years of his life and was buried atop Mount Vaea in Apia in 1894.  He built a large house of redwood imported from California at the foot of that mountain that was completed in 1891, named Vailima after the local village.  Today it is a museum. 

     Rather than having a guide lead visitors through the house they had a sort of docent stationed in each of the featured rooms to explain it and answer questions as each group entered.  Stevenson’s widow sold the house and most of its contents a few years after he died and moved to California.  The house became the residence of the German governor of Samoa, then the New Zealand administrator of the territory and after independence of the head of state.  It opened as a museum in 1994.  It is furnished with period (or at least period style) furniture and decorations in an effort to make it look as much as possible as it did when the Stevensons lived here, but because Mrs. Stevenson sold almost everything very little here is original to the house.  Among the interesting items inside was some elaborately printed siapo cloth adhering to the wall like wallpaper.  Siapo could also be seen hung like tapestry.  The verandas lining the outside of the upper story were airy and pleasant, in a rather Victorian style.

     The grounds of the house were particularly beautiful, with many colorful flowers and well landscaped.  And we spotted an interesting bird wandering the grounds, of a type we had never seen.

     After we toured the house there was a dance performance on a large porch in the back of the house.  It began with a demonstration of what the Samoans call an ‘Ave Ceremony (called a kava ceremony on other Pacific islands).  This ceremony generally involves formal speaking and shared drinking of a liquid made from a root of some kind.  One of the dancers sat on the ground with a bowl filled with the ceremonial drink, which was given to members of the audience who volunteered.  It was scooped from the bowl into a piece of coconut shell and taken to the volunteer, then returned and swished in a bucket of water, filled again and distributed to the next volunteer, perhaps half a dozen times in all.  We are sure it was safe enough and no one seemed to get sick, but since the pandemic we are more leery about shared food and utensils than we once were.

     The dancing was very interesting, mostly performed in rows, sometimes standing and sometimes kneeling.  There was a rhythmic band accompanying and at the end a rather hefty band member stood up, removed his shirt (revealing extensive tattooing) and danced.  The band sat next to an interesting sculpture of two men sitting and seeming to be enjoying the music.

     Our next stop was at the Immaculate Conception Cathedral, which was easily the most distinctive building we saw in Apia.  There has been a church on this spot since 1857 and in 1884 it was replaced by a larger one.  The 2009 earthquake damaged it beyond repair and it was replaced by this much larger one (with a capacity of 2,000 compared to the old church’s 400) that opened in 2014.  The Apia archdiocese was created in 1966, so that is presumably when the church on this spot became a cathedral.  We had a good view of it from the ship across the harbor.  It is white with a deep blue roof and towers on either side of the front entrance topped by blue domes.  There is a gold dome over the apse, the inside of which has a painted depiction of the Last Supper, with apparently Samoan figures seated around an ‘Ava bowl.  It also has a very nice rose window near the entrance with a pipe organ surrounding it .  The large interior is dominated by a stunning ceiling of imported mahogany carved into patterns resembling traditional Samoan male tattoos.

     We drove across town to the Mulinuʻu peninsula.  Apia’s clocktower was in the center of a traffic circle on our path through the central city.  It was erected in the 1920”s as a memorial to Samoans killed in World War I and to the many Samoan victims of the influenza epidemic at the end of the war.  Mulimu’u has been an administrative center of Samoa for many years and today the legislature and the main courts (among other buildings) are located here.  We saw the interesting round and domed parliament building there, the design of which was based on the traditional Samoan meeting house called a Fono.  Opened in 2019, this building (called the Maota Fono) was built by the Australian government to commemorate Samoa’s 1972 independence.  Near the Fono was the new courthouse housing three levels of Samoan courts.  Opened in 2010 this building has already undergone expensive repairs and renovation to correct severe deterioration.  We thought this wide and low beige building looked rather institutional (after all, it is an institution) in contrast to the neighboring Fono.

     We continued on to the site of several tombs of prominent people (if not royalty).  One looked like a step pyramid and the other was domed, both painted white and maybe 15 feet tall.  They were located in a very nice green area bordering the ocean with many palm tees and tall grasses.  Nearby was a parking lot with several buses painted in bright rainbow colors.

     Finally, we drove back into town to visit the Fugalei produce market.  This is a huge open air market under a roof with individual vendors selling mostly produce (although there are also some handicrafts and clothing vendors).  We didn’t buy anything here . . . not only were we not in need of fresh produce but we had no Samoan currency, which is the only payment accepted at the market.  We did enjoy exploring it though.

     We returned to the ship.  This was the end of our Samoan sojourn and we sailed away before dinner for Fiji.