A beach in Samoa

Bruce — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 07:19:38 +0000

Apia is 2892km closer to the equator than Auckland; that alone might be reason enough to choose Samoa for a winter break. We followed a personal recommendation to stay at Virgin Cove Resort on the south coast, near the village of Saanapu. Here we spent a week swimming, reading, eating and sleeping: it was just what the doctor ordered. Reaching the resort Polynesian Blue, with domestic flights between Wellington and Auckland on Air New Zealand, was cheaper than Air New Zealand alone. We arrived at around 2100h and the resort had organised a transfer for a very reasonable 80 tala. An hour from Apia on the south coast, our cross-island journey afforded us glimpses into the lives of the locals. Most were watching TV at this hour, seated on the floor of open fales. Children walking the road by starlight and packs of dogs would appear suddenly out of the darkness, our driver struggling to see them through the condensation on his windshield. The last 1.5km to Virgin Cove was a corrugated sand track, the lush vegetation on either side looking especially dense in the gloom of the taxi's headlamps. We were lying on our mattress by midnight, listening to the cacophony of lapping wavelets just metres from our fale, the far-off crashing of waves on the reef, and the play of the wind in the palms and woven blinds of our shelter. We felt secure under our mosquito net, although had they been buzzing we could not have heard them. We doused ...

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A beach in Samoa