Discovery

Concierge

NiteLife
L ive or DJ? Either way, the listening is good and the times they
are a rockin’. Get it started at the Bowling Alley where DJ Zee
serves up a mix of modern, traditional and jammin’. Zee knows just
when the beat is up tempo, on the down low or siva ready. . . .
Mellow up at Koko Bean in the Laufou Shopping Center on
Saturday nights beginning at 7. Three Legged Dog entertains with
acoustic resonance and a down home beat that can quite suddenly
morph into a full blown Mississippi jambalaya clam bake.

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Your crew gets their party on at Rubble’s. And u kno it! The house
band invites the audience to an open mike when they aren’t making
their own special brand of cool, funk, oldies and Polynesian.
Dine and relax at DeLuxe Cafe in Ottoville. The band takes
ooking east from the observation deck atop Tutuila’s Mount requests to suite your dining pleasure. Rare, medium well, or London
Alava, Neighboring Upolu (left above) loomed in the distance. broil? Its your steak night out
Turning 180 degrees facing east, the Manu’a group, Ofu,
Olosega and Ta’u (right above) rise above the horizon. The view from Mount
Alava is a spectacular panoramic overlook of the Samoan archipelago.
Straight below, the entrance to Pago Pago Harbor belies its provenance as
a blown out volcano: our lofty perch, the ancient
calderic rim of the extinct crater. The inner harbor Get-A-Way WeekEnd
(top right) reveals itself as a safe port for commercial
traffic and an enthusiastic destination for global
cruising sailors. Family friendly weekends (Think Labor Day) recharge the batteries and
Tree ferns in the cloud forest
And my adventure journey was just beginning! provide a cost benefit solution of keeping family morale at a peak; especially
regime along the trial.
when school has just begun. So finish off your summer with a bang!
In less than two hours hiking along a safe United
States National Park Service trail down to the scenic Turtle and Shark Lodge offers on-line booking (turtleandshark.com) for
village of Vatia, regimes of the paleolithic (diverse) weekend packages. There’s plenty to do including tennis, hiking and all
rainforest gave way from lush, tree fern inhabited, important lazing while the sun sets. . . Poolside lunch, Spa treatment your
liking? Tradewinds and Sadie’s By the Sea fill the pleasure bill. If it’s that
cloud forest, to the dense ridge forest hardwood
rugged coastline and the sound of waves crashing on the rocks that pleases
Ridge hardwoods spread trees, stunted windswept trees of the lower lying
roots in the thin soil. your wanderlust, the refined elegance of MoanaSina Resort strikes a chordant
littoral forest, to the salt resistant plants of the
note. . . . . Or just plan to do them all!
strand, or seaside, rainforest environment. Within
this all-at-once, all-in-one-place environment,
tropical birds soared and flitted, ginkos and skinks
darted: epiphitic vines and ferns wrap themselves
in host trees. Clingy mosses and lichens sop up the
Epiphitic ferns find a home
in the high forest canopy. aromatic moisture in the higher elevations.
All in all I had been thrust into a natural rainforest
classroom of stunning beauty and peace. Nowhere
else in the Polynesian Pacific (or dare I say world)
can a casual hiker (fitness level 5 out of a possible
10) transit the full diverse glory of this tropical
paradise in such a short period.
My trip began at the Mount Alava trail head above
Coming Up
Pago Pago village and ended in Vatia. In between Island Queens at Tradewinds Aug.28th
was a world of discovery, adventure and education. Mosooi Festival, Upolu
The village of Vatia is a welcome destination.