Savai‘i - Exploring and Diving

Riding my scooter for about 40 minutes, I arrived in a small village called Manase. I checked into my beautiful beach fale accommodation before heading off to check out some nearby lava fields.

Savai‘i‘s black and dried up lava field was the result of a volcanic eruption in 1905 that lasted over six years. Walking on the lava fields, I explored a church that was destroyed by the lava flow. While not spectacular, it was certainly an interesting spot.

On the way to the lava fields, I booked myself two dives for the following day. I headed to the dive shop at 8am. The first one being a dive through a reef, canyons and underneath an arch while the second dive was to a shipwreck.

During the first dive, we didn't see much sealife (we did see a lion fish though), but it was the first time diving through a canyon, underneath an underwater arch and along a reef wall. The dive through the underwater canyon was really cool!

Once we got into the water for the second dive, we could immediately see the shipwreck as it was positioned in a way that the front of the ship was down only 2-3m but the end of it was in more than 22m depth. We basically dived along the entire ship for a good 30 minutes. The ship used to be a missionary three-mast ship that hit the reef and sank in 1948. Exploring its ins and outs was simply awesome. From seeing an old lantern over finding a telephone to diving through the ship's skeleton, I would do the dive again in a heartbeat. We continued our dive along a beautiful reef where we spotted multiple sea turtles and other colourful corals. That was a really really cool dive and still puts a big smile on my face.

Once back on shore, I relaxed until around 3-4pm when I took my scooter to drive aimlessly to the next village. When I stopped to take a picture of a colourful church, a local woman said 'hi' and I sat down and chatted for a good 1.5h about Samoan traditions, village rules, the importance of the local chiefs and all things Samoan. I learned a lot about their culture. It is not just about 'sightseeing' to me, but equally important to learn about the way of life. It was a perfect end to a really great day in Savai’i.

On my last full day in Manase, Fernando - a guy I met in my accommodation - and I chilled out on the beach, tried and unfortunately failed to harvest some fresh coconut from a tree and drove to have lunch at a local small BBQ shop. There we met Aris and Anna who volunteered at the shop for a few weeks. As we were heading in the same direction, we made plans to meet up at the next place - Falealupo Beach.Baca selengkapnya