The Correct Way to Feed Chickens

I have no doubt that any reader of this blog has had the opportunity to throw bits of food at animals that are lower on the food chain than themselves, but feeding chickens is a form of art that is lost on many people.  I went to Samoa, thinking that I knew how to correctly feed chickens, sadly I was quite mistaken.  Not only was I throwing the food quite poorly, but I also had the audacity to make the wrong chicken noises.  Little did I know that chickens make different noises depending on their home language.  Go figure?

Well, perhaps it is easier for you to just see what happened.  I am pretty sure that I went from being a level 0 chicken feeder to a master that day.  Win for me!

Everyone has a cousin in Apia

I seem to have a knack for traveling to places where I stick out like a sore thumb.  Nothing screams "tourist" like being white and walking around downtown Apia, Samoa.  During our trip there, it became the running joke for everyone to ask me if this or that person was my cousin.

See a white guy walking down the street - must be my cousin

Two people speaking German in a market - obvious relation

Hippie backpackers on the side of the road - next-of-kin

This is how it worked.  It was hilarious.  Of course we all look alike!

Random White Guy

When you visit an island that is just about as far away from anywhere as you could get, it totally should be the running joke that all the white tourists are related.  I mean, what the hell else are they doing there?  It is like a family reunion or something? Right?

The best part is even the taxi drivers would make jokes about it.  

We were taking a taxi from downtown Apia back to the village on a day that must have had temperatures that would make a vulcan sweat, and I kept noticing that the driver was getting odd waves.  I was in the front seat and loved to try and strike up conversations with people who were driving us around, just to get to know the area, so I asked him.  After a moment of hesitation, he finally came clean with what they were doing.  While most of the taxis are used by locals who know what the real fare is to get from point A to point B, the white people are the score.  They were all jealous of him landing two tourists because he could make more money.  I think he was relieved that I found this hilarious, and then proceeded to tell us all the great places to eat and explore.  

The other thing we found is that "white" tourists have to be one of the most annoying types of people on the face of the planet.  Holy crap, if there is something to complain about, I can guarantee that some white person is bitching about it at a hotel right now.  

When most of the country looks like something out of a post card, what the hell do you have to complain about?  

Seriously?

I heard people complain that there was not enough air conditioning, there were bugs, dogs, prices, chairs, food, etc.  You name it, I heard some white asshole bitch about it. 

For the sake of all of us travelers who don't complain when we experience another country, please shut up and go home.   Perhaps that Travel Channel episode on a country is more appropriate for your tastes. 

• If you are traveling to the South Pacific, there will be bugs, come to terms with it. 
• If the featured amenities on the hotel room list "electricity" and "fan" then don't expect the Ritz-Carlton.
• Don't assume that there will be hot running water and cell phone service everywhere you go.
• You will get food poisoning or at the very least an upset stomach.  Deal with it.
• If you are in a country that sits on the ground, don't expect chairs.
• Learn to at least say a few simple phrases in whatever language is dominant.  You don't deserve to be catered to for any reason whatsoever.

When you travel, you are visiting the "home" of another person.  You would not walk in your friends house and make a scene if something was "out-of-place" so leave that shit at home when you travel as well.  Instead, take on an attitude of learning and curiosity.  Do you really need electricity for a week?  Can you live without cell phones and laptops?  Is it really beyond your comfort zone to say hi to someone using sounds that are unfamiliar?  Is hot water really needed in 90 degree weather?  

If you can leave some creature comforts at home, then traveling is most certainly for you.

If not, please don't stand in my way.

How to fit a dozen people in a station wagon

I am sure that everyone is aware of just how many people you can fit into the stereotypical vehicle.  We have all been on that "road trip from hell" where there are four people in the back seat of a car specifically designed for just three.  You know that feeling when your "bubble" has been invaded and the next time you get bumped, someone is going to die...

If you have never done this on a road in Samoa, where you have a dozen bodies and suitcases in the same station wagon, you don't know shit.

Let me start with the explanation that the roads in Samoa leave a bit to be desired.  Once you leave the main airport area, it is pretty much a free-for-all on road maintenance until you hit downtown Apia.  By Google Maps it says that is is a quick trip - about twenty miles or a bit above a half hour of driving.  

I call bullshit. 

Load of Crap

Our story starts late in the evening.  Most of the flights heading out of Faleolo International Airport that head direct to Honolulu, Hawaii take off at some ungodly hour.  I think ours departed at about 11pm.  Yeah, major load of crap.  Of course it was running late, which made for an even later flight, but we did not know that at the time.  It seems like one plane does the Honolulu - Samoa - Fiji - Australia, and back, voyage.  

We had spent the week with some family in a small village outside of Apia, which is the major port-of-call for that side of the island.  If you have never been to Apia, it is actually a very awesome town.  It has some distinct districts, with cool alleys that are sporting anything from bootleg CD's to fish.  We never knew quite what we were bound to find when we turned down one alley or the other.  While it may be quite lacking in size, it has a very rich history and the people of Apia are some of the friendliest that we have run into.  

Just make sure to carry a few golf ball sized rocks with you.  More on that another time.

The flight was due to leave at a bit after 11pm, and we started on our journey at about 8-9pm.  It is on island time, so we left whenever we all got around to leaving, with the intent of getting to the airport whenever we ended up getting there.  Of course, my need to exactitude was already dead inside, and I had just accepted that "I'll see you at noon" could mean sometime between about 9am and dinnertime the following day.  Things are done differently when one does not ever have a pressing rush to be somewhere.  

We all piled into a small station wagon.  This of course was not some luxury station wagon, but the typical few rows of seats and a hatch-back trunk.  Our gear went in first.  This consisted of three large suitcases.  No big deal, trunk was mostly full.  All good.  Then everyone got in.  I mean everyone.  Then more people got in.  Somehow we got all 12 people into the same station wagon.  It was an amazing orchestrated event with some people splitting laps while others were laid across the top.  Even the suitcases in the trunk were utilized as places to lay down and somehow pack more bodies into the car.

Then came the pothole jarring, swerving to avoid rocks and pigs, 3,960 B.T.U.s of body heat hour-and-a-half long car ride to the airport.  

It was one of the longest car rides of my life.  We were sweating, we were getting carsick, we were doing anything we could to try and sleep, so as to block out the event.  It may not seem that bad, but try cramming yourself and your nearest 11 friends into a space the size of a bathroom and then bump into each-other while turning up the heat and humidity.  Yeah, not fun.

We endured.

All of us made it to the airport.  Not because Faleolo International Airport is anything special, but because we were family.  That is what family does.  They had taken us into their home and they sure as hell were going to send us off in style.  Sometimes enduring is an act of love.

Vailima - Robert Louis Stevenson

I will do just about anything for a Geocache.  Groups of us have rappelled, hiked all day, fallen from cliffs, and hurt ourselves in any way imaginable just to find a stupid box in the middle of some God-forsaken area, using space-age technology.

This is one of those stories.

There is a lovely house on the hillside outside of Apia, Samoa that was home to Robert Louis Stevenson.  It was built in .... blah blah blah, history, and stuff you can look up on wikipedia to sound really smart at your next Stevenson themed party...

Quite Majestic

On the hillside near the house is the grave of Stevenson.  This is important because there is a geocache located near that grave.  This is no big deal.  I have yet to meet the under 2,000 foot peak that could conquer me.  Again, my life seems to be a running theme of my pride getting me into trouble.

Trail starts off normal.  Incline.  Pretty Setting.  Some rocks here and there.  Keeping an eye out for any wild jungle animals, and playing scenes of how to escape Predator in my head (just in case).  Pretty sure the covered in mud trick will come in handy.

Majestic Nature

Then the trail turns to this.  

Less Majestic

Perhaps I forgot to mention that the country just got hit by a hurricane... twice.  It hit once, and then decided to swing a quick loop back and knock everything down that was still standing for good measure.  Entire villages were wiped out. Flooding was extensive.  That tree is about the size of a small house.  This is where shit got real.  I remember this point clearly.  There is one active geocache in the country.  It is straight up a hill where I have to climb over trees the ranging in size from a car to houses on a hillside that has a slope of about 45 degrees.  Camera went into the backpack, which got strapped down tight, and onward I went.  I needed that geocache like Gollum needed the One Ring.  

Pride and stupid decisions go hand-in-hand.

I finally lost the trail.  Again, no pictures, I was just trying to not die at that point.  I suddenly remembered why I usually have climbing rope in my geocaching stuff.  Great job on that one.  I took a bearing on the sun, figured the right direction to go, and then just went off trail and headed straight up the cliff.  Somehow I popped out on to a lovely cleared trail and walked right up into another hiker.  He told me that he was using the "easy" trail, and I must have taken the destroyed "hard" trail.  No Shit.

Finally, I made it to the top. Covered in mud and cuts.  Everyone else had bottles of water and a splash of mud on their Bermuda pants and I looked like something out of the Swamp Thing.  I took a quick spit bath for my picture with my G.P.S.r. to prove I was in the location, and then take in the view.

Remember that Dark Colors Don't Show Stains

The view was worth it.  

Majestic Again

After giving up on staying clean, I stumbled and slid my way back down to the bridge that spans the creek near the house.  I decided this is a great place to take a quick bath and under the watchful eyes of three construction workers I proceeded to splash water all over myself to get some of the mud off before I walked back onto the grounds of the Robert Louis Stevenson house.  Of course, I am barefoot.  In water that looks sort-of clean, enjoying getting the mud and muck off of my bruises and cuts.  

Under Construction

Then I spotted it.  About six inches from my foot was a hypodermic needle.  I exited the river and walked back to the house.  Carefully.  I showered using their garden hose.  

Quite the adventure for a geocache.  The ice cold coconut at our favorite little restaurant on the side of the road in Apia, Samoa was extra amazing that day.

Straw Added for Dramatic Effect

Piula Cave - How my last living picture was not very flattering.

Piula Cave is beautiful.  Like many beautiful things its beauty is only skin deep.  Peel back that lovely veneer of tranquil turquoise water and oddly out of place tilapia, and it is a scene out of Peter Pan (Disney Version).  The water is rising, the ceiling is getting lower, there is no light, and you are not going to get out the way you came in.  

It starts out all nice and pretty.  Manicured lawns, some mention of religious stuff... this sign:

You got this.  So far, no big deal.  You have driven past signs before.  If you are like me, it might not be a church sign, but that is another story for another day.

Stairs come next.  If you saw my earlier post then you know it could be worse than some stairs.  

Granted, they are sloped, and they certainly would not be very good if you had a balance problem.  But at least it is not a ladder.  Thank God it is not a ladder.

So you finally come to the point where you see that first picture.  It is beautiful.  Water is cold.  Cute little fish swimming around.  Gaping maw into a cliff side.  No one else around. No lifeguard on duty.  No lights.  

What the hell.  Gotta die somewhere.

You go about twenty feet in and this is all you can see.  

No, that is not a picture from inside.  It is just a black square, but I am sure you get my drift.  You are swimming, not touching the unseen bottom.  Not able to stop from smacking your head on the rocks that are about six inches above the surface of the water, and too dumb or prideful to turn around.  It is like playing a game of Marco Polo, except in the deep end, at night, with sharp objects hitting your head, while kicking equally sharp objects, unknown swimming things bumping into you, and no one else is there to see if you drown.

We finally spot a speck of light in a tunnel that is about 8 feet down and seems to come from nowhere.  

Too proud to turn around (where no one will see us exit, since again, there is no one here to notice the death of two idiotic tourists), we take what feels like a half hour, but was probably only 5 minutes and dive through it.  Yeah, it only goes about 8 feet until you can feel your way to the surface on the other side.  We did not die.  But... for about 10 minutes there, it was touch-and-go.  

Perhaps in retrospect we should have turned around and not gone into the abyss in hopes that there was light on the other side, but perhaps it was a great learning opportunity.  There must be a lesson somewhere in all this. 

Then again, we could just be idiots.

This was almost the last picture taken of us.  First is my wife taking the obligatory selfie:

The second is me with a friend of ours who showed us the way down and then left to go wait near the car which was parked about a half-mile away under a nice shady tree that would be perfect for a nap.

This picture could have been my last.  What on earth was I thinking?  Double Shakas?  No shirt?  This would have been the picture that was featured in the newspaper next to a headline of Tourist Found Dead: Tacky Swimsuit and Pasty White Skin Spotted Two Days Later.

Make every picture you take obituary worthy.  Don't take pictures like this.  It is not worth it.  Shame on me.

If I had my way, I would add another line to that sign for the cave 

Proverbs 16:18 (KJV) - Pride Goeth Before Destruction. 

Thankfully our pride got us to the other side...  Maybe we won't be as lucky next time?

Ladder from Hell

If you have ever been to another country, you know that safety standards can be a bit... lax

On our trip to visit family in Western Samoa, we found a ladder, and this ladder should be in a training video for what O.S.H.A tells people to NEVER do.  It was amazing.  
It featured the following:

• Two telephone poles
• Two-by-four slats
• Almost perfectly vertical
• Vertigo inducing design
• Protruding nails
• Wet wood to climb on
• Moss on the wet wood
• A platform to catch you if you fall... 

You would think, that with water being below the ladder that there would not be a... catching platform?  A large, wooden, spine crushing, paralysis inducing, living-as-a-vegetable wooden platform.  

Just remember, when you travel, tetanus shot and medical evacuation insurance are not a bad thing to have.

All this being said, the water was wonderful, but never again!  You win this round To Sua Ocean Trench 

Part two to follow.