From Suwarrow to American Samoa, we had around 450 nautical miles of open Pacific ahead of us. This time the ocean treated us kindly. The weather was stable and mostly sunny, with only the occasional rain squall passing over us for a short while before moving on. After everything we had already been through, it was one of those passages where you almost start to get bored — and at sea, boredom is usually a good sign.
It took us almost four days to reach Tutuila, the main island of American Samoa. As we approached, high, steep and intensely green volcanic mountains began to rise ahead of us, and then we entered Pago Pago Harbor, a bay that cuts deep into the island and from the sea almost feels like sailing between the walls of a huge green fortress.
Its shape is no accident. Pago Pago Harbor lies within the remains of Tutuila’s old volcanic system. The island was formed through several major volcanic phases, and over time volcanism, collapse and erosion created this deep natural harbor, almost completely sheltered from the open Pacific.
Only when you sail far enough inside do you really understand how protected the harbor is. The ocean disappears behind you, and around the boat rise steep mountains covered in tropical forest. It is easy to see why the Americans recognized this place as strategically valuable as far back as the late nineteenth century.
After completing the usual entry formalities, we moved almost to the head of the bay and found a place to anchor not far from a small dock. There was no room for us alongside, and honestly I was not sure I would have wanted to tie our boat there anyway. Our boat was large enough that in serious bad weather it might have caused more damage to the dock than the dock would have helped us.
By the time we were settled, it was already getting dark, so we went ashore only briefly to see where we had arrived.
My first impression was strange.
Pago Pago was unmistakably Polynesian. There were palm trees behind the houses, enormous green mountains above them, Samoan people everywhere, and a tropical climate that constantly reminded you where you were. But over all of that, it felt as though someone had pulled an American shirt over the place.
Large American pickup trucks filled the roads. Shops, signs and advertisements looked American. Many of the houses had the same lightweight construction you see across parts of the United States. The whole place felt like a small provincial American town that had somehow been lifted up and dropped onto a volcanic island in the middle of the Pacific.
In Samoa, there is an interesting custom called Sa, a period of evening prayer and quiet in the villages. Toward the end of the day, a gong, bell, conch shell, or another signal is sounded, and for a short while daily life practically comes to a stop. People remain at home with their families, while visitors and passers-by are expected not to walk through the village or make unnecessary noise during the prayer period. After ten or twenty minutes, another signal is given and normal life resumes. We found it especially interesting how quickly an entire village could shift from its usual activity into complete silence, and then just as quickly return to its normal rhythm.
This custom did not develop as some modern kind of “curfew.” It is part of the broader fa’a Samoa, the traditional Samoan way of life in which family, village, chiefs, and community all play a central role. When Christian missionaries arrived in Samoa in the early nineteenth century, especially from 1830 onward, the new religion did not simply replace the older social customs. Instead, it was largely absorbed into the existing structure of Samoan society. Evening family prayer became part of that system, and Sa — a word that can roughly mean “sacred” or “forbidden” — became the time when the village briefly settles into silence so that families can gather and pray.
For that reason, Sa is about more than religion alone. It also reflects the importance in Samoan culture of the individual briefly adjusting his or her behavior for the sake of the family and the wider community. In traditional villages, the beginning may be marked by a bell, conch shell, or gong, and members of the village may sometimes stand by the road to make sure the quiet is respected. It is a good example of how the older structure of Samoan village life and Christian tradition did not push each other aside, but gradually blended into a single custom that has survived to the present day.
We did not stay out long. We walked around a little, returned to the boat, made dinner and went to sleep.
Later that night, however, a smell began to spread through the boat.
Fish.
And not the kind of smell you get when someone on the next boat is cooking dinner. This was more like being anchored in the middle of a fish-processing plant.
The smell came through the hatches, across the deck, through the ventilation — everywhere. At first we had no idea what was happening, until we discovered that there was a large tuna-processing facility nearby. The tuna industry has been one of the most important parts of American Samoa’s economy for decades, and Pago Pago is home to a major StarKist plant.
That also explained the large number of fishing vessels in the harbor.
As for the smell, there was not much we could do about it. When the plant was operating and the wind was blowing our way, the whole anchorage knew about it.
In the end, I decided the only fair thing to do was go to the shop, buy a local can of tuna and complete the experience properly.
We already had the smell.
Might as well have the taste too.
Over the next few days we started exploring Pago Pago and the surrounding area more seriously. We needed to restock, replace some things for the boat and buy supplies we had used up since Tahiti. Not far from the harbor there was even a McDonald’s, which after so many months among small Pacific islands felt almost like a tourist attraction in itself. We had not seen one since Tahiti.
But what interested me much more were the mountains above the harbor.
While reading through a guidebook, I found the World War II Heritage Trail, a hiking route that runs through the jungle past the remains of military positions from the Second World War.
That immediately sounded like something I wanted to do.
The history of Pago Pago made it even more interesting. American involvement here did not begin recently. The United States gained rights to use the harbor as a naval station in the late nineteenth century, and by the beginning of the twentieth century Tutuila had come under American administration.
During the Second World War, American Samoa became strategically important because the Samoan islands lay along a major communication and supply route between the United States, Australia and New Zealand. After Pearl Harbor, the defenses around Pago Pago Harbor were strengthened dramatically. Bunkers, gun positions, trenches and other military installations were built into the hills surrounding the harbor.
American Samoa was even directly attacked once during the war, when a Japanese submarine shelled the naval station area in January 1942.
Most of that military infrastructure never had to serve the purpose for which it had been built, but the remains are still scattered through the jungle.
Before attempting the longer trail, I first went to see what remained of the old cable car system leading toward Mount ʻAlava. The cable car once crossed high above Pago Pago Harbor and connected the town area with the mountain on the opposite side.
On the summit of Mount ʻAlava there was communications infrastructure, and the mountain remains one of the best viewpoints over the harbor.
By 2018, very little of the cable car still looked like a functioning system, but the idea that cabins once crossed this enormous harbor was fascinating. Everything I had been looking at from below — the ships, the tuna factory, the town and the harbor itself — must have looked completely different from up there.
The next day I set off on the World War II Heritage Trail.
The trail ran through dense tropical forest, and the rain from the previous days had left enough mud to make it more than a casual walk. Some sections were slippery and required a bit of care, but that was part of what made it enjoyable. You would be walking through completely wild jungle and then suddenly come across the remains of a bunker, a trench or an old military position hidden among the trees.
It is strange how quickly nature takes things back in places like this. Structures built by the Americans more than seventy years earlier to withstand war were now slowly disappearing beneath roots, moss and tropical vegetation.
At one point I came across a group of children who were, to put it mildly, not entirely sure where they were going.
They asked me which way they should go.
Apparently I looked competent enough to be mistaken for a local guide, so I gave them my best professional hiking advice:
“Just follow the trail and don’t leave it.”
They seemed genuinely impressed.
They were walking in the opposite direction from me, so I assume they eventually made it back down.
At least I hope they did.
By the time I finished the trail and made my way back to the boat, my legs were making it very clear that I had spent far too much of the previous few months sitting in the cockpit.
But I still had Mount ʻAlava left to do.
One afternoon, while I was resting on the boat, Marko called me. We were talking on the phone when suddenly there was an extremely loud sound, somewhere between a distant explosion and thunder.
I looked up and saw a very bright meteor streaking across the sky, leaving a visible trail behind it.
It lasted only a moment, and from where I was standing it looked as though it disappeared somewhere toward the ocean.
Later, I could not find any confirmation that a meteorite had actually fallen near American Samoa around that time, so it may simply have been a large fireball burning up in the atmosphere.
But at the time I took it as a perfectly good sign that I should climb the mountain the next day.
Mount ʻAlava rises to around 490 metres above sea level, which does not sound especially serious on paper. The problem is that tropical heat, humidity, mud and the distance required to get to and from the actual trail quickly make the whole thing much more demanding.
I set off early, although apparently not early enough to avoid the heat.
As the day went on it became hotter and hotter, and then at one point the usual tropical rain arrived. For several minutes it fell as though the sky had opened, soaking everything completely. Then it stopped, the sun came back out, and the humidity started cooking you all over again.
I met a few other hikers along the way, but spent most of the day walking alone. The forest was dense and noisy, and the views only opened occasionally.
That made the moment when Pago Pago Harbor finally appeared below me even better.
From above, you really understand how deeply the harbor cuts into the island and how tightly the town is squeezed between the sea and the volcanic slopes. The entire shape of the place becomes much easier to understand from that height.
There are also communications structures and remains of the old cable car system near the summit.
I spent almost the entire day on the hike, and by the time I returned to the boat, I had very little interest in discovering any more mountains for a while.
So the next day I decided to behave like a normal tourist.
I went into town.
Bought a souvenir.
Walked around without climbing anything.
A surprisingly pleasant change.
We explored the rest of Tutuila using the local buses. They were cheap and perfect for us because we did not have a car.
There was only one problem.
The timetable.
There seemed to be some theoretical idea of when a bus was supposed to arrive.
Then there was reality.
The two were not always closely related.
After a while we stopped trying to understand the system. You stood by the road, waited, and eventually a bus would appear.
Probably.
It was during those bus rides and trips around the island that I started to notice more clearly just how strange a mixture of two worlds American Samoa really was.
The American influence was obvious everywhere, but beneath it there was still a very strong Samoan way of life — villages, large families, traditional social structures and an extremely visible role for the church.
And there were a lot of churches.
At times I had the impression that every few houses belonged to a different church or religious community.
It became especially noticeable on weekends.
Different church groups would set up tables around town, cook food and hand it out to people passing by. Nobody asked whether you had money. You simply walked up, took some food, and sooner or later the conversation would begin.
And naturally, at some point the question would come:
“Which church do you belong to?”
If the answer was none, that immediately opened the door for someone to explain why joining theirs might be an excellent idea.
I never looked deeply into how all those communities were organized or financed. What interested me more was simply how visible religion was as part of everyday social life.
For us, the practical result was much simpler.
On a weekend, you could walk through the center of Pago Pago and practically eat your way from one end to the other.
At one table someone gave you food.
A little farther on someone else offered you something different.
Fifty metres later, another group was already trying to recruit you.
You were unlikely to go hungry.
You might accidentally join a church, though.
As the days passed, I became more and more curious about what Samoa itself would be like — the independent one.
Until then, American Samoa was the only Samoan world I had seen, and I had no real sense of how much of what I was looking at was traditional Samoa and how much had developed through more than a century of American influence.
We were about to find out.
Upolu is not far from Tutuila. The passage between them would take only around ten hours, which after our Pacific passages of several hundred miles felt almost like a short trip.
But there is one geographical detail that completely changes your sense of time.
The International Date Line.
In 2011, Samoa moved to the western side of the date line in order to align its working week more closely with Australia and New Zealand, while American Samoa remained on the eastern side.
That meant that in June 2018 there was a full 24-hour difference between two island groups that are geographically almost neighbors.
The clock can show almost the same time.
But the date is different.
You can leave American Samoa on one day, sail for only a few hours, and arrive in Samoa on the next calendar day.
A whole date simply disappears.
I found it slightly ridiculous that after sailing thousands of nautical miles and spending days at a time looking at nothing but ocean, one of the biggest jumps in time would happen during one of our shortest passages.
During our final days in Pago Pago, we finished restocking, visited a few places we had missed earlier and prepared the boat for the next leg.
American Samoa stayed in my memory as a strange combination of everything: volcanic mountains and American pickup trucks, tropical villages and McDonald’s, old military bunkers disappearing into the jungle, a tuna factory whose smell could find you even at anchor, churches handing out food on weekends, and one enormous natural harbor that the Americans had recognized as a perfect place to establish themselves in the middle of the Pacific more than a century earlier.
Now we wanted to see what happened when the American part was removed.
We raised the anchor and headed for Upolu.
Our next stop was Samoa.