We’ve now been here a week and find Samoa a wonderful country. It’s beautiful here and the people are quite friendly, we could easily stay much longer. We are awoken each morning by the sounds of the police marching band’s flag raising ceremony. We’ve watched canoe races in the harbor, a giant 40-man canoe in training and we’ve seen a traditional ocean sailing canoe come and go. All from our back porch. The Apia downtown area is a 10 min walk (or 5 tala taxi) and has many shops and restaurants. The food is quite good and after French Polynesia, everything seems super affordable. Wendy bought me a Samoan lava lava (man skirt), which I rocked in church on Sunday. A few days ago we went on a cultural tour offered by the Tourism Bureau and saw traditional cooking, carving, tapa making and tattooing old-style with the bone and mallet. Afterwards we were served the traditional Samoan meal that we had seen prepared earlier and treated to some dancing. It was a great show! Later that night we went to another Samoan feast with fire dancing. This was very cool and put on by a local outreach organization that gets street kids involved by teaching them how to play with fire… It got even better because there were a bunch of Samoan and New Zealand police in the audience who all ended up dancing with their shirts off. Speaking of tattoos, I got the Samoan installment to my ink montage by a local artist named Masua who operates part-time from a nearby clothing shop named: Wendy’s Designs & Tattoo. This guy is amazing. He sketched a beautiful design freehand, then applied the tattoo practically by memory. It’s pretty badass and I’m quite pleased with it. We also took a taxi tour of the east half of Upolu with Andy who showed us a freshwater cave pool, 2 spectacular waterfalls (see pic) and Robert Louis Stevensons estate. Even though the weather got a little snotty, this was a beautiful drive and we enjoyed each of the sites. The RLS estate was quite interesting and we learned a lot. We still have a lot to see and do here, but next week we will start watching for a weather window to sail for Tonga, ~300 miles south of here.