On Saturday, shortly after our arrival in Asau, we met Alvah, Diana and the Mahina crew ashore so we could jump in a mini-van for a tour of the island. We were driven around the whole island, more of a drive than we anticipated, but quite interesting.

In Samoa, there appear to be a few careers: construction, civil service, tourism, and retail. If you don't run a resort or work for one, you can push papers for the government or help build yet another church for a village, or sell water and fruit at your family's roadside stand. Unless .your land contains some curiosity that you can charge tourists to see!

On our trip around the island we stopped at a few of these curious places. Some were worth the cover charge. On the southern coast, the Alofaaga Blowholes would blow your mind. As breakers hit the shore, the water flows underneath the lava and shoots up through holes - just like geysers at Yosemite. Water and mist shoot straight up into the air and hang suspended for a while. A crazy old man drops coconuts into the holes so they rocket skyward with the right wave. However, perhaps more interesting than the holes themselves, is the political intrigue surrounding the ownership of the holes. Apparently, a family used to own the land with the holes and they charged a visitor's fee. This is common practice; we had already paid a few Tala each to view Lover's Leap, the Methodist Church with lava flowing through it, a rainforest banyan tree and suspension bridge, etc. To get to the blowholes, we had to drive through the village. Recently, the village grew tired of the traffic and wasn't getting a cut of the revenue. The village took the family to court and won the right of ownership. It probably helped that one of the village high-chiefs also served as a judge. Now the village owns the first 200 feet of blowholes and the family was left the final bit. The catch is, once we paid the village we saw what we came to see. There was no need to continue down the dead end road to pass the family fence and pay them another 10 Tala to view the same holes. A few family members stood and grumbled while we stopped short of their fence to view the spectacular water show. They weren't angry at us but at their village counterparts who had collected our fees. It sounds to us like the family got a bit of a raw deal, but they weren't giving the village a cut to begin with. Sounds like a mediation might have resulted in a more equitable solution, but it looks too late for that now. The only difference between that kind of dispute in Samoa and in the US is that in Samoa, you can't pack up and move elsewhere that easily. Family and village life are nearly inextricable.

The virgin's grave was kind of a funny little anomaly in the flow. As lava flowed through a Methodist church between 1905-1911, it came to a grave of a missionary and flowed around it instead of over it. The family created a miracle out of it and now charges a few Tala to walk tourists through their property, along the old lava flow through the church and up to the grave. The best part of the tour was the sign out front (see photo) that read as if Virgins Crave Methodists. I had to giggle about that one for quite a while.