Wild Places and Open Spaces

One year later, 11 flights, 72,000 driven kilometeres, 3 cars, 200 different campsites, 20 states, and several pairs of shoes, we are back home. We aren’t exactly pleased at the abrupt conclusion of our pacific adventure, but we have succeeded in creating a lifetime of wonderous memories in a relatively short time.

Apart from some minor mishaps ie stings, scrapes, falls etc. we were very fortunate to have endured our journey without any significant snags. Remarkably we only lost a bird book and a few other minor things along the way. We wore out several pairs of cheap shoes and a normal amount of clothes.

We were also fortunate to have a terrific supportive cast from home with our parents taking care of our stuff and affairs while we were gone – not to mention taking care of us before, between and now after our trip.

A lot of people ask where or what our favorite part of the trip was, but that is extremely difficult to give a simple answer. The best part of all was probably breaking away from our ‘normal’ boring existence and daring to break the rules. Like we said before we left, “If we can be of any inspiration to anyone small who wants to think bigger, then we would be happy”.

After that it has to be all the incredible people we met along the way, as they have served as inspiration to us! Our lives were touched by so many amazing people, that they alone made our trip worth every step. We especially thank our friends and family in Australia who helped us and gave us a place to stay and get organized, as did both our Canadian/Kiwi and Canadian/Alaskan friends in both respective places. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for helping to make our trip easier and more fun.

That being said; we set out on this journey to experience wild places and open spaces, and we did just that. The highlights are many – too many to list- but between the vast open spaces of the colourful southwestern US landscapes, the open untouched tundra and large animals of Alaska and Yukon Territory, the beautiful scenery of the Inside Passage, the warm weather and waters of Hawaii, the wonderous animals of Australia, the rolling landscape and friendly people of New Zealand, the amazing reefs and underwater life of Fiji, and the lazy days of lying on the beaches of Samoa, we truly had a thrill of a lifetime discovering thousands of amazing treasures everywhere we went.

The problem now is we have the travel bug, and even the great distances we’ve travelled and all the things we’ve seen, the bug has only opened our eyes to how much more there is to encounter – places we’ve never even considered prior to our travels.

Now we just need to find the means and the money to continue our journey. One of our friends told us if he won the lottery he’d fund our travels just so he could keep reading about them….That sounds perfect to us! We’re pulling for you……and thanks!

Nobody knows what lies ahead and we don’t either, but the mystery is part of the fun, don’t you think? For now we’ll settle back into our ‘boring, structured lives’ but we will be dreaming of further travels in the near future and that will always get us through!

We have no regrets for the money we’ve spent, and we intend on doing it again soon. Our only advice to everyone is ‘dream big, then do it!’.

We, as usual, did not have any accomodations booked when we reached the island of Savaii, but did know we wanted to go to the ‘town’ of Manase. Bridgette and Scott were headed that way as well, so we decided to share a cab. They were headed to an upscale ‘resort’…their fale had airconditioning and they paid 300 Tala a night. We opted for the beach fales that were 50 Tala per person, and had natural airconditioning…ie no walls. Yup, our fale had no walls – it did have thatched ‘curtains’ that you could pull down if you wanted, but we only did that for half of the fale, because our view of the water was incredible – our fale was literally right on the beach – 10 steps from it we were in the ocean.

Our new friends were only a 2 minute walk down the beach from us, and we ended up hanging out with them most of the time. We decided to take a ‘tour’ of the island with them – and booked with a fellow who was recommended by the Lonely Planet Guide. The tour guide ended up being an interesting 80 year old man, who used to be a geologist with a special interest in volcanic processes. Although the tour was very interesting, at times he went a little overboard with the information, and because of this we ran out of time. It was on this tour that we saw the highest blow holes we had ever seen – so high and strong that when a coconut was thrown down the hole just before the waves crashed in, the coconut would be catapulted hundreds of feet into the ocean. Very impressive.

After 3 nights of paradise in Manase, we decided to follow our friends back to the mainland to another ‘hot spot’ called Lalomanu. Again, we had no accomodations, but this time decided to stay at the same spot as our friends, since it was cheaper than the outrageous 300 tala before. This spot ended up being even more of a paradise than before, and after Scott and Bridgette left we ended up staying there for nearly the rest of our trip. The beach was amazing, and the snorkelling even better. This truly was paradise. Our fale was nicer as well – this one had walls and was lockable, and had a nice porch on it that we spent many hours on. Again, we were right on the beach, with only 10 steps to get to the water. I even got my luggage back here – we never got the full story what happened to it, but it was delivered to us by the airline. By the sounds of it, it never got offloaded from the plane, then the plane did another trip to Fiji, then it got offloaded a week later with the new flight’s luggage. A few minor things were broken in it, but all the important stuff was there thank goodness. And finally, I could take my glasses off again because I had my contacts!

The only unfortunate thing we found at Lalomanu, were the cockroaches – they tended to come into the fale at night. This wouldn’t be so bad, except that the roaches had an unforgettable smell to them – as soon as you tried to scurry them away (or kill them for that matter) they would release this TERRIBLE smell and it would permeate everything. It was the grossest smell I think I have ever smelled.

We managed to pull ourselves away from the paradise (and cockroaches) at Lalomanu to visit another small island called Namua. There are no roads or villages on this island, only a few open fales on the beach. When we arrived we found that we would be the only people staying there, so it was very quiet. Unfortunately, the mosquitoes were very bad, and they got the better of us. It was hard to go from paradise just across the water to a place where the food, beach and snorkelling were not as good, not to mention we got eaten alive. After our night at Namua, we decided we’d leave that afternoon, but not before we’d walk around the island.

The weather that day started off beautiful, however, it quickly turned overcast, and while on our walk around the island it started pouring. Jim was carrying his camera without a waterproof bag, so we had to seek shelter under some rock walls. With the camera in a dry spot, we amused ourselves for a couple of hours by playing baseball with driftwood as bats, and shells, nuts, rocks as balls. We had a hoot getting soaked while having contests on who could hit the furthest out into the ocean.

As luck would have it, the skies cleared up around 4pm – exactly the time we were to leave Namua. We had wanted to head to another town that evening, but we found out that all the accomodations were taken. So, we went back to our old standby at Lalomanu – our paradise and they were glad to take us back. We didn’t even mind the stinky cockroaches after being eaten alive at Namua.

The rest of our trip was relatively uneventful – after Lalomanu we headed into the capital again for 2 nights, and from here we would fly home. We chose a relatively expensive hotel for our last 2 nights of our travels – just some splurging before reality set in again. The hotel had airconditioning and a pool, both of which were welcome in the extreme heat. We treated ourselves to dinner one night at a VERY expensive hotel (we couldn’t afford to stay there) and had to fend off some barking attack dogs with stones on our walk back to our hotel. We visited Robert Louis Stevenson’s house/museum during the day, but it was too darn hot to walk the 45min up a hill to his grave site – neither one of us needed to have a heart attack on our last day of our trip!

It was so strange when we were sitting at the airport in Samoa, waiting to board our plane to Los Angeles. Neither one of us could believe that we had been gone for a year. How time flies when you’re having fun! Samoa was a great place to end our trip – a paradise where we were able to relax before returning to reality again.

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