The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
The ‘treasured island’ of the South Pacific
Robert Louis Stevenson was so enchanted by Samoa that he never left. Anna Selby reveals the charms of the author’s final resting place
It was as a simple sketch that Treasure Island first took shape in Robert Louis Stevenson’s mind. In Scotland, in 1881, he drew an imaginary, romantic island. This would become the setting for his children’s tale of pirates, mutinies and buried treasure. It was not until seven years later that he found his own treasured island, one he would fall in love with and make his home until his death in 1894.
The main island of Samoa is Upolu – there are nine others, all but one of them tiny and several uninhabited. It was on Upolu that Stevenson built his colonial-style villa, Vailima, complete with two Scottish baronial fireplaces – though, for obvious reasons, these were never lit. Sitting just below the Equator in the heart of the South Pacific, this is a tropical climate, the volcanic peaks covered in vegetation. (Spare a thought for Stevenson and his clan, buttoned up in Victorian attire.)
Now as then, it is a land full of natural wonders. The rainforest drops down to a coastline ringed with pearly white beaches and turquoise waters where turtles swim alongside you just off the coast. In the mountains, waterfalls create natural pools for bathing. You can swim in the azure waters of the To-Sua Ocean Trench, accessed by a climb down a 100ft ladder and, from there, through caves to the sea.
On the second island of Savai’i, there is a great roar as blowholes force thousands of gallons of seawater spectacularly skywards. (Occasionally, children put coconuts on top for an extra-explosive effect.) The nearby lava fields are the dark remains of the floe that followed the 1905 eruption of Mt Matavanu. The lava engulfed five villages as it made its way to the sea – a roofless church still stands, though the lava surged through and around it. Amazingly, everyone survived, some escaping into the sea using coconuts as makeshift life jackets.
Samoans seem to take most things in their stride. Life is quiet, there is little crime, the roads are empty, everyby one goes to church (“Have a blessed day” is a common form of farewell, with absolutely no Handmaid overtones). The village is where everything is decided, from permission to build a house to punishment for misdemeanours. Meetings take place in fales, which stand on stilts with poles supporting their thatched roofs – there are no walls. Until a decade or so ago, all Samoan houses were like this, but walls have become more common – painted in Technicolor hues, surrounded by colourful gardens and the neatest of lawns. I would swear that, after birdsong, strimmers are the most common sound here. This is the fa’a Samoa – the Samoan way, a culture that has lasted 3,000 years and is still going strong.
You can get a glimpse of it at the Cultural Village in Apia, the capital, where you learn how to weave a plate from leaves (on which you will later eat lunch cooked in an umu, an underground oven), meet the woodcarvers, enjoy the singers and dancers, and witness traditional tattooing. A tatau is obligatory for Samoans and respected as a rite of passage and a demonstration of inner strength. For men, it is a dense pattern that completely covers the body from waist to knee. Women get off a tad more lightly as theirs run only from the knee to the upper thigh. Both are executed in the traditional way with a needle tapped a block of wood and, judging by the wincing, that respect is hard-earned.
Apia may be the capital but it is really just a small town (population: 35,000). Beyond its limits, there are only villages and that beautiful coastline, where most hotels can be found. But you won’t see anything approaching mass tourism, and the lodgings are very much local affairs. If you want lots of entertainment – or indeed late nights – Samoa is probably not the place for you.
Most hotels are small and Samoan owned and run, favouring the traditional oval or round fale design, with public spaces open to enjoy the constant cooling effects of the trade winds.
However, there are creature comforts – you will find pools, spas and wonderful restaurants at Le Lagoto (meaning “sunset”) on Savai’i or Sinalei (pronounced “sing-a-lay”) with its overwater restaurant on Upolu. You won’t be disappointed with the food. Samoa has an abundance of delicious dishes, the most typical (and addictive) being Oka I’a, fresh tuna marinated in lemon or lime juice, mixed with onion, tomato and cucumber and drenched in the milk of a coconut just picked from the tree.
It would be wrong to suggest nothing happens here. One of the big occasions is the Sunday service where everyone dresses in white and sings four-part harmonies that fill the coral limestone churches. There are churches everywhere in Samoa and, even in the smallest villages, they are as big as cathedrals. If you are really lucky, you might be asked to join the traditional family lunch that follows, the Toanai.
Perhaps the most exciting entertainment on Samoa is the dancing. The men are warriors, as in all Polynesian cultures, and have an impressive fire dance, while the women’s dances tell lyrical stories of myths, the sea and love. The dancing is known as fiafia, and it says much about the Samoans that the word also means “happy”.
No surprise then, that it was not just Samoa’s beauty which so endeared it to Stevenson, but the warmth of the locals too. Something of a champion for Samoans’ rights (locals were treated badly by the German traders who had made it their base, and it would become a German colony in 1900), he was much loved. He died at Vailima in 1894 and was buried there at the top of Mt Vaea, overlooking his home. You can still visit the spot today. It is a steep walk through dense rainforest and overshadowed by a magnificent banyan tree. As a sign of respect, locals passed Stevenson’s coffin from hand to hand up the hill to the final resting place of the man they called Tusitala: “the teller of tales”.