Fiji
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Samoa
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In morning I went along the Mulinuu Peninsular looking at the various memorials to Samoan dignatories and the colonial past, whilst Lucy relieved the market of most of its souvenirs. We meet Emma at the Aggie Gray’s coffee shop and then headed back off towards Aleipata. This time we were not intending to make use of the sand and sea, but were hoping to catch sight of a Flying Fox. Whilst the once common in Samoa it is sadly now only visible in a few locations.

Emma had been hoping to arrange a guide through some of her brothers in-law's family but unfortunately there had been a death in the family and everyone was otherwise occupied with fa’lavelave.

We drove back to the beach fales we had used the previous day and spoke to one of the ladies on duty and asked wether it would be possible to arrange for one of her family to act as a guide for us. After several minutes she decided who would be a suitable guide and sent a child to collect our him.

In the 4x4, we headed through Lalomanu, soon turning off the road and heading inland. Within a mile we had to turn off on to a plantation track and we carried on up this going higher and higher for about 15 minutes. We pulled over to the side of the track and the guide headed off through thick undergrowth, using his machete to clear a path for us to follow. Fortunately it was neither too strenuous nor too long a walk and within 20 minutes we had reached the top of the hill we were climbing and found ourselves looking down into the bowl of a wide crater. No more than 15 metres in front of us were several large trees, the branches of which were laden with the cloaked shapes of sleeping flying foxes. When we arrived there were just one or two that were awake and circling within the walls of the crater, but the longer we spent there, the more appeared in the air. We stayed their for about 20 minutes, at which point there must have been about 200 wheeling noisily through the air.

On the way back down to the car we had an excellent demonstration of Samoan survival skills. Our guide picked up a piece of wood and started stripping the bark of it. He asked us if we would like some niu, and we when said we would he stopped by a coconut tied the strip of bark into a loop which he tied aroud his ankles. He then proceeded to hop about 40 feet up the tree and knocked down a number of coconuts using the length of stick he had stripped the bark from. From he came down the tree, he sharpened the stick at both ends, placed one end of it into the ground and used the other end sharp end to take the husk of the coconut. Finally with a few deft strokes of his machete he opened a small hole in the end, through which we could drink the milk.

Although no money had been asked fvor or even mentioned, we gave our guide 30 Tala and a packet of cigarettes. He said that had would actually have prefered lau, which is the current slang for cannabis, to the money. We then had to drive back to Apia because we had been invited for dinner at Enoka Puni’s.