American Samoa - Pago Pago, and Tisa's Barefoot Bar

My Dad had fond memories of Pago Pago during his time in the Navy and he pronounce it Paygo Paygo. I learned now that it is properly pronounced Pahngo Pahngo. It sounds weird, but I am determined to adjust. We had to cross the International Date Line to get here. Instead of a missing day like we had when crossing east to west, this time we had 2 Mondays because we crossed west to east. When putting something on our calendar for Monday Dec 15, we had to put in the title whether it was the first Monday or the second Monday! Our shipmate friend, Randy Cassingham said, if we're going to get 2 of one day, why does it have to be a Monday! 🤣

We were greeted at the dock by enthusiastic dancers and even Miss American Samoa!

There is no doubt that this is a South Pacific tropical paradise of an island, but it also is the United States. I could live here! (But, I'd rather live where I do 😊) I spoke with one shipmate that got some testing done at the local hospital and the cost was covered by Medicare. 

Since we had just produced our recent YouTube show, we felt we deserved some tourist time and were ready to play in this port. We previously signed up for a group event at a place called Tisa's Barefoot Bar. According to the website, Tisa's is World Famous!! Well, it has certainly earned a famous spot in my world memories. We spent the afternoon snorkeling on their beach, and the evening eating the most delicious food prepared in a traditional method. 

What a gorgeous place! It was equally pretty underwater. We didn't need to go far at all to see a drop off and canyon with large schools of tropical fish.

The food was cooked in a traditional method. They build a fire, then pile it with rocks, add the food wrapped in aluminum foil and covered with banana leaves, then Taro leaves. It cooked all afternoon then, as soon as it came out of the fire/oven we ate. The tenderest ribs ever. And, you haven't lived till you've eaten a papaya that has been cooked this way! It's called an Umu feast. 

Here's our shipmate, Viv, helping to build the oven. 

A view during our bus ride to Tisa's

After a full day of snorkeling, sightseeing, food, friends, and pina coladas - we caught a taxi back home.

Samoa and Geeks on Tour

 We were docked in Apia, Samoa for 3 days but we didn't even get off the ship 😜 Port days where we have no tourist stuff planned are the only time we get to catch up on our work! Sea days have so many shipboard activities planned that it's hard to get anything else done. This is our life, and we are learning to adjust to the fact that we won't see everything, we have other stuff we want to do besides being tourists. We call it 'work' but we actually enjoy doing our Geeks on Tour stuff, so we make time for it.

To create a YouTube 'Studio" Jim uses magnets to hang a green screen from the ceiling. Then he sets up an extension to his desk so I can sit beside him and do my part. Other than the work to set it up and tear it down, this works great. 

 While we were in Apia, we did our Geeks on Tour YouTube show, Episode 313 of What Does this Button Do? Our topic was Google Photos 2025 Updates. We even did it live! As we've been sailing east, our time zone is not that much different from the US. I really like doing our show at 2pm - I've gotten hardwired to be ready at that hour - but if I upped it just a few hours to 11am, that made it 5pm on the east coast. Very doable. It was a great show, if I do say so myself. Not even one hiccup with our Internet connections. There are some jaw-dropping new features in Google Photos - my favorite is "Help me Edit" and I came up with some practical examples that do a great job of showing off the feature. If you don't want to watch the whole show, just click this link to take you straight to what I think is the very best part.

Clicking 'Play" on this video will take you straight to my favorite part. You can always scroll back to the beginning and watch the whole thing.

Diving in Fiji

  We're in the south Pacific. Some of the best diving in the world. We've done a lot of diving around the world and when people ask me "Where was your favorite?" I respond - Fiji. We were there in 2006. Me, Jim and Mom spent 10 days there on the Nai'a liveaboard dive boat and it was spectacular and fun! 

See our blog posts from 2006. I saved them in .pdf format to preserve the photos.
(Here are the original blog posts: We have to go back to Fiji and Part 1-Diving in Fiji and Part 2 - Diving in Fiji)

This time we joined a group for diving in the Namena Marine Reserve while the ship was anchored in Savusavu. It was a long boat ride to 2 very nice dives. One was called 'chimneys' because of the unusual formation of 2 coral heads sticking straight up and the other was Grand Central Station. I'll remember it more clearly as Grand Canyon for the dramatic walls. It was great, but it didn't live up to my memory. The comparison really isn't fair since, in 2006 we were on a liveaboard for 10 days, making at least 30 dives all over the Fiji area. Still, I figure I'm sure a spoiled diver when I go to a protected dive site in Fiji and come up saying ... "That was nice." 😜

Here's Jim's video:

Ziplining?! Really? At your age?

 Believe it or not, that's what we did one day in Fiji. We went Ziplining. And, not just one zipline. This operation had set up 16 lines. You hike up to the first platform, get hooked up to the line and goooooooo. Then you walk up some stairs, climb another path to another platform, get hooked up to the line and goooo. It was a gorgeous day, and the views were magnificent. We kept hiking up to the next platform for 6 lines I think it was, then the trail headed down with 10 platform stops and ziplines in between. See Zip-Fiji.com for more details.

There were some techniques to learn. For the first few lines, I would spin around till I was headed backwards to the landing platform. I finally asked why that was and they told me that my gloved hand need to hang on to the line behind my head rather than in front. Notice Jim in the photo above vs my photo. That would keep me flying straight. There was also a technique of just kind of falling off the platform or pushing off, and of course, there is the obligatory shouting of "Bula!" as you fly away! By the time we were on line 13 or 14, we pretty much got it down! It was SOO fun.

Bula! Jim is a happy boy!

It was extra fun because we were there with a group of friends from the ship.

Somewhere in the middle of the day of ziplining, we took a detour and visited a cave. It was magical. A tour of that cave alone would have been a memorable day. 

Fiji Fun

 

We've been in Fiji once before - 2006 on a liveaboard dive boat. More on diving later. This time we're here on the Villa Vie Odyssey, our floating home, and we bounced around the islands for 2 weeks, making 6 stops. 

 

Suva

In Suva, we joined some Odyssean friends, Eve, Carolyn and Andrew, for happy hour at the Grand Pacific Hotel. It was a short taxi ride away from the ship. It was a beautiful evening.

We also visited the American Embassy to get a document notarized and found a lot of our fellow Odysseans already there trying to get new passports with more Visa pages. Yes, it's a thing! In this lifestyle we visit so many countries - 20 so far this year - that the pages in your passport get filled up! If you have no blank pages, your Passport is no good. Our passports were only a year old, but it could get full before another year passes, so we need to pay attention. The big problem is, in order to get a new passport you normally have to surrender your current one. We can't do that. So we are blazing new trails with the procedures of our Dept. of State. Based on what these trailblazers are learning, we will attempt to get new passports when we are in Sydney next February, and we will get the new 52 page booklets rather than our current 25 or so.

A Tropical Embassy!

Lautoka

We didn't make any particular plans in Lautoka. We stayed on the ship and did computer work. But we did take a walk from the ship along the waterfront and found a delightful hotel bar for a drink under the palm trees. 

It's always such a delight to come back home.

Meanwhile, back at the ship, we had a "Speaker's Corner" about staying safe. Some information was about keeping your phone safe and who to contact if you get in trouble. Other information was about self-defense. Our friend, Donna, is trained in the street fighting martial art called Krav Maga, and Silja is a black-belt in Karate. You can see the video recording here: Speakers Corner: Self Awareness - a panel discussion. Regardless of the topic, you can always count on Donna's husband, Wayne, to inject some humor 🤣

Wayne is ready for his wife, Donna, to demonstrate self-defense techniques!

We also had dinner with new friends, Elma and Robert. When we learned that they lived in an RV for 14 years ... in Europe! ... We just had to talk more. So we planned to have dinner in the "Thistle" which is the sit down restaurant on board. We learned that those years were spent working, going from hospital to hospital teaching staff how to operate new radiology equipment. Robert is a radiology imaging specialist and Elma was certified in NeoNatal Intensive care. 14 years! Living in hospital parking lots. But that's not all. They are both of Dutch heritage, but lived in Venezuela, South Africa, and call Paris 'home.' I lost count of the number of languages they speak.

Oh! The People we Meet!