March 12th, 2025

This was a new port for us. We were lucky that we had no rain today even though there was a 50% chance today. We ordered room service breakfast and then got off the boat around 10am.

The view from our balcony of Pago Pago.

There were not many tours offered by the cruise line in this port and the ones that were offered were cultural shows or museums, none of which are our thing. There was a small market at the pier and then right outside the gate there were several people offering tours of the island. We opted for 1 that took us around in a local bus with wooden benches and no air conditioning. To be clear that is all they have on this island when it comes to buses and even if we had done a ship’s tour the vehicle would have been the same. We were offered a 3 hour tour of the island for 20 dollars each. We shared the bus with about a dozen from the cruise ship.

Our bus tour.

We went along the coast and our first stop was to see the “flower pots” which are large rock formations in the water covered in greenery.

The water was crystal clear and the tide was going out. One thing we did notice was that there was no one in the water. There was no snorkeling or local boat traffic. No dive boats or fishing boats and we thought that was strange since the water was beautiful.

We did see this sign and we figured this was one of the reasons we saw very little water activity.

We went to the end of the island that had a nice view point.

You can see all the volcanic rock and the color was beautiful.

Samoa is known for their open air pavilions. These are gathering places and they have them everywhere including. In front of churches, public parks and in their yards. That is the picture on the left and it is just a concrete pad with columns and a roof and no walls or anything else in them. The picture on the right is of a crypt which can be seen on the left hand side of the house. Almost every house had crypts in the front yard. Sometimes right on the front porch. We saw the crypts in Vietnam like this but they were not right in the front yard. They were usually off to the side or in the fields.

American Samoa is mostly Catholic and there are churches everywhere. 52,000 people live on the island but it did not seem that crowded. We did go into a grocery store that the bus brought us to so some people could use the restroom. We walked around the store a little bit and found the prices to be quite reasonable. The island gets direct flights from Hawaii twice a week, Saturday & Thursday.

We passed a very large and very smelly Starkist factory that employees over 1,000 people, processing and canning tuna.

More “flower pots”.

It was very warm and after the tour we walked around town a little bit and then headed back to the boat. All on board was 5:30 and we sailed a little before 6pm. Another thing that we found interesting was that this is the first place we have been that had no T-Mobile cell service. That includes all the countries that we went to on the world cruise in 23/24 and all the other places we have been since switching to T-Mobile.

Another view of Pago Pago as we sail away and the first sunset we have seen this trip.

Tonight we cross the international date line so there will be no Thursday for us. We go straight from the 12th to the 14th. If anything happens on the 13th please let us know.

Next Stop on the 14th is Apia, Samoa.