Wednesday 18th March once again! Woke up just as we were coming into the tremendous natural harbour of Pago Pago, American Samoa. A large horseshoe bay surrounded on three sides by towering mountainous hills, thickly clad in green…. Green everywhere. Colourful houses nestling on the slopes and around the water's edge. Nothing very big.

The ship docked at the head of the bay where the small town was centred. We came out of the dock and headed left to Sadie's By the Sea, a small hotel about 10 minutes walk. We knew there was wifi there. A lovely little hotel, nice pool, nice beach and with an outdoor café. We sat there by the water and enjoyed the first of many cups of coffee while we got online to try and find the girls for a chat.

The weather was very hot and very, very humid. We were expecting rain but amazingly it never came. Anyway, managed to track Lucy down pretty quickly and we had a good chat. The connection was not good enough for video but audio wasn't too bad. She'd had a fantastic time in Ireland. Daisy was at dinner and we didn't manage to catch her before we ran out of time and headed off to the beach. There was no mobile signal at all for anybody's phone on the island. So using a normal phone wasn't an option. Will try again in Honolulu on the 24th.

We walked around the edge of the bay to find a taxi. There were local buses, strange jitney affairs, brightly covered and rickety. Most of them had a religious slogan painted on the side i.e. God is My Saviour but some had women's names. I tried and failed to photograph one that I saw twice and missed both times. It's name was Queen Lucy!!!!! Anyway, couldn't find one to take us to the Barefoot Bar and Grill Beach which had been recommended to us. So a taxi it was.

Nice taxi ride along the coast road. Past the very very smelly tuna canning works which is one of the major employers on the island. Past a number of the famous rocks offshore that locals have named after something their shape resembles i.e. Camel Rock. Incredibly lush vegetation everywhere and wonderful rickety wooden houses on stilts with large verandas. All very tropical. We saw the famous Sadie's Inn, the small hotel/bar made famous by Sadie Thompson, and featured in the Somerset Maugham novel, Rain.

The Barefoot Bar was a wonderful rickety shacklike structure clinging to the small hill along the back of a lovely sand beach with a large coral reef. We found a seat overlooking the beach and gratefully gulped down a beer in Bob's case and a fresh iced coconut with a shot of rum in mine. Delicious. There were a few other people from the ship there and later on quite a few of the entertainment team turned up.

After a while we established a base camp on the beach and waded out into swimmable water and just floated there. It was incredibly warm and clear. Truly like a bath. We hadn't brought our snorkel stuff with us which was a mistake. I thought we'd be able to get it at the bar but they only had one set. Anyway, we swam for ages, then sat in the shallows for ages. Rather worryingly LOL on our way back across the beach to the bar, we saw a banded sea snake wiggling its deadly way in ankle deep water. YIKES!

Had another cold one each and then reluctantly at about 3 got another taxi back into town. We had a good look round some of the shops and stalls there. They were incredibly cheap. I bought a pair of blue cotton shorts, gaudily patterned Hawaiian style ones, blue with white flowers. They were $4.99 and we also bought some t shirts which were really nice ones, very good quality cotton, at $5 each. Bob invested in another tropical loose shirt too.

Got back on board about 4:30 and gulped down some Earl Grey and had a cool down in the a/c which was very welcome. Then went out onto the rear terrace deck at 6 for the sail away and stayed out there drinking some wine as the ship sailed back out of the beautiful harbour.

Samoa was an unexpected treasure to be honest. I had little expectation of it to be honest. Not sure why but hadn't heard anything that inspired me. However, what we found was a beautiful, lush green place with lovely people, so friendly and welcoming, smiles everywhere. Nicely developed, all very low key. The sort of place you could while away a week or so…. Doing nothing very much. We liked it a lot.

Quick dinner up in the Horizon nd then saw a magician in the theatre. I was really tired but he was good and pretty amusing. A good day!