Samoa Tsunami

So I just happened to be in Samoa the the other week for my mates 40th Birthday. What a beautiful place it is too! We started out trip on the main Island of Upolu, along the south coast in a place called Coconuts Beach Resort. Fantastic place, at least it was! Unfortunately when the earthquake hit and the consequent tsunami came, Coconuts was all but wiped out. The fortunate thing was that we had checked out and moved over the Island of Savaii. Although the earthquake was furious at 8.3 on the Richter scale, there was no real damage over there and the Tsunami damage was almost nothing, due to the fact that Upolu took the brunt of it and sheltered us. It was so sheltered that I was snorkelling in the afternoon!
I feel very sorry for all the people that were effected though. They are already on eof the poorest nations in the world and could have done without this. The only saving grace is that it was a relatively small part of Samoa that was effeceted and there is still plenty to see and do there. They need your tourist dollar, so if you were thinking about going and now lookingto put it off, DON'T! Just go, it's great!
When all the drama of false alarms and evacuations had passed, we got to explore some more of the Island. Wow! It has over 450 volcanic cones on the island and is built largly on coral reef and lava flows. Despite all this it's still very green, very tropical. The snorkelling is great, good surf spots, the walks through the rain forrest are great and the peo0ple are so friendly. Love it!