Our final stop was the Island of Savaii, which somehow manages to be more relaxed and less modernised than Upolu. Before we got here, that didn't seem likely. This place really does look like the quintessential island paradise: palm trees, blue seas, long low beaches, and fat men with tattoos wearing sarongs. [The traditional Samoan dress is a Lavalava, just like a sarong, for both sexes. You can buy posh suity ones, and everything. Even the police wear them.]

The best bits we saw of Savaii were blowholes and turtles. The blowholes shoot seawater up to 40 mentres into the air, and tourists regularly and inadvisedly drop coconuts in to see them fired out like cannon balls. This, combined with the fact that the 'safety line' is ignored by all, means that the tourist population never gets to dangerous levels.

There's also a pool where you get to swim with a dozen or so large fresh water turtles. This really is as cool as it sounds.

In the evening, everyone staying in the fales sits together for dinner, and after dark there is not much to do except chat and play cards. We played a lot of cards with Dutch/Kiwi family, and taught them a game which we told them was called Oksel (armpit), as there were children present (though the real name in Dutch would be Kak-hoofd). We also discovered Celia's S and M addiction in a big way, on those long, dark evenings.

Probably our favourite Samoan experience was sitting in a fale, with the blowholes in the background, drinking coconuts and listening to a man singing and strumming 'achy breaky heart', in Samoan. Wonderful.