Next Island - Manono. Their main marketing point in the tourist literature is that there are no dogs on the island. If you have ever encountered the Samoan dogs, who attack anything that moves, even cars, and are only discouraged by a local throwing a rock at their head, you'll see why this is a selling point. England should take note and market itself as being free of roaming lions.

Getting to Manono involved getting on a local bus. This took a little longer than it would have otherwise, because the bus went to both of the Apia bus stations three times each before leaving the town. Maybe the driver just got lost. We then stopped twice en route so that various people could get off and do their shopping.

Which leads us on rather neatly to the very friendly, but incredibly frustrating Samoan way of doing things. Everything happens at a slow pace, by which we mean almost comatose. You can see the picture of the man rowing his boat while asleep. Surprisingly, Samoa is only the 3rd largest population of Samoans, most live in the US or New Zealand. Almost all of them send money back home, which means no-one actually living in Samoa has to do any work. Arriving in Manono, the following conversation took place with the fale owner:

"We've just spent 4 hours travelling, can we have lunch?"
"No, we've just had lunch"
"Okay, but it's included in our room rate, and you knew we were coming"
"..." [blank look]
"Okay, is there anywhere else on the island to have lunch?"
"No"

Arrrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

Okay, enough bellyaching. The really unique thing about Manono is the over-water fales. This means your bedroom is on stilts over the breaking waves, and is quite amazing. From the front of our fale we watched the huge yellow moon rise over the sea, and the next morning watched the sun follow.