It was a warm day, despite some grey clouds threatening to rain and big waves rolling into the beach at Aga Reef Resort, when Dear Tourist meets New Zealand couple, Carla Smith and Andrew McAllister on a ‘water break’ during their tour around the island. 

While on their break, they couldn’t help but admire the surroundings of the Resort and they were glad to have their tour guide make the suggestion to stop there. 

“We have our tour guide who is driving us around the island ask us if we wanted to stop here for a drink, it’s really nice looking,” said Carla. 

“We have been staying at Saletoga Resort since Saturday. It’s been really good there, I really like it - a bit too much rain, but actually, I don’t care.”

The couple were grateful that they had enlisted the help of a tour guide through the recommendations of their hotel which made it a lot easier to see not only the popular hotspots, but places they may have missed had they kept to an independent itinerary. 

So far, Samoa was living up to the expectations the couple had before they arrived, with Carla making a popular observation that Samoa had a sense of ‘je ne sais quois’ about her.

In her matter of fact way, Carla commented, “I’ve never been here before but I’ve always wanted to come to Samoa, I don’t know why … I never wanted to go to Fiji. I went to Raro and that was really boring. Samoa just looked  like it would be bigger and have a lot more to do - and there is. Definitely. It’s heaps nicer.” 

The couple recapped their sightseeing ventures so far, noting swimming at popular water holes as well as waterfalls, and were about to head out to feed the turtles. 

Andrew makes a surprising admission to Carla and tells us what his favourite part of the sightseeing tour was.

 “I really like all the churches,” he said. “The architecture is kinda cool to see. Just awesome massive churches, so over the top.” 

Andrew surmised that there just hasn’t been enough time to cover everything after they realised that there was so much more to see and experience about Samoa. 

“We’ll probably come back again cos (sic) it’s not long enough to see it all. We’ll definitely tell everybody about here, it’s been really great for me…and bad at the same time because everyone speaks English here so it’s easy but you don’t learn any Samoan. In other places we’ve visited,  where people don’t speak English, it’s kinda (sic) been nice to learn some other language.”

Dear Tourist was very curious to know which words they had learnt in the Samoan language, if any. 

Carla paused for a good while and finally offers this:

“ Umm..Talofa and….Talofa lava.”  

Jumping in to help his partner, Andrew added that he learnt another one the other day, “Ioe” says Andrew proudly. To which everyone around them laughed along with - better luck for your next visit, Andrew and Carla.