1999-2004: The South Pacific

Nov 1999: Samoa

Nov 15, 1999: Email to Pancho en route to Tin Can Island

Hey Pancho,

A real quickie here - since I last wrote we have (finally, reluctantly) left French Polynesia - last stop Maupelia, the best of the lot - nailed an amazing week in Palmerston Atoll in the Cook Islands (all 60 island inhabitants are descendants of William Marsters and the three Polynesian sisters he married), then pigged out in American Samoa, kicked back in Western Samoa (one of our favorites - will probably return next year), and currently are about to run into the strangest of the strange, Nivafo'ou, or "Tin Can Island", one of the least-visited islands in this part of the world.

Hope to be in Fiji in another week, and will hang there for the next 4-5 months, during the hurricane season (wish us luck).

Have a great time in California and Hawaii! Stay in touch, buddy.

Sam

Yacht Rhapsodie

Lat S 15 13, Long W 175 08

We watched a "fautasi" race, each carrying a rowing crew of about 50.

Robert Louis Stevenson spent the last four years of his life on Upolu Where he was buried on the slopes of Mt. Vaea. His epitaph reads "Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill."

NOV_1999_-_APR_2000 Title 1- Chapter1 Tattoos.mp4

A tattoo contest and exhibition in Apia.

Aggie Grey's Polynesian Review. She was friends with American writer James Michener and was widely believed to be the model for his character Bloody Mary that he created in Tales of the South Pacific (1946).