Samoa: the Pacific most people never see

Most people heading to the South Pacific think Fiji or Tahiti. Samoa barely
registers, and that is exactly its appeal. We arrived after a stop in Tuvalu,
near the end of our honeymoon, expecting little more than a quiet island and a
pool, and spent three days slightly stunned that more travellers have not
worked it out.

The first surprise is the colour. Drive out of the airport and every village is
painted in a different national palette, left over from a championship the
country hosted, with thousands of roadside flags and Christmas lights thrown in
for good measure. The second is the churches: a settlement of a few houses will
still have its own, and the density of them is hard to believe until you see it
on a map.

Then there is what you actually came for, only better. Towering waterfalls you
have entirely to yourself. The To-Sua ocean trench, a swimming hole sunk into
the rock, shared with locals rather than tourists. Turtles you can swim with
alone, for the price of a borrowed snorkel. The pace is slower than slow,
nobody is in a hurry, and outside the few hours a cruise ship is in port, the
place feels like it belongs to whoever turned up.

What is missing is the machinery: no resort strip, no touts, no queue for the
viewpoint. It takes a day or two to tune into a country moving at that speed.
Once you do, it is hard to hand back.

Come before everyone else does. Samoa is the rare Pacific country that still
feels found rather than sold.