After visiting our 62nd National Park (Gateway Arch) back in 2021, we turned our attention to finishing our quest at the National Park of American Samoa. Still dealing with the end of the covid pandemic, travel to the island was shut down. In the two years that followed, we were able to research the best ways to travel to and enjoy the park. In the end, it wasn’t easy, but it was glorious. Mission accomplished!
We visited American Samoa in September 2024
Getting There
The primary island of American Samoa, Tutuila, sits about 5 hours south (by Hawaiian Airlines flight) of Hawaii. That’s the easy part. Hawaiian Airlines goes to Pago Pago, on Tutuila (the largest island), a couple times a week depending on the season. However, we chose to go to one of the tiny outer islands named Ofu. While it’s gorgeous tropical paradise, getting there requires quite a bit of effort. Ofu is part of the Manu’a Island group of American Samoa and you can get there from Tutuila a couple ways, none of which are super reliable. You can get on a fishing or weekly supply boat and hope the 2-10 hour trip doesn’t turn around due to rough seas. Neither of us tend to suffer from seasickness, but we chose to NOT do the water voyage. We did what most of the 100 or so visitors/year do – catch a ~30 minute flight from Pago Pago to Ofu. You can’t even find these flights on Kayak, but they are legit Samoa Airways flights scheduled for every Tuesday and Thursday morning. Due to frequent weather delays and cancellations, you need to make sure you leave some buffer before and after the Ofu trip. Booking the Samoa Airlines trips is different too. Their website was down during our planning for the trip, so I had to contact them by email. They were wonderfully responsive, it just took several interactions back/forth to get a reservation. And, the authorities only release approved schedules every six months, so you may need to deal with that. Fortunately, our travels went mostly flawlessly with the only possible catastrophe being our flight to Ofu was moved up 3 hours and if we hadn’t checked our email late the night before, we may have missed that. Anyway, our 12 person plane to Ofu was 100% full with 8 locals bringing back supplies and one other, very cool National Park seeking couple, Matt and Regina from Cincinnati.
Vaoto
Lodge
The National Park of American Samoa has land on 3 of the islands and most visitors just check out the portion on Tutuila which is where Pago Pago and the international airport are located. But we suffer badly from FOMO (fear of missing out) and read about some NP visitors’ adventures on Ofu. Once we landed on Ofu, we were met by Ben, who owns the Vaoto Lodge with his wife Deb. We literally got our bags off the plane, walked maybe 50 yards off the runway and moved into our living quarters for the next 5 nights. Again, getting a reservation required some extra effort. I was able to reach Deb over email and we traded several messages before sending payment over Venmo. Net/net, not difficult, just different. And Deb (leading up to the trip) and Ben (once we arrived) were fantastic. They were super informative and kind. That’s common amongst Samoans. There are about 200 residents on Ofu and its adjacent island, Olosega (connected by a short one lane bridge). The combined size of Ofu and Olosega is about 5 square miles. Some might call it primitive, but we absolutely loved it. The Vaoto Lodge is the ONLY lodging option on the island. And in a very remote part of the planet, the Vaoto lodge is pretty remarkable. The actual units were clean, fully functional cinderblock rooms with a Queen size bed, bathroom, full shower, and AIR CONDITIONING! Then there’s the view/accessibility to an uninhabited stretch of beach that is hard to describe. I think they have maybe 10-12 units, but while we were there, it was just us and Matt/Regina. We had access to a full kitchen for meals and Ben’s truck if we wanted to drive to any of the beaches or villages. They have bikes you can use to get around (we did) and snorkel gear (we used some of their fins, but we brought our own masks/snorkels). And they had wifi that was good enough for us to check in with family and get Padres updates – the important stuff. They have a stocked kitchen and we prepared all of our meals. Typically sandwiches or ramen for lunch with apples. For dinner, we’d find a protein and make rice or pasta to go along. Proteins included chicken, ground beef, and yes, Spam. It had been many years since either of us had Spam, but Rainy prepared some excellent fried rice with Spam. We’d sit around the lounge outside the kitchen and recount our day with Matt and Regina. We’d go back to the Vaoto Lodge in a heartbeat and 100% recommend this to anyone with a sense of adventure and willingness to “rough it.”
OFU Beach
There was a great beach directly out from our room and we snorkeled the afternoon that we arrived. It rained most of the second day we were there, but we still managed to get out and hike a bit around the island. For the next 3 days, our routine was pretty simple – wake up, snorkel for an hour or two, eat lunch, relax/read on the beach, snorkel for a couple more hours, clean up/shower, eat dinner, then walk the airstrip as the sun set and the stars came out. Usually there were scattered clouds, so we only got a great Milky Way view one night. It was hot and humid, so we didn’t do the difficult hike to the top of Mt Tumutumu. But Matt and Regina did that and were kind enough to share their picture from the top, overlooking Ofu Beach and neighboring Olosega (pronounced Oh-low-senga). Ok, more about this incredible beach – think “Lost” meets “Castaway” in terms of lush, remote, tropical beauty. It runs along the edge of the mountain/jungle for a mile or two with a healthy coral reef a few feet from shore. The water was perfectly comfortable, compared to the hot, humid air and you could literally snorkel indefinitely. There were tons of colorful fish, wild coral formations, some neat blue starfish, and the occasional reef shark. One time, as we surfaced in about 4 feet of water, we noticed a fin shaped something sticking out of the water about 100 feet away. When I saw it, I thought it was just a rock protruding up out of the water, but wasn’t sure as Rainy announced “it’s heading toward us.” Rainy is an accomplished swimmer and took off quickly for dry land. I stood there analyzing my potential attacker, still believing it was a rock whose apparent movement was the result of the angle of the surf. Fortunately it was just a rock. We named it “Rocky” or “Sharky” for the rest of the week. We were able to capture some fun video of the underwater life. The sounds that the underwater camera captured were more like a submarine than the actual relaxing sound of the surf. I’ve been snorkeling in many places around the Americas and this was especially spectacular. We learned late in the trip that the stretch of beach we loved so much was thought to be haunted by the locals. Maybe that’s why it was uninhabited or why they gave it up so easily to the National Park Service. Reminds me of a Brady Bunch episode, but so far we haven’t had any lingering supernatural problems.
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Samoan
Kindness
The Samoan people are deeply religious and Sundays are days for rest, family, and reflection. On one visit to the village on Olosega, we were invited to the upcoming church service. On Sunday, the four of us got cleaned up, borrowed Ben’s truck and ventured to Olosega where we listened to a 90 minute sermon in Samoan. Of course, we didn’t understand any of it, but the singing was incredible. The church itself was beautiful and clean. As he was bringing the service to an end, the minister singled us out as guests, gave a brief English welcome, a few words of scripture, and an invite to join him and his family for lunch afterwards. They opened their home to the four of us and shared incredible food (made by the villagers) and educated us on Samoan culture. Everyone was so welcoming and genuinely kind – there is hope for humanity. It was so humbling to meet them and enjoy time without the petty problems that tend to occupy our daily lives on the mainland.
Mission
Accomplished
We jokingly hoped for a storm to hit Ofu, so our plane wouldn’t be able to take us away from paradise. But everything went as scheduled and we made it back to Pago Pago where we had two days before flying back to Hawaii. We stayed at one of the more popular hotels, Sadie’s By the Sea, which had a decent restaurant attached and had available cars to rent. We took advantage of renting a car and pretty much drove around the entire island of Tutuila. We ventured through the National Park property on the island which had some nice views, although we were spoiled by Ofu. We also took one afternoon to take a small boat trip across super choppy seas to Aunu’u island which was fun and only mildly life threatening. The highlight of our two days on Tutuila was the National Park Visitor Center where we got our certificate acknowledging completing our 63rd National Park. Overalll, what a trip!
At the end of this quest, along with our time on Ofu and American Samoa, we are left amazed by the beauty of our country, grateful for the chance to live such an adventure, and humbled by the people we’ve met along the way.
We hope you get to sample some, if not all, of what our parks have to offer. The Parks Are Calling! Let us know if you need any help planning!