American Samoa National Park

If you are looking for a tropical paradise in the South Pacific that not too many people visit (yet) – you will find it in American Samoa. This is the complete opposite of the other tropical paradise in the National Park system – Virgin Islands National Park. In American Samoa, you may be the only visitor on a given week to the National Park. One reason for that is the remoteness of American Samoa as it sits literally right next to the International Date Line. The only option to get here is through Honolulu and that flight only runs a couple times a week and is super expensive. There also is not a great tourism industry built up yet here which makes it difficult to get around and see the sites. It took a lot of planning, but we were able to locate a tour provider for our time on the island which we will talk through below.

When to Go

We traveled in late April and were pretty happy with the weather. April is the end of the rainy (and hot) season and transitions to a drier (and cooler) season which lasts through the summer and into the early fall. Realistically though, it could rain here anytime as they get about 125 inches of rain a year. The majority of the cruise ships which include the island on their itinerary arrive in the April time frame as well.

How to Get Here

Unless you are going to get really creative with your flight planning (like visiting Australia or New Zealand first) – you really just have two options to get here. You can either take the flight from Honolulu which runs a couple times a week or you can catch one of the cruises which land here for a day as part of their itinerary. Both of these are going to be really expensive as one round trip ticket from Honolulu to Pago Pago was around $960 in April 2019. If you fly – don’t be shocked when you walk out of the airport to find your transportation and find what feels like the entire population of the island waiting outside the airport for their loved ones to appear. Many Samoans who live on the island can’t afford to ever leave it, so when one of their family members or friends does make it out and returns – it is a big deal and celebrated accordingly.

Trip Length

Unless you are going to make this a week or longer trip and find your way to some of the smaller more remote islands within American Samoa – your trip is likely going to be 3 days & 3 nights which is driven by the flight schedule. We left Honolulu on a Monday afternoon and arrived in Pago Pago at around 9pm Monday night. No flights go back to Honolulu until Thursday night around 11:30pm. So unless you are going to find a flight out to the islands of Ofu or Ta’u (which we would love to do at some point in the future) and wait for the next flight on the following Monday from Pago Pago – you have your length of stay.

Where to Stay

There are a couple hotels in Pago Pago to choose from – both operated by Sadie’s. We chose Sadie’s by the Sea as it was a little cheaper and right on the water giving us great views from our room. The National Park service also has a program which finds you a local Samoan to stay with during your time on the island if you are interested in that. It is a great way to learn the culture which is a big reason to visit the island in the first place.

What to Do

You likely are not going to figure out how to visit this park on your own. Luckily, there is a tour company which exists on the island which we had a lot of success with for our visit: Best Tours On Island. This company is family run and takes care of everything from putting together a custom itinerary based on your interests to providing all of the transportation and logistics during your time on the island. If you wanted to get out to the remote islands of Ofu or Ta’u – they would take care of that as well. If you are arriving on a cruise ship (the schedule for this is on their website above as well) – they also specialize in filling your limited time on the island with meaningful adventures.

We chose to do a custom tour and submitted our interests based on what we saw as the possible activities on the website and were quickly given a 3-day itinerary consisting of 22 hours of activities over those three days including all lunches and one dinner at the famous Tisa’s Barefoot Bar for a total of $1,540. We jumped on this as it seemed like a very reasonable price for everything we were getting and not needing to worry about a thing during our stay.

We arrived late Monday night and were transported to Sadie’s by the Sea for our stay. Upon waking up Tuesday morning, we looked out the window and realized we had an amazing view of the Pacific Ocean. Goat Island Cafe is attached to the hotel and is where we ate all of our non-provided meals. They had an outdoor area right on the water and we frequently noticed crabs running up the sea wall to watch us eat breakfast. After breakfast, we were picked up by our tour guide – Lou – in his SUV. He was able to give a lot of perspective to life on the island which can be a struggle for so many as there are not really any high paying jobs (or jobs at all for that matter) anywhere to be found. If you didn’t work for the government or for Starkist, which has a large factory on the island, it was a struggle to work at all. So a three day private tour like this was a really big deal for him.

Our first day was all about the National Park. Lou drove us over to the Visitor Center which has a number of exhibits and also normally has some of the island elders performing live demonstrations like blanket or basket making. We then hit the road again and headed into the park passing Rainmaker Mountain and Afono Pass. We got our picture of the park sign which we always like to do and then headed for a couple of trails.

Lower Sauma Ridge Trail — 0.4 miles RT, Moderate, 3o minutes

You will walk down a pretty steep hill through the forest until you get to a beautiful clear view of Pola Island which you could spend a lot of time staring at if you wanted too. It will take some effort to climb back up which is why we classified this as moderate, but it will be worth it. It happened to be lunch time for us at the end of his hike – so we ate some sandwiches and got to drink out of a coconut which is not something we had done before.

Tufanua Trail — 2.2 miles RT, Strenuous, 1.5 hours

After lunch, we headed to another hike and this one was much more strenuous. While only 2.2 miles, you start the hike by heading up several switchbacks and then once you get to the top – you descend down the other side to the beach. It is not a normal descent though as you literally head straight down which involves 7 or 8 rope ladders. Once you are down on the beach it becomes very rocky as you head towards a better view of Pola Island, so you need to be careful now to twist an ankle. It does result in another great view of Pola Island though along with views out into the Pacific Ocean. You’ll want to spend some time down on the beach because once you head back – you have to go climb those same 7 or 8 rope ladders that you just came down which is even more challenging.

Once we completed this trail – we were absolutely exhausted and Lou took us back into Pago Pago to an overlook of the Pago Pago Harbor including our hotel. This is actually where the world’s longest tram used to exist, but in April 17, 1980 – a small plane crashed into the wiring and took the entire tram down. The plane actually ended up crashing into Sadie’s by the Sea (where we stayed). Several people died and the tram was not reconstructed, so you just will see the remnants now including a memorial for those that died. After we were done here, we headed back to the hotel to grab dinner and rest.

On Wednesday, Lou picked us back up at the hotel and we headed over to the Fa’asamoa Cultural Center which is where many Samoan elders hang out and make anything you could imagine by hand. It is interesting to walk around and watch them in action and you are welcome to buy things from them as well. Once done here we drove over to the east side of the island where we took a water taxi (on a really small fishing boat) over to Aunu’u Island. We could see there was a storm brewing, so it was a little concerning – but the boat made it over to the island just fine. Once there – we walked around the island which includes tropical rain forests, tremendous views of the ocean with waves crashing into the shore, and a taro plantation where we actually picked some taro for Lou to take home with him. We also got a lunch made by one of the island’s residents and ate at his outdoor table which was luckily covered as it started to pour during lunch giving us some concern about getting back across the channel to the main island (Tutuila) where we were staying. The rain eventually died off and we boarded the fishing boat and successfully made it back across. Lou took us back to our hotel to relax before dinner which was going to be a highlight of the trip.

Dinner on Wednesday was at Tisa’s Barefoot Bar which is a must do if you are going to visit American Samoa. It is a traditional Samoan Umu prepared dinner which occurs at 7pm every single Wednesday. If you are not with a tour company – you will need to make a reservation in advance to be able to get a seat for dinner. Dinner is cooked outside on hot rocks (Umu) and is covered with many leaves while the cooking is taking place. When the food is ready, the leaves are removed which starts to show the layers of food which is then served up at the table. Some of the food we ate, which was all amazing, was shrimp, octopus, pork, fish, ham, turkey, squash, taro, and much more! There is also plenty of options to drink as well and we picked some local Samoan beers. After dinner, which took several hours, Lou took us back to the hotel for the night.

Lou picked us up again the next morning for our last day on the island. Today, we headed out towards the western edge of the island including Cape Taputapu and Sliding Rock which you can hike out to if the tide is low (which it wasn’t when we drove by). Lou asked us if we wanted to get wet and still go out there, but he was relieved when we declined and decided to keep driving. One of the more sobering moments of the trip is when Lou dropped us off at the 2009 Tsunami memorial and gave us the story of what occurred at that time. A wave only about 2 feet high – but moving at an incredibly fast pace came racing in to the island. For some reason a bus driver dropped off a busload of kids at a bridge and every single one of them was swept away and killed. There was a lot of damage caused and lots more people killed as well. You can still see the remnants of ships off shore which were destroyed in the event. We did eventually make it all the way to the west end of the island which involved driving down a very rough road. It is hard to imagine people actually live this remotely on this already very remote island. We hung out on a beach for a bit and then headed back to Pago Pago stopping on the way at an overlook of the western side of the island where this used to be a really cool restaurant before it burned down several years earlier.

We reached the hotel and said our goodbye to Lou before grabbing our final dinner at the Goat Island Cafe. We then took the hotel shuttle back to the airport and headed back to Honolulu. We would love to return someday and check out some of the smaller islands like Ofu or Ta’u where we hear the snorkeling is incredible.