To Sua Ocean Trench

To Sua is a hole in the earth full of the sea: on the south coast of Upolu, in the village of Lotofaga, the roof of a lava tube fell in long ago and left a shaft thirty metres deep and as wide as a house, with a pool of the clearest water at the bottom that rises and falls with the tide through a tunnel to the ocean, and a long wooden ladder down the wall — the name means ‘big hole’, and there is nothing else like it. The village owns it and keeps it, with lawns and flowers around the rim, and it has become the picture of Samoa. But it is the door to a coast: an hour east, at Lalomanu in the Aleipata district, the beach fales — open huts on the sand with a mat and a mosquito net — line the finest beach on the island, rebuilt after the tsunami of the twenty-ninth of September 2009 that took a hundred and forty-three lives here and along the shore; the cross-island road climbs from Apia past the lookout over the Papapapaitai falls, a hundred metres into a green gorge, and comes down by Sopoaga and Togitogiga in Le Pupu-Pu'e park; and on the north-east coast, at Piula, the Methodist theological college keeps a freshwater cave pool under its chapel where anyone may swim. Apia is the capital, an hour away — the fish market at dawn, the cathedral, the fiafia nights, and Vailima on the mountain, where Robert Louis Stevenson lived his last four years as Tusitala, the teller of tales, and lies buried on the summit of Mount Vaea.

The traveller lands at Faleolo, sleeps a night in Apia for the market and Vailima, and drives the south coast for two or three days: To Sua at opening time on a weekday morning, at low tide, when the water is still and the ladder is dry; the coast road east to Lalomanu for a night or two in a fale, with the meals included and the reef in front, and the boat to Namu'a island; back by the cross-island road for the falls and the swimming holes; Piula's cave pool on the north side; and, if there is time, the ferry to Savai'i, the larger and quieter island, for the blowholes and the lava fields. Sunday is for church and the to'ona'i, the long midday meal, and the traveller who is invited says yes.

The Guide's honesty: To Sua is a village's property and a village's pride, and the entrance fee, the closing on Sundays and the rules about the ladder are theirs; the pool is deep, the tide moves in it, and the ladder is long and slippery when wet — the traveller who cannot swim well stays on the platform; Samoa lives by the fa'a Samoa, and the traveller covers the shoulders in the villages, asks before photographing, and does not walk through a village during evening prayers; the fales are open to the wind and the rain and that is the point; the tsunami of 2009 is recent memory on this coast and the Guide names it with respect; and To Sua at nine in the morning, empty, with the light coming down the shaft into water so clear the bottom seems to float, is one of the small perfect places of the Pacific.