Ofu 2

We wanted to leave Friday night, but Samoa being Samoa, that was just not possible. They were taking empty flights to another island (Ta'u) about 6 miles from Ofu to pick people up, but they couldn't arrange it to drop us off on Ofu after work on Friday. So, we left Saturday morning.



Here's an arial view of Tutuila where I live:


We got to the lodge and headed pretty much straight to the beach, which is right there. The end of the runway is about 40 yards from the lodge. Then from the lodge, it is about 80 yards across a nice lawn to the beach.

In the above picture there's a tornado thinking about coming down and picking up one of those dogs. That's the first real funnel cloud I've ever seen.

On the other side of the lodge is about 1200 or so foot sheer cliffs. It is a spectacular setting. You can see white birds flying around way up the cliffs. It kind of looks like the opening sequence when you first see the island on Jurassic Park (hard to get across in this picture though).


You can just go walk and hang out on the airport runway too. Here's me doing that with a sour apple blowpop:



The water is just fantastic. There is so much colorful coral and fish that you can see them just standing out there without a snorkle. We hung out by the lodge beach for a few hours and you could see neon blue fish swimming around you the whole time. I can't fully explain how clear the water is and how fantastic the snorkling is at Ofu.

Then we headed to another stretch of the beach about a mile or so away. It was (as always) really warm out, which doesn't get across in this picture. It actually was a nice day too, come clouds just had rolled in by the time I took this picture as we left to go back to the lodge:


Where the little jagged mountain and the big mountain come to the water in the above picture, there's a channel which seperates Ofu island from Olosega island. There is a bridge connecting the two islands:


When you jump off the bridge, this is the water you're going into:




Here's Weave, Me and Fred jumping off the bridge between Ofu and Olosega.



Once you jump off there's a little beach at the bottom, but even better there's a large area where the water is maybe 3-4 feet deep where you can just hang out in the water. We did that for a long time. It was a great day.

After most of the day by the bridge, we drove over to Olosega village.



Staying at the lodge comes with meals as well which are very good. We even had Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday night. That was great.

Sunday night we got a fire going on the beach after our poker game finished (ahem, which I won). There was tons of gigantic lightning strikes and flashes in the distance, but mostly the rain left us alone.

Then Monday we headed back home. Here's Ofu from the air (and at an angle):



Today was AWFUL at court. There were something like 30 initial appearances. I think the most I'd had before was 16. The morning session got done at about 1255, just in time for traffic court to start at 1.
Then, when I finally got back to the office at 345, our wonderful staff just let some lady come back to my office unnanounced. She sat down and told me how she wanted her domestic violence case against her husband dropped, and I told her for 20 minutes how I can't/won't do that. I'm exhausted. But, Tuesday is the worst day and it's over.

Movie Review:

Waiting for Guffman: This is an old movie, but I hadn't seen it. It's a Christopher Guest movie, like Best in Show and This is Spinal Tap. It wasn't too bad. The folk singer one was pretty excruciating, so I did not have high hopes for this one (about a small town play). But, it was pretty funny and not too boring. Better than Spinal Tap, not as good as Best in Show. 5.5

The M's seem to be playing better, but they coughed one up today. If they could just get the starting pitching turned around, they actually might have a chance. Amazingly, they are leading the league in batting.

If Ron Mexico gets suspended from the NFL for dog fighting he could probably set up shop out here. There are tons of extra dogs and they seem to like fighting.