Cinco de Mayo

        Peace Corps Samoa has a wonderful tradition of going out to Lusia’s Lagoon Resort for Cinco de Mayo every year.   It’s out on Savaii so I had to make a decision about whether I wanted to take the time for it or not and obviously since I’m writing this post, I decided to go out there.  The ride getting out there was not the best experience.  First, I took a bus from my place at 7:00am and went into town for a nice pancake breakfast at McDonalds.  Ended up costing me $20 but ooooh man it tasted AMAZING!  The person who I was traveling out to Savaii with had her bus break down outside of Apia and was told to start walking so almost 30min later a car picked her up and drove her the rest of the way.  Finally at 10 we caught the bus out to the ferry in hopes of making the noon ferry.  Well noon rolled around and past and the boat never arrived.  And so we waited…and waited…and waited.  For some reason the boat just never showed up.  So at 2pm the little dinky ferry came around instead of the nice large (steady) boat.  And so we got to cross the open water with huge swells in a glorified fishing boat.  Oh yay.  So around 4:00 we finally arrived at Lusia’s and the party began!

You don't really realize what foods you’re going to miss until you actually get into country.  For instance you think you’ll crave pizza and end up craving salad.  Well we all were craving some Mexican food and Cinco de Mayo was the perfect excuse.  Our amazing chef for the group, Josh, worked in the kitchen for hours on nachos, pulled pork, tortilla shells, bean mixtures, and guacamole.  It was a drool inducing result.  We stuffed ourselves with nachos and tortillas and it was the most satisfying meal in a very long time.  Thanks Josh!!

Our amazing PCV Madi made a homemade piñata for our group!  Unfortunately nobody could wait for the actually hitting of it and kept ransacking it for candy but no matter.  Thanks Madi darling!  It added to the party.

Lusia’s is built on a gorgeous lagoon where the water is an interesting mixture of warm water with cold pockets that’ll hit you every now and then.  They have a deck built out over the water that you can sit out on and jump off into the water.  It’s currently owned by Jim, a former Peace Corps volunteer (from 2 or 3 groups ago I think).  Fun to hear stories about previous groups.

Lu jumping off the dock at Lusia's

Floating away my cares