Samoa holidays

Samoa is the most-culturally-intact of the accessible South Pacific island nations — Polynesian fa'a Samoa ("the Samoan way") remains genuinely strong, with extended-family villages, communal fale (open-walled thatched houses), tatau (traditional tattoo with hand-tools, the painful 3-month process that produces the distinctive thigh-and-back motifs), and a slower rhythm than the more-touristed Fiji. Two main islands — Upolu (the capital Apia is here, plus the famous To Sua ocean trench and the Lalomanu beach-fale coast) and the wilder Savai'i (the lava fields, Alofaaga blowholes, Saleaula village ruins) — plus Robert Louis Stevenson's grave on Mount Vaea (the author of Treasure Island and Kidnapped lived in Samoa for the last four years of his life and is buried above his home, now the Stevenson Museum at Vailima).

A 7-10 day Samoa trip: Apia on Upolu (2-3 nights — Stevenson Museum at Vailima, the Friday seafood market at the Mulinu'u peninsula, the colonial-era cathedral, the Saturday market, the harbour-front fale-village walking, the Bahai House of Worship as a quiet detour) → drive to Lalomanu beach on the south-east coast (2-3 nights in beach fales — open-walled traditional huts metres from the water, basic but authentically Samoan — Lalomanu Beach Fales, Litia Sini's Beach Resort) → To Sua ocean trench day-trip (the Instagram-famous swimming sinkhole accessed by a ladder; the photo every visitor takes) → fly or ferry to Savai'i island (3-4 nights — the lava fields at Saleaula, the blowholes at Alofaaga, Afu Aau waterfall, the Tafua rainforest reserve, simple beach-fale stays at Vacations Beach Fales or Tanu Beach Fales). The two islands are connected by 90-minute car ferry from Mulifanua to Salelologa.