Holiday memories

Anzac Day - a day of remembrance. Dad passed away a few years ago, he was in Scotland during the war and was a Marine, but once over here he became a member of the RSA and always took part on Anzac Day. Peter said last night that next year he will take Devin and then start taking the other grandsons to a dawn parade. We would like them to start to understand what it means.

Last nights newspaper had deals on South Pacific holidays - so something we will be taking a look at over the next couple of days. Exciting! Travel - I love it, we need to win Lotto! The next thing is where to go? As the opportunity doesn't come up that often we like to go somewhere where we haven't been rather than return to a place we've enjoyed in the past. Just took a look at our passports and saw it was six years ago yesterday since we returned from a holiday in Samoa. It is a beautiful place, just perfect and a bit of an eventful holiday. Despite that we loved it and it would be one place I would love a return visit to. The kids met us at the airport and we greeted them with you will never guess what happened ! Peter had bought a new video camera duty free so we have it all to see.

Easter Sunday - Samoa, we were in the swimming pool enjoying, late afternoon it started to rain, people just stayed on in the water until we were hit with thunder and lightening. Quite a storm. We weren't bothered, these come and go and we knew it wouldn't last. That night it was still pouring down so we decided just to stay at the resort and eat there. Was funny watching people darting in and out of buildings trying to stay dry. The rain was torrential and Peter said he had never seen anything like it. Little streams of water were rushing down the paths around the tables, no worries we just took our shoes of. We went and stood (under shelter) out the front of the resort looking out to sea. I couldn't believe the force and sound of the rain. Back to our motel room (LOL the little cheap one at the back of the resort). We poured a liqueur each and relaxed, I went into the bathroom and hmmm, noticed water coming up from the bottom of the shower and also the toilet was filling up with brown water!? I thought maybe a plumbing problem, burst pipe or something similar. I called out to Peter and he came in, within minutes we were ankle deep in water, Peter saw a staff member outside and called out to show him. LOL we were told to go to bed it would be alright in the morning. Ah they are laid back. Within no time at all the water was half way up our calves. Time to get out!! We quickly threw our gear in our bags and went outside. By then several others were out of their rooms and we were wondering what next. Again within just minutes it was like a river was swirling around the buildings with some force, a wall of water . Nothing else to do but go up! We all went up the stairs. Peter left me there and went back to see if he could help, silly man was videoing parts of this happening. Ranchsliders broke with the force of the water, kids were being passed out of rooms and handed up the stars to where we were. What we found out was the river the resort backed onto had burst it's banks! The part of the resort where we were backed onto the river so we were hit first. While the flood caused damage elsewhere this was were the river did the most damage.

So here we were upstairs, no electricity so in blackness, water rising rapidly. Feeling really scared - in fact I've never had fear like that in my life. We were stranded there. Visions of people sitting on roofs came to mind. I was thinking how the hell do we get onto the roof from here?? Luckily it didn't get to that. Quite a few of us just stood around not knowing what to do next. Nothing we could do really, we were stuck there. We could see the main block which had some kind of emergency lighting in the stair well. Really eerie though. A man stood beside us and told us the water was probably up to his height down there. Thanks for the info I thought. Peter walked around the balcony and came back and told us that the swimming pool area all he could see was the tops of the sun umbrellas!! (When we returned to our room next morning the water level had gone up past the light switch) The upstairs rooms were empty so we all found rooms to go to. We just lay on the bed, it was a sleepless night!! The rain had stopped which was a huge relief. Weird just lying there not knowing what had actually happened to cause this. All around we could hear dogs barking and this cat just miaowed loudly all night, found out next day it was sharing a room with us, also quite a few fleas!! I was bitten badly. Believe it or not - we did sleep, eventually. Woke up in the morning, beautiful sunny day, could hear noises outside, looked down below, the water had subsided, but the mud, the smell, staff were trying to clean up. All they had were brooms and buckets. We were still semi stranded, eventually we made our way downstairs, and through the complex. We had to walk through pools of water to get back up the stairs to reception. There was no running water, and no electricity in the block we were in. At this stage we couldn't get back to our room. Once we got to reception there were people everywhere, covered in mud. The staff seemed a bit uncertain what to do with us and were busily checking in new arrivals, who looked a bit shocked to see us. The swimming pool had suffered a lot, it was full of plastic chairs, umbrellas and was just a sea of muddy water. Imagine what the new check ins were thinking!

People do have great senses of humour and everyone despite the shock we could see a funny side. Peter silly man was wandering around videoing people and they were telling their stories:

The young honeymoon couple who went to bed, woke to feel the water splashing around their bed, they darted out of their room - starkers!! People threw them t shirts and shorts. They had been lying in bed having a drink - the next morning they found their bedside cabinets had risen with the flood and then came back down again - drinks still in tact!

The middle age woman who said the first thing she did was put on her lipstick before she left their room. Hell you have to look good!

A single woman who woke when her door was pushed open with an influx of water, almost instantly there was a couple of feet of water in the room. She was in a fale that eventually semi toppled over.

The sad part was the the hotel wasn't equipped to deal with it, buckets and brooms do not clear up a flood. Eventually a little fire engine arrived and helped with the pump out. They didn't know what to do with us as there were no rooms to put us in. They eventually put us in a restaurant and gave us breakfast then a staff member came to get our names so they could charge us, one guy just said I don't think we will be paying. For the first night we all got sent to different motels. The first one we went to was an experience - to flush the toilet we had to phone reception so they could turn on the pump and they had chickens in the back yard. We were then sent to another one which was a lot better. After a few days of going back and forth we ended up with an upgraded room. A bit of a bonus. Also because the swimming pool was out of action, every day they had a small bus that took us to different beaches on the island all with a picnic lunch, so we saw a lot more than we probably would have of the island. The few of us that got together after the flood, ended up getting on really well and off socialising at night at different restaurants. One day at one of the beaches another couple and us wandered down the beach and found a little bay, we snorkeled, then just sat and enjoyed, The place was deserted apart from us and it felt like paradise.

We have been asked a few times what would be our best holiday and we both say this one! And we only got four hours rain the whole holiday.

When we got home we told our neighbours as they had lived over there for several years. They survived a cyclone there and also had took video footage, so one night we had drinks with them and sat and watched videos - one of a flood and one of a cyclone.