Samoa Surfing, Surf Charter Samoa Images

Surf Travel to Samoa

Introduction / History

Ever wonder what Hawaii would be like if it had been left mostly alone? Samoa is the answer to that: a purer brand of Polynesia.  . The Samoan archipelago is made up of four main islands – Savaii, 'Upolu, Tutila and Tau – and many smaller islands and atolls. Together they were known as the Navigator’s Islands by explorers because the Samoans were fearless ocean-goers.

From 1962, Samoa was divided into independent Western Samoa (the designation made when the nation joined the United Nations in 1976) and the American territory American Samoa. Western Samoa tended toward cricket and rugby and tea and the British/New Zealand way of life, while American Samoans liked football and baseball and migrated to Hawaii and the mainland United States. In 1997, a Western Samoan Constitutional amendment changed the name of Western Samoa to just Samoa. American Samoa protested but the change stuck, although American Samoans still refer to their independent cousins as Western Samoans.

Out of the 19th Century and into the 20th, Samoa was the far-off Polynesian ideal – even more far flung than Hawaii. This is the kind of place Gauguin painted, Robert Louis Stevenson wrote about, Mitzi Gaynor sang about and the rest of us dream about.  The “Aloha” spirit is alive and thriving in Samoa.



The middle franchise in the Polynesian chain, the poly (many) nesia (islands) of Samoa are halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand from north to south, and halfway between Samoa and Tahiti from east to west.