The Least Visitied National Park

Hiking Part 2
The next morning bright and early I awoke with my friends as they were heading to Pago Pago for work, and I wanted to catch a ride with them to the city. I had made plans to go to the National Park to go hiking and the post office to pick up packages from my family.
The Post Office opened at nine, so that meant I had an hour and a half to explore the Pago Pago area. I walked around the streets and gave my normal “Malo” greeting and had a few people strike up surprised conversations with me about why I know how to speak Samoan. I even met one young man who knew some of the Peace Corps Volunteers which gave me a chuckle. I met a lot of interesting characters on the street. Eight months after the tsunami there is still a lot of damage throughout the city. There are boats still grounded on land, buildings destroyed and offices displaced.
It was finally time for the Post Office to open. I had a backpack full of presents to mail and was looking forward to unloading them. I forgot how long a trip to the US post office could be. They had the priority mail boxes I needed, but no tape to put them together. I had to explore the neighboring stores to find tape and finally I was ready with my two boxes bound for family. I was then given a sheet of paper to pick up my package from the back of the post office.
I went to the back confused and hopped on the long line of people waiting for packages. After awhile of waiting a cart came in with 5 packages for me! They were so ridiculously heavy and I had trouble picking them all up. How was I to bring these packages back? Thankfully a lot of people felt bad for me and offered to help, and give me a ride, I graciously accepted. Of course, since it is Samoa, even though it is American Samoa, getting a ride consisted of going on a lot of errands at first and getting introduced to as many people as possible.
Finally we made it back to the Government Offices and I went on an hour long scavenger hunt to try and find my friends to put my packages in their car. I kept asking everyone if they knew where the white people worked and finally I got an answer! (I tried to use the easy route of calling, but the pay phone did not work and kept taking my money.)
I was finally ready to start my purpose for the day….the National Park!
I got to the start of the trail and realized that I was just wearing my Jandels, despite having packages labeled hiking sandals and sneakers. The previous day I went to the website for the Parks Department, and realized that I might have been in Samoa too long because I was ready to break all of the rules for the hike. They suggested many things, and I was not prepared with any of them. I just thought everything they suggested really wasn’t necessary.
The hike was awesome with the mud extremely deep in some areas, so I acted how I normally did and took my shoes off and hiked barefoot. Since I was hiking Samoan style already, I decided to do one better by putting a flower behind my ear.
I was the only one in the park and enjoyed running up the mountain and seeing how far I could get the mud if I jumped directly into the puddles. There were beautiful butterflies flying about, those big black lizards clustering the ground and birds in every tree I passed. It was simply majestic.
At the top of the mountain there are the remains of a cable car and the most spectacular views ever. I sat on top of the mountain ate my sandwich and enjoyed the view.
I then continued downhill to the next village on the trail which had crazy ladders to climb. We had to hold onto a rope while going on these concrete steps that sometimes were not touching the ground.
About 10 k later I made it to the other village, and was ready to hop on the bus to head back to my “home”.