Apia

Apia needs 2 days: the central market and the museum at the former home of writer Robert Louis Stevenson, author of «Treasure Island», who lived and is buried in Samoa, on one, and an excursion to the To Sua Ocean Trench, a 30-meter-deep turquoise water pool surrounded by jungle, on the other. May-October brings the dry season. It's inexpensive by Pacific standards. It was the first country in the world to adopt a parliamentary system of government based on the traditional chieftain structure (matai) instead of replacing it, and its fa'a Samoa culture -the «Samoan way»- still governs social life and communal land tenure more strongly than in almost any other Pacific nation.