Travelling in American Samoa: its own border rules, then village custom

How visitors get in and who lets them

Unique among United States territories, American Samoa runs its own immigration system. According to the Department of the Interior, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services has no jurisdiction there, and nobody may enter without meeting the American Samoa Government's own requirements.

For United States citizens and nationals those are two documents: a valid United States passport or a certified birth certificate showing nationality, and either a ticket to leave again or proof of employment in the territory. Foreign visitors need a valid passport that lets them return home or travel on to another country, and the same onward ticket. A tourist or business visitor lawfully admitted may stay for an initial thirty days and for up to thirty more with the approval of the territory's Attorney General.

The arrangement has consequences a traveller may not expect from a United States territory. American Samoa is not treated as part of the United States for the Immigration and Nationality Act, so time spent there does not count toward a foreign national's residence for naturalisation, and a permanent resident who moves there may be considered to have abandoned that status.

How far away the islands lie

The distance is the first fact of any trip. Britannica puts the territory about 3,500 kilometres southwest of Hawaii and 2,600 kilometres northeast of New Zealand, and the National Park Service advises visitors to plan transport in advance because the options are limited.

There is one international airport, Pago Pago International at Tafuna on Tutuila, about 11 kilometres southwest of the centre of Pago Pago. In 2014 it received 3,099 arriving flights carrying 55,728 passengers. Most of the traffic that year was the short hop to independent Samoa, 2,628 flights, against 162 between Honolulu and Pago Pago. The Manuʻa group has two small airports, at Fitiʻuta on Taʻū and on Ofu, reached by smaller flights from Tutuila. Ofu can also be reached by small fishing boats from Taʻū, which the park's record calls unreliable.

The airport's history shows how the route map has narrowed. Between 1975 and 1985 Pan American, Air New Zealand, UTA and Continental all flew through Pago Pago, and cargo carriers used it as a refuelling stop. Services thinned after 1984, when the runway at Faleolo in independent Samoa was lengthened for larger jets.

When to go

The National Park Service tells visitors to expect warm, humid weather all year, frequent showers in the wet season from October to May, and a dry season from June to September that suits outdoor activity best. Other sources draw the wet season more narrowly, Britannica from November to March, and cyclones are possible from November to April.

The dry months are also the southern winter, the coolest part of a year in which temperatures change little, and the time when humpback whales pass through the territory's waters. Rain can arrive quickly in any season. Pago Pago, under the mountains that catch the trade-wind clouds, receives about 5,000 millimetres a year, and the Park Service advises carrying a rain jacket on every hike, with two to three litres of water per person, sturdy shoes for steep and muddy trails, and insect repellent.

What the national park asks of visitors

The National Park of American Samoa spans parts of three islands, Tutuila, Taʻū and Ofu, and more than 8,000 acres, about 4,000 of them under water. It charges no entrance fee. It also works differently from most United States parks: the land is leased from villages under 50-year agreements signed in 1993, and the park sits among villages that keep their fishing, gathering and farming inside it.

That arrangement sets the etiquette. The Park Service asks visitors to seek permission before entering village areas, to dress modestly in villages and at cultural sites, and to ask about permits and permission from villagers before going to remote places. The facilities that visitors find at most national parks are largely absent, services are limited, and the Park Service advises bringing water, food and snorkelling equipment, since rentals may be few.

On Tutuila the park takes in the island's northern ridge and steep north slopes, the only unit reachable by car. A trail runs along the ridge to Mount ʻAlava above Pago Pago Harbor, and the unit includes Second World War gun emplacements at Breakers Point and Blunts Point, the Amalau Valley, which is good for watching fruit bats and birds, and the islands of Pola and Manofā. On Ofu the unit is Ofu Beach and its reef and lagoon. On Taʻū it covers nearly two-thirds of the island, with a trail from Saua around Siʻu Point to the south coast; the old trail to the summit of Lata Mountain is overgrown.

What the Manuʻa islands offer and demand

Manuʻa is where the park is least visited and least developed. The Ofu unit is the park's smallest, 70 acres of land and 400 of offshore water, built around Ofu Beach, which runs for about two miles below Sunuitao Peak, and a lagoon whose corals have tolerated warm water well enough to draw researchers. Ofu is joined to Olosega by a bridge across the 137-metre Āsaga Strait. The Taʻū unit covers 3,700 acres of land and 1,100 of water, and its coast at Saua is the site that many Samoans regard as the birthplace of Polynesian culture.

Both islands have accommodation, and both are small places. Manuʻa's population has been falling for decades, and the government is the main employer. Its diet has relied less on tinned imports than Tutuila's, though fewer people now fish and farm and imported food is filling the gap. The Park Service's advice to bring supplies applies here most of all.

How village custom shapes a visit

The rules visitors notice first come from faʻa Samoa rather than from any sign. Most villages keep an evening prayer curfew, the sa, marked by a bell or a conch shell, during which travellers passing through should not stop; guardians may stand by the road to see that they do not. Eating or drinking while walking through a village is treated as disrespectful, and a person passing in front of someone seated says tulou. A host can be fined by the village for a guest's breach of custom.

Sunday is a day of rest, and families gather for a meal from the umu, the traditional oven. The National Park Service reminds visitors that transport and other services may not keep to a strict timetable.

Much of the coast is village land, and the Park Service's advice about asking first applies well beyond the park. The territory's own tourism office promotes beaches, hiking, snorkelling in the lagoons, diving in the marine sanctuary and the Second World War sites, and says plainly that there are no five-star hotels and no mass tourism.

What Pago Pago and Tutuila hold

Pago Pago is less a single town than a string of villages around the harbour that nearly bisects Tutuila. Fagatogo, known locally as downtown, has the legislature, the courts, the post office and a museum; Utulei has the governor's office and hotels; Satala and Atuʻu the tuna industry. Half the territory's inhabitants live along the harbour's shores and foothills, under Matafao Peak, Rainmaker Mountain and Mount ʻAlava. Fagatogo has taxis, bars and a cinema, and the climb to the summit of Mount ʻAlava inside the national park gives a bird's-eye view of the harbour and the town.

The food a visitor meets is a mix of the Sunday umu and the tin. Palusami, corned beef simmered with taro leaves in coconut milk, and sapasui, corned beef with noodles and vegetables, both rest on pisupo, the canned corned beef that has become part of Samoan gift-giving. Luʻau, coconut cream baked in taro leaves, and koko alaisa, rice cooked with local cocoa, come from the islands' own produce.

The Jean P. Haydon Museum in Pago Pago, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, holds three Moon rocks given by President Nixon and a flag of American Samoa that went to the Moon. The crews of Apollo 10, 12, 13, 14 and 17 came through Pago Pago after splashdown on their way to Honolulu. The Sadie Thompson Inn, on the edge of Pago Pago, is a hotel and restaurant named after Sadie Thompson of Somerset Maugham's story "Rain," and it is also on the National Register.

Beyond the harbour, Tutuila's coast road runs about 50 kilometres from Fagamalo in the northwest to Onenoa in the northeast. At Vaitogi, villagers still perform the chant said to call a shark and a turtle to the surface. Seven National Natural Landmarks on the island include Cape Taputapu, the Leʻala shoreline, Fogamaʻa Crater and Rainmaker Mountain, and the National Marine Sanctuary protects reefs with old and massive Porites coral heads. The Park Service warns snorkellers about strong currents and asks them never to stand on coral.

Where the Second World War left its mark

Tutuila was a Marine Corps base during the war, and the relics are part of what the tourism office promotes. The Marines built concrete bunkers along the coast, and the park's Tutuila unit takes in gun emplacements at Breakers Point and Blunts Point. The airport itself began as Tafuna Airfield, partly built before December 1941; its two coral airstrips opened in March 1942, and the first Marine fighter squadron flew from them that month.

The war touched the island directly once. In January 1942 a Japanese submarine surfaced off Tutuila and fired about fifteen shells at the naval station over ten minutes; one struck a store, one the naval dispensary and one the seawall by the customs house, and two men were slightly injured. No other attack followed.

What a visitor needs to know on the ground

The practical side is mostly American. The currency is the United States dollar, cars drive on the right, and the mail uses the United States Postal Service under a single ZIP code, 96799. Mains power is 120 volts, and sockets of several types are in use, North American ones among them. The territory levies no sales tax, though imports carry a general 8% tax.

Getting around is simpler on Tutuila than anywhere else. The territory had about 240 kilometres of road in a 2008 estimate and a maximum speed limit of 30 miles an hour. On Tutuila the ʻaiga buses, a service dating from 8 June 1922, travel the island. Between the islands the options are the small flights to Manuʻa and boats. The territory's one hospital is the LBJ Tropical Medical Center, named after President Lyndon Johnson, who visited in October 1966.

The calendar is the last thing to set. American Samoa lies east of the International Date Line, and it marks Flag Day on 17 April each year, the anniversary of the Tutuila cession.