Massacre Bay ver 2. “Stranded on the Beach”

Being the lucky women that we are, our husbands gave us a day all to ourselves. Deepa and Carol both still have kids in diapers so they were excited just by the prospect of getting to read a book on a beach and not have to chase little people around. But as I am always in need of some adventure, I talked them into an hour-plus jungle hike to the secluded beach of Massacre Bay…. hiking and snorkeling in one outing!

Massacre Bay is so named for a deadly encounter that occurred on December 12, 1787 between some Samoans and French explorers. The rumor has it that the Samoans were first friendly to the explorers and invited them to a feast that evening. The feast turned out to be a trap and 12 Frenchmen and 39 Samoans were killed. There is no monument for the dead Samoans, but there is a French monument that receives a yearly visit from a French warship.

I have actually been to Massacre Bay once before, but it was during that kind of fuzzy ‘I’ve only been on the island a month’ time. As a trail can literally be overgrown in a few days in the rain forest I had some doubts about finding it. But these doubts did little to stop me. I did call Paul at the Park office, though, and asked him for some maps, compasses, a GPS, etc…. all the stuff a good Park Ranger should have at his disposal. No compass was found and GPS units don’t work in the dense jungle, but Paul made me a whole bunch of cool maps. I confided my doubts to Carol, but we decided that Deepa didn’t need to know. Carol and I both have lots of hiking and backpacking experience, but being an L.A. city girl, Deepa is new to trekking through the forest.

Saturday turned out to be a beautiful day. No rain, and not even uncomfortably hot. Deepa picked us up and we were on the road by 9 am. The trailhead is located on a plateau near the top of a mountain. The road ends at a farm, which was exciting in itself. I guess it takes living on a mountain to find some open land on this island. The farm had pigs and lots of cows. The skinny Samoan cows look a lot different than the Midwest cows I’m accustomed to seeing.

After checking in with the farmer, we headed out. The trail starts off as a dirt two-track and eventually turns into a smaller trail. I was surprised at my memory and felt more confident as we went along. The views were incredible. It was such a clear day that we could see the Western Samoan island of Upolo, 65 miles away!

The trail follows along a ridgeline before heading down to the bay. The heading-down part is where my original doubts came into play. The trail was no longer visible, but we could hear the ocean and knew we would eventually hit the beach. Deepa, being the wise woman she is, kept suggesting that we mark our trail somehow. We found a few beer bottles and laid them down along the way. However, finding a few Vailima bottles in the jungle is akin to finding a needle in a haystack. I really was not too worried, though. I knew we just had to climb back up the ridge and we would eventually cross the trail.

Any worries about the trail were set aside as we came out of the jungle after an hour and a half hike to the beach. It is such a gorgeous beach, completely secluded, clean and sandy. To the east, there are views of the National Park. We ate our lunches, read books, snorkeled, and explored. We found a few run-down fales (Samoan open houses) and the French monument.

We couldn’t have asked for a better day. At about 3:00 we decided to pack up and get started on our hike back. We started into the jungle and figured if we headed straight back, we would find the spot where we came down. Everything looked fairly familiar (‘oh yeah, I’ve seen that green leaf before’), but as we got further and further in, it all looked the same (‘isn’t that the green leaf I just saw?’). We did hit a big incline, though, and started the climb up. It was a lot steeper that on the way down, but we were determined. We were literally covered in mud and pulling ourselves up anyway we could. After at least an hour of climbing, it seemed we hit the top of the ridge. We tramped around and around, but there was no trail to be found. I was so frustrated and felt the most responsible of our group. I kept looking at my maps and logically, we had to be in the right place. After not finding the trail, we decided to go back down the mountain and start over. We literally slid down on our butts, and all I could think was that one of us was going to twist their ankle.

We made it safely down and followed the sound of the waves back to the beach. It was now past 4:30. I knew we had to hurry if we were going to make it out of there by dark. We set a time limit and decided if we weren’t back on the trail by 5:30 that we had to come back to the beach. The idea of being on a beach in the dark was a lot more appealing than being in the jungle in the pitch darkness. We thought that in our first attempt we had veered too far to the east so this time we kept to our right more. Again we hit the incline and started climbing. It was much less steep, but we were not making much progress and our 5:30 deadline quickly arrived. I couldn’t believe we were really accepting defeat, but I knew going back to the beach was our best option.
All we could talk about the whole time was what Paul, Jay, and Matt were thinking and talking about. We felt bad that they were probably going through the worst-case scenarios (our wives were swept out to sea or something equally deadly). We knew we were fine, but we had no way of letting them know. Carol had her cell phone and though we could actually see the lights of a cell phone tower, there was no reception. We had a party we were expected at that night so we knew that our friends were also going to be worried.

We accepted our fate and prepared for a night on the beach. There is a taro and banana plantation back from the beach that seemed to still be utilized by some Samoan person. We saw laundry hanging in an old fale and thought someone may even still be there. With thoughts of rescue in mind, we called out, but no one was home. We did find a jug of water that smelled fine so taking our chances we filled up our water bottles. We also found a fire pit that still had logs smoldering in it. We gathered wood and soon had a fire going. We were pretty proud of ourselves.

Sitting around a campfire on an amazing beach with your girlfriends should be a joyous time, but we felt pretty bad. We were dirty, hungry, tired, and anxious as we talked about the possible “rescue” scenarios. I thought Paul may get the National Park boat or they might try to hike in the dark, but we figured no one would come until at least 11:00 pm, if they came at all. Although I really thought they wouldn’t be able to come until morning, I couldn’t help but stare at the ocean, looking for a boat, and listening in the forest, waiting to hear our rescue party.

It was only 8:30 pm when we heard a yell in the forest. We jumped up and started yelling back in excitement. When we didn’t hear a response, we started to get really nervous. I probably watch too much “Lost,” but I kept thinking about an “Other” coming out of the jungle to get us. Plus, I couldn’t believe that our husbands could have gotten there so soon. After a few long minutes, we finally heard some more shouting. We could tell it was still far away, but now we were convinced it must be our husbands. After about ten minutes, we saw some lights moving down the beach, and Deepa, Carol, and I ran so fast all the way down the beach, shouting and laughing. I first saw Paul and ran up and jumped into his arms. It felt like I really was in distress and has been lost for days! Jay and Paul brought us cookies and water. We ate a snack and decided to hike out in the dark. The guys brought headlamps for all of us, and within ten minutes they had us back on the trail. As happy as I was to be heading home, I was annoyed that we had to have our men come rescue us! I still am not quite sure where we went wrong, but we plan to make the hike again soon (with our husbands this time!).