Samoa is so laid-back it’s only a kava session away from being comatose. Palm-fringed beaches, booming white surf and lush rainforests wreathed in misty in misty clouds it the kind of place that Hollywood location scouts go gaga over. The Samoan lslands comprise two entirely separate entities: the independent country of Samoa and the US territory of American Samoa. Over the years it’s been visited by trading ships and served as a bolt hole for the homeless riffraff of xthe seas-ex-whalers, escaped convicts, bawdy traders and retired pirates. After such a tumultuous history, this is a place that has earned a little time in thee sun.

May to October, when the weather is perfect and the events calendar is full

Spending the night in a 225-year-old banyan tree amid fruit bast and birds on Falealupo Peninsula Playing a game of kirikiti-a home-grown Samoan version of cricket Discovering Pulemelei Step Pyramid, Polynesia’s largest and most mysterious ancient monument Gazing into Falls, Samoa’s most beautiful waterfall and tropical pool Staying at Aggie Grey’s legendary hotel (Aggie was supposedly the model for Bloody Mary in James Michener’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Tales of xthe South Pacific)Blowing your mind at Alofa’aga Blowholes, one of the world’s largest marne blowholes Getting volcanic at Sale’aula Lava Field, a expanse of black basalt formed by flowing lava enveloping a buried village

Read Where We Once Belonged by Sia Figiel, a local author’s first novel about dispossession in modern Samoa

Listen to world-renowned Samoan hip hop as the Boo Ya Tribe and King Kapisi

Watch Fa’a Samoa: The Samoan Way, an amusing video portraying everyday life in Samoa

Eat a traditional Plynesian feast cooked in an umu (below-the groun oven )

Drink kava, the ceremonial drink made from the ground roots of pepper plants

Malo or Talofa-traditional greetings

Hefty rugby-playing locals; crazed kava ceremonies; palm-fringed beaches; ornate traditional tattoos; volcanoes periodically blowing their tops; Robert Louis Stevenson

Falealupo Peninsula figures prominently in local legend. The natural beaty of the area belies the dark significance it holds Samoans, who believe that the gateway to the underworld of the aitu (spirits) is found at the place where the sun sets in the sea.