The ancient heart of Samoa

This enchanting Pacific island has retained its strong culture despite Western influences. Heather Couper discovers a society where tradition is still king

Travel guidebooks, the internet and an entire Air New Zealand flight crew all agree: there is only one place to stay in Apia, the shabby capital of Western Samoa. Aggie Grey's Hotel is "the Raffles of the Pacific", according to one pilot.

Aggie's (as it's known) is named after its founder – a redoubtable lass who was the progeny of Scottish chemist William Swan and his Samoan wife, Pele. During the Second World War, Aggie offered generous hospitality to American servicemen who were stationed on Samoa. Later, the hotel became a favourite hideaway for Hollywood movie stars. It sounded intriguing – and with a private fale available for $100 (£67) a night, we were sold.

The fale (pronounced fah-lay) is the traditional Samoan residence. The basic house style is a brightly painted fale, or grass roof on stilts. It is easy to have a look around typical Samoan homes, because the fale usually has no walls (reasonable enough, given the year-round humidity). When you peek inside, you see that they also have no furniture. People sit cross-legged on the floor, and if they need privacy, they put up pandanus screens.

Each of the villages has a collective identity and to wander around uninvited is the equivalent of going into a stranger's house and making yourself at home in their living-room. You need to obtain the permission of the village mayor, or Pulenuu, before making a visit.

Next up in the fale hierarchy is the cheap beachfront backpackers' variety, with four walls and a nightly rate of £5-£10 per night. Most of the tourists are Kiwis or Australians, with the occasional German thrown in. Western Samoa was part of Germany from 1900 until New Zealand invaded in 1914. In 1962, it became the first Pacific nation to escape from colonisation as a fully independent country.

Western Samoa is not overly dependent on tourism, however, which is just as well given the lack of other visitors on the midnight bus from the airport into Apia.

Aggie's turned out to be a pretty, white colonial building with wrought-iron balconies and huts dotted around the grounds. The typical fale here is top-of-the-range – a comfortable wooden cabin. Ours was set apart from the rest. As the clouds blanketed the night sky, we sat outside on the balcony lapping up the humidity, accompanied by glasses of chilled New Zealand white wine. Dawn broke, and so did reality. We clearly hadn't done our homework – because we didn't pick up on the fact that Aggie's is right in the centre of downtown Apia. Our "remote" fale was right next to a bridge carrying the most thunderous traffic in the South Pacific along the main drag through the town.

Apia itself is dwindling into terminal shabbiness. It has none of the colonial elegance of, say, Victoria, the capital of the Seychelles, and its obligatory clock tower is plain and dumpy. But it has an energetic flea market around the bus station, and you could never accuse the town of being drowsy. But I wanted peace and quiet, with an ocean view.

So we hired a four-wheel-drive and headed off down the cross-island road to the south coast. Samoa is about 75km long by 25km wide – about the same size as Mallorca. It shares with the Med's favourite island a wooded, mountainous terrain, which rises to 1,158m at Mount Fito. As a result, it always takes a lot longer than you would think to drive from A to B – especially when you're constantly having to avoid dogs (friendly) and pigs (well-fed).

Samoa's scenery is absolutely enchanting. The island's covered in rainforest, with huge waterfalls cascading down the steep volcanic slopes. Driving around Fagaloa Bay on a 4WD track was particularly hairy – soggy, rutted and with a steep fall down to the ocean. At one point – miles from anywhere – the same thought came unbidden into our minds. If we broke down, rescue might become a bit of a problem – for digital mobile phones don't work on Samoa.

As well as dramatic scenery, the other thing you can't escape on the island is religion. Christianity is central to the Samoan culture, and – as a visitor – you're asked not to enter villages on Sundays. Christian missionaries visiting Samoa in the 19th century were amazed at the take-up rate of their teachings. It transpired that there had been a prophecy from Nafanua – the war goddess of the old religion – that a new belief system would supplant the old.

There are churches everywhere, in a bewildering hotch-potch of architectural styles. But surely none are as unusual as that at Piula Methodist Theological College, 18km east of Apia. The church is built over a pair of interconnecting cave pools which exactly follow the line of the nave and chancel of the church above. We swam through the first pool, filled with freezing, but spectacularly clear fresh water. However, we chickened out of going into the second. The Lonely Planet guide maintains that the two are connected by an underwater passage that is 3m long – but while we've sump-dived before with experienced cavers, we weren't going to risk it on our own.

Still in search of our ocean view, we wound up at the Sinalei Reef Resort, a Pacific idyll of traditional Samoan wooden buildings. The resort is set in acres of native flowering plants fronting on to a pure white sand beach. Unlike other properties in Western Samoa, it is owned and operated by a Samoan team.

How much, we wondered, for an ocean-view suite, with a perfect view of the gardens, beach and fringing reef? Negotiable, but the right side of £200 per day including breakfast, afternoon tea and unlimited fresh spring water on tap. The staff were proud of the fact that the resort is Samoan-run (the next-door resort – Coconuts – is American-owned and looking a bit worse for wear). One expatriate, though, was the chef – a German. Dietmar created a memorable breadfruit gratin. The beer was great, too – Samoa brews its own lager, Vailima, which beats any of the Australian and New Zealand opposition.

Samoan culture is based on Polynesian family traditions going back centuries – and the Samoans, even the young, are resolutely unwesternised. Both men and women wear sarongs, and I hardly saw a pair of jeans during our whole stay.

The Sinalei hosted an evening of "local entertainment" during our stay. I've seen these elsewhere in Polynesia and have been decidedly underwhelmed: the performances have been professional, but passionless. Not in Samoa. The singing, dancing and fire-eating were positively primal. At the end, the young master of ceremonies – a dead-ringer for Freddie Mercury – invited me on stage to dance with the troupe. He later told me the performers were just lads and lasses from local villages, doing what came naturally.

We hit Samoa in what was allegedly the dry season (May to October), and yet experienced torrential rain every day. Apparently the disruptive El Nino current was to blame. The Samoans are a little coy about this, but there is a climatic north-south divide – the south is windward-facing, and we found it dry in the north when it was pouring down in the south.

The rain caused two problems. First, we were cut off. The two telephone lines into the resort don't allow contact with the next village, let alone the worldwide web, when it's wet. The second was that I had an encounter with a sharp, and now slippery, volcanic rock when it was dark, and fractured my ankle. Alas – the cave swim was to be my last adventure before I came a cropper. At least it gave me the chance to check out the impressive Samoan healthcare system.

I suppose the good news is that – as a result of my unlucky break – we've left so much undone in Samoa that we can't wait to go back. For a start, opposite the medical centre where I was given a special plaster on my leg sufficient for the 24-hour journey, is Vailima – the magnificent colonial mansion built by Robert Louis Stevenson, where he spent the last four years of his life, and which we had been planning to visit. We never went swimming in a pool under a waterfall; never went snorkelling at the coral beaches on the east side of the island; and never spent time on Upolu's sister-island Savaii – which is larger, but even more unpopulated and traditional. But most of all I want to go back to explore more deeply Samoan culture, and meet those glorious sunny people again.

Heather Couper is the author, with Nigel Henbest, of 'Mars: the Inside Story of the Red Planet' (Headline, £25)

Traveller's Guide

Getting there: the most sensible airline for any tour of the South Pacific is Air New Zealand (0800 028 4149, www.airnz.co.uk), which has an extensive network of flights from London via Los Angeles to destinations around Oceania. The return fare through a discount agent is likely to be around £1,200 for travel in January.

A more economical way to get there may be to include Western Samoa as a stopover on a UK-New Zealand return, or as part of a round-the-world itinerary. Now that Air New Zealand is part-owned by Qantas of Australia, a range of new round-the-world fares involving both airlines is likely soon to appear.

Accommodation: Aggie Grey's Hotel, 00 685 22880, www.aggiegreys.com; Sinalei Reef Resort, 00 685 25191, www.sinalei.com.