About Mu Pagoa Waterfall
The Mu Pagoa Waterfall was kind of a locals waterfall as it didn’t seem to have any tourism infrastructure devoted to it.
That said, the falls featured a wide drop of about 5m tall and perhaps 15-20m wide as the Lata River spilled over an old lava flow right into the churning South Pacific Ocean.
Indeed, you could count this as one of the waterfalls that dropped directly into the ocean!
Julie and I made a somewhat awkward visit by pulling up into a driveway of the nearest residence to the falls and asking around.
We knew where the waterfall was beforehand, which was how we guessed at the closest residence to make our inquiry.
It turned out that the place we stopped at accommodated us after we paid the 10 Tala (5 Tala per person) to go across their property to visit the falls.
The girl that took the money, then led us to the lava cliffs overlooking the Mu Pagoa Waterfall as well as the turbulent ocean before leaving us alone.
Julie and I were careful not to get too close to the edges of the cliffs because the ocean swells crashed against the cliffs creating this constant battle of erosion against erosion-resistant lava.
We managed to look towards the falls, which from this angle was backed by sparse palm trees and cows grazing in the pastures beneath.
We didn’t cross the wide Lata River to get to the other side for a completely different perspective, but we really didn’t need to as the views were already good enough.
Prior to us showing up, we had noticed locals standing atop of the lava cliffs perhaps fishing or daringly jumping into the swells.
All I could say was that there was no way we were even thinking about doing that given that we weren’t as familiar with the area nor were we as strong swimmers as the locals in the know.
So our visit pretty much was limited to around 20 minutes before we had our fill and returned to the parked car, where we carefully had to back out within the limited space that they had.
Authorities
The Mu Pagoa Waterfall resides in the Palauli District near Salelologa on Savai’i Island, Samoa. For information or inquiries about the area as well as current conditions, you can try the MNRE website.
For the purposes of simplicity, we’ll describe the driving directions to the ferry terminal at Salelologa since just about every visitor to Savai’i comes by ferry.
First, we had to get from the Salelologa Ferry Terminal to the South Coast Road.
The easiest way to do this would be to turn right upon leaving the terminal, then driving about 1.4km to the South Coast Road, where we’d then turn left to go west on that road.
We then continued on the South Coast Road for about 23.5km where we then to stopped at the driveway of the residence nearest to the Mu Pagoa Waterfall on the left.
The waterfall was downstream of the road bridge traversing the Lata River, and the residence was just before this bridge (roughly 10km west of the signed turnoff for the Afu Aau Waterfall.
Overall, this drive would take about 30 minutes.
Note that when we left the ferry terminal, we also could have turned left out of the ferry terminal and followed the road for 1.2km.
Then, we would turn right and follow this road for 2.4km before finally reaching the South Coast Road, where we would then turn left again.
Once on the South Coast Road, we would then drive 21.5km to the nearest residence to the Mu Pagoa Waterfall just before the bridge over the Lata River.
Doing the drive in this manner would also take about 30 minutes.
Finally, for a little local context, the town of Salelologa was about 11km (over 15 minutes drive) south of Tuasivi (East Coast), about 47km (about an hour drive) south of Fagamalo (North Coast), and 88km (about 1 hour and 45 minutes drive) southeast of Falealupo (Northwest Coast).
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A couple of left to right sweeps starting with a distant look at Mu Pagoa Falls while the second panning action checking out the falls from closer to the brink
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