🇼🇸 Samoa
Apia
Apia is the capital and only city of the Independent State of Samoa — a town of 37,000 people on the northern coast of Upolu Island, in the centre of Polynesia, roughly equidistant between Hawaii and New Zealand. Apia is the smallest national capital in the Pacific, with a downtown of colonial-era buildings (including the old German Post Office from 1907, when Samoa was a German protectorate) around the Mulivai lagoon. The city is where Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson spent the last four years of his life (1890–1894), writing at his plantation home Villa Vailima (now a museum) and resting finally on the summit of Mt. Vaea (looked at from Apia, a forested ridge behind the city, reached by a 1-hour trail from Vailima, bearing the inscription he wrote for himself: 'Home is the sailor, home from sea, and the hunter home from the hill'). But Apia's most spectacular geography is on the south coast of Upolu: To Sua Ocean Trench (a circular sinkhole 30 metres deep, connected to the sea through an underwater lava tube — one of the most striking natural swimming holes in the Pacific). Best months: May–October (dry season, 24–30°C).