(Savai'i West)
This should actually be part 2. This location, along with the one in Maota, was also picked out by Shaun and John while Matt and I finished up the station in Ta'u.
This site, also like the Maota site, was on land controlled by the forestry division. That kept things pretty simple from an administrative point of view, and came in pretty handy from a practical point of view. All of the forestry folks helped us out quite a bit. The forestry office for this region was near the town of Asau.
About three miles up the road in the picture below was the Asau Development Farm. The road was so good that the trip from the office to the farm area took about half an hour.
A lot of the trees along the road to the farm were planted in rows. The whole area was a agricultural tree farm. There was a green house area near the office where the seedlings were grown. They were breeding fast growing trees to grow the lumber industry.
We made our own road for the last little bit.
There was a large clear area and it was decided to place the station near the middle of it. The ground was a good mix of rock and dirt, so the digging, most of which was done by the time I got there, went fairly quickly.
We adjusted the hole a little, built a form for the cement around the outside of the barrel/vault out of some pieces of wood we scavenged from the area, and started the same routine as the Tutuila and Ta'u stations.
Done! We were getting good at this.
Once the barrel was in place we covered the site to help keep any rain water out of the hole -- at least until the cement was dry -- and headed out.
2014-07-23