Maninoa Village, Siumu District ;………………………………April 12, 2003

Well, it is now almost 10 years later and the story definitely needs updating! So, here is a belated Chapter III.

Our new dining room did, in fact, open in 30 days and it was (notice the was) very romantic and intimate and could seat about 40 people. More than enough for our needs! It had a low ceiling, real wooden floor (not sand), the first restaurant banquette seating in Samoa, and open on all sides with “windows” that folded up and, with the aid of three strong Samoans, could sometimes be dropped down in inclement weather.

To backtrack a bit, in late 1992 we had all of the 8 rooms of The Treehouse completed, but rarely found ourselves with more than 4 of them occupied. So, Sieni and I decided to move out of the converted tool shed at the rear of the property where we had been living for the past two years and moved into room #5 of the Treehouse. That was really exciting! What luxury and what a view! By the beginning of 1993 we had started to receive a lot of interest from surfers from the United States and Australia, both young and not-so-young. Sometimes, we happily found ourselves with nights when all 8 rooms were filled. So, we decided to build some more rooms. This time it was decided that we would build budget type accommodations that were earmarked for the young surfer crowd that was showing up with greater frequency. Thus, on May 7, 1993 (our wedding anniversary) we started to build 7 Courtyard rooms, adjacent to the Treehouse. The rooms were completed by July 1993 and were slowly filled with young surfers, mostly from Australia. When the Courtyard rooms were completed we decided that we would move in to one of those rooms (room #16) and let the guests enjoy the relative luxury of our Treehouse room - #5.

The Conde Nast Traveler article created a lot of interest in Samoa and Coconuts Beach Club and the result was a lot of inquiries from visitors as well as other journalists. I am happy to say that the stream of visitors and journalists that started in late 1993 has never abated – to date. But, you have to realize that even though we had a great increase in the amount of inquiries and visitors, the term “a lot” is quite relative. To increase awareness of Samoa and Coconuts, in November of 1993 Sieni went to Europe to attend a series of trade shows to promote our new resort. While there she mentioned to me that she wasn’t coming back to Samoa until such time as I built a proper house for us and we stopped moving in and out of guest rooms. Recognizing the brilliance in her suggestion, I immediately set to work to build the Villa – our first to be located right on the beach. I cleared a small patch of the jungle adjacent to the area in front of the Treehouse and in December of 1993 we moved into the Villa – with a sitting room, kitchen, two bedrooms, and three bathrooms.

It had always been our dream to build fales on the beach. So, when we built the Villa it - along with the completion of Sieni’s Three-Stool-Bar in 1991- represented a major milestone in our lives in Samoa! There was only one problem. Our original idea was to have one fale for us, but also to have a couple of fales for friends or guests. So, as soon as the Villa was finished I immediately set out to build two more fales on the beach. In short order (March of 1994), we opened the first fale (called Fale A – very original naming!) adjacent to our Villa. Fale A embodied all of the characteristics that we wanted for our guests as gleaned form our travels around the world. Our dear friend and talented designer from Los Angeles, Robert Ross, came to Samoa and designed our dream fale. It was split level, with a King size bed that allowed you to look at the sea from the bed, a separate sitting room and an outdoor bathroom with a waterfall shower that came out of the rocks into a sunken tub.

Quite happy with our design we decided to build a second fale on the beach, but this time a fale with two bedrooms. Thus, four months later, in July 1994, we opened Fale B (another clever name) adjacent to Fale A – right on the beach. True to our original criteria, this fale also had a separate sitting room, split level design, a view of the sea from the bed, and an outdoor bathroom with a waterfall shower and a sunken tub. But, to make Fale B just a little bit different, we added a bidet to the bathroom – the first in Samoa!

In 1995 Mother Nature started playing games with us. It all really started soon after cyclone Val in 1991, but we were unaware of what was happening. During the cyclone we lost the beach in front of the restaurant due to the heavy pounding of the storm surf. We managed to reestablish the beach over the next six months and everything seemed fine. Except we noticed over the next couple of years, once or twice a year, we would get very heavy seas coming at the beach from a strange angle and a great deal of the beach would be washed away. As far as we could tell, this had not happened in the years before Cyclone Val and seemed to be related to the cyclone. Then, we noticed that the heavy seas and resulting erosion of the beach was occurring more often – like every three months! We soon found ourselves in an unending activity of replacing the beach sand – just as soon as we would finish replacing the sand, Mother Nature took it away again. So, in 1995 we decided to erect a seawall in front of the restaurant in order to retain the sand there and protect the restaurant and bar – which was only meters from the sea. The sea wall worked very well, so in 1996 we decided to extend it and reclaim some of the sea in order to build a swimming pool on the beachfront.

We didn’t want to just build a “generic’ swimming pool. If Coconuts Beach Club was to have a swimming pool then it had to be unique and serve our unique needs. Once again – Robert Ross to the rescue! Together we came up with a unique design that seemed to make sense. First and foremost we incorporated a swim-up bar into the design. Sieni and I had always loved the swim-up bars in places we visited around the world. Then came the idea of making it into the shape of a gecko to introduce some “fun” into the design. We decided to make it a 30 meter long pool with a more-or-less constant depth of 5 feet so guests could swim laps for exercise. The four gecko “feet” (and the “head”) became sitting ledges where guests could comfortably read a book or sit and have conversations, while still in the pool. The final design incorporated all of those ideas, with the tail of the gecko wrapping around the swim-up bar. To make it ecologically sensitive, we employed salt water chlorinating – a unique way of chlorinating a pool by passing an electric current through slightly salt water to convert the sodium chloride into chlorine. That eliminated the need to import toxic chemicals and the problem of disposing the used containers of chlorine. The construction was completed in April of 1996 with the help of Phil Brent from New Zealand and his helpers from Australia that used a revolutionary “pebble” technique to finish the pool and create the mosaic of a gecko on the bottom with colored pebbles.

In May of 1996 the Coconuts family gained an important member when Ned Brown joined us as general Manager. At the time Ned was well into his professional hotel management career having graduated the prestigious Cornell graduate school in Hotel Management and worked his way up through the ranks with various international hotel chains, to be in charge of operations at an 800 room hotel in Honolulu. During a meeting in Honolulu, Sieni did her best to discourage Ned from making the change from a “professional” hotel in Waikiki to our little operation in Samoa. Undeterred, Ned decided to visit Coconuts for a week to see the operation first hand. Following his visit to Samoa, he made the logical choice and decided to leave his career path, take a substantial cut in pay, and join our family in Samoa – where he is today.

With Ned at Coconuts to run the day to day operations, we decided to take our act on the road to Trade Shows to increase awareness of Coconuts, and to open an office in Honolulu to take advantage of the excellent telecommunications available there and enter the emerging world of the Internet. We also found that the Honolulu office could better supply Coconuts with all of its import needs – from construction materials to foodstuffs. One other bonus was that it enabled us to care for my elderly father and mother whom were living in Honolulu. With Sieni and I traveling back and forth between Trade Shows and Honolulu and Samoa on a regular basis we found it impractical for the Villa to remain empty during our absences. So, in June of 1996 we started to make it available to guests, giving us now three beach fales for guest use.

During our travels in Tahiti, during the 70’s, we stayed in several Over-The-Water bungalows on various islands, but were never really “thrilled” with the experience. They were nice experiences, maybe very nice, but not thrilling, as I thought it should or could be. So, Robert Ross and I got together to design and build the first (and only) Over-The-Water Fales in Samoa. The idea was that the Fale should not be dark (like most of the ones that we stayed in) and should be intimate and have some very special appeal – while maintaining a sense of privacy. The resultant design was anything but dark, with glass windows all around and two sliding glass doors to a deck which overlooks the distant reef and the pristine adjacent beaches. As a bonus, the fale has a beautiful tiled shower and a separate two person tub – with a view to the sea – and air conditioning and a glass floor to see the sea life below. In April of 1997 we opened two Over-The-Water Fales - the first in Samoa -on the extreme western side our property, off a pier that extends 20 meters into the sea. While building the two fales I had the impression that I was on a boat, and many guests who have stayed in these fales have remarked that it was like sleeping on a boat – except there was no rocking.

In 1999 we decided to build 4 more beach fales on the remaining stretch of undeveloped beachfront between Fale B and the over-The-Water Fales, to bring us to a total of 24 rooms. The idea was to have the fales ready to celebrate the Millennium. So, Robert Ross improved upon the original design concept and in July of 1999 we opened the last of the Beach Fales – Fale C through F (again, clever naming). To build them we cleared just enough of the jungle for the Fales and even built around a lot of the existing palm trees. Fale E has a very large palm tree right in the middle of the bathroom! We maintained the split-level design, with a sea view from the king size bed, and an outside bathroom with a waterfall shower falling into a sunken tub.

At the beginning of 2000, after living in Samoa for more than 10 years, I was approached by the highest chief in Maninoa, Atanoa, and asked if I would accept a high chiefly title from Maninoa. After much discussion and preparation, in April of 2000, in a ceremony in Maninoa attended but the chiefs and orators of the Siumu district, I was honored with the matai title of Tautaimatapalapala. This was a very moving ceremony and marked a further acceptance of our Coconuts family into the local village community.

To start off the new Millennium we decided to build our often-delayed Guest Lounge Room. Picking the site and the design was the most difficult decision we had experienced so far. We ultimately decided to build it as an adjunct to our new (at the time not even designed) entrance and reception – adjacent to the restaurant and bar, along the eastern edge of our property. The design criteria required a room that was open to the outdoors, comfortable for guests to lounge in and to accommodate small meetings, private functions, house our guest library and serve as a state-of-the-art cinema in the evening. The resultant Robert Ross design incorporated all of these elements, in a structure built entirely of poles, open on three sides, with 10 foot high bifold doors, slate floors and furnished with unique and beautiful furniture from Bali Indonesia. Started in the beginning of 2000 and completed almost one year later in January of 2001, we call the building Fale Afa. Afa is the Samoan name for the senet or “string” that is made from coconut husk fibers and used to bind things together. Needless to say, Fale Afa has a lot of afa in its construction. The fale quickly becomes a first rate cinema at night with a digital projector, 12 foot screen, DVD player and theatre sound – but with a bonus! Large comfortable sofas and chairs to watch the movies, and full bar service too! The beauty of the building and the cinema experience actually exceeded my expectations.

But, when it was first finished in January of 2001 it was not used as intended. Instead, we decided to use it as a temporary dining room for the restaurant and to tear down the existing dining room that had been built at the end of 1993. Due to our increased number of rooms, the old dining room had gotten too small to accommodate the number of guests for dinner as well as the large dinner crowd for Fiafia Night every Saturday. Plus it had a number of poles in the center of the room that made it difficult to see the fiafia for many diners. Continuing the theme of Fale Afa, Robert Ross designed a beautiful, open structure, with no supports in the center, and one of the most beautiful ceilings around. The entire ceiling is a constructed of exposed trusses, made of poles, that span the entire room – some 40 feet long. The new dining room, located on the same site as the old one but almost twice as large, opened in October of 2001 – complete with banquette seating (like the original one) and lovely teak tables and chairs.

No sooner was the new dining room constructed, then we decided to undertake the one project that we had been promising ourselves we would do since we opened our first hotel rooms in 1991 – a new reception. I must digress for a moment to explain that the building that we had used as our reception since the beginning of Coconuts was never designed to be the reception for a hotel. It was built when we started as a Beach Club and served as Mika’s original home. The front part was used by a security person who opened and closed a pole barrier for Beach Club Members. So, it was nothing more than a “temporary” reception building –temporary for more than 10 years! So, in February of 2002 Robert Ross came to Coconuts Beach Club and designed a new entrance and reception. Work on the new reception started in March of 2002 and the new reception was officially used for the first time in March of 2003. The new entrance and reception reflects a continuing evolution in the architecture of Coconuts, retaining many traditional aspects of Samoan construction – lava rock walls, poles, afa – but with a contemporary flair to the roof structure. The large roof permits natural light to enter as though it was one large skylight, and there is a 30 foot long waterfall wall. It is truly a beautiful addition to Coconuts and was built entirely by our local carpenters, without any heavy equipment – as is true of all of the structures at Coconuts.

For our next project we decided to tear down the Courtyard Rooms since their intended purpose – catering to young surfers – had long since ceased to exist, and their “budget’ nature seemed out of place. So, once again Robert Ross came to Samoa and designed a grouping of three Suites for the site that the seven Courtyard rooms formerly occupied. On February 1, 2003 the demolition of the courtyard rooms was started and, at the present time, the construction of the new Garden Suites is underway. We hope to have the Garden suites finished by the end of May. At the moment one of them is almost finished and I do believe that these suite will become favored accommodations at Coconuts. Each suite will have a bedroom with a king size bed, a separate sitting room, two bathrooms and a covered terrace. When completed, we will have 20 rooms – 4 less than when we started this project.

What’s on the horizon? Who knows! Sieni is saying, once again, that she wants a fale of our own and that she is tired of packing up and moving rooms every time we are here. Then, there is also the one remaining project from our earliest dreams that has never been built – Disco Duck! Stay tuned!

………………………………………………………………………..Tautaimatapalapala Barry Rose

Since the last installment was completed, and until Barry takes pen (keyboard) in hand again, here’s what’s been keeping us busy:

2003 -  Completed Garden Suites

        Built new raised path to Garden Suites & Tree House rooms, with a shade fale

2004 - Remodeled Tree House rooms, completely redoing interior and adding entry vestibule

       Built Observation Tower between Garden Suites and Tree House rooms

       Built Sieni her new fale!

2005 - Tore down Beach Villa (Barry and Jennifer’s first “house”) and built Royal Beach Villa complex

2006 -  Completed Coco Beach Spa

2007 -  Completed “Lanococo”, or Lake Coconuts, fronting the Tree House rooms