About Papapapaitai Falls
Papapapaitai Falls (I’ve also seen it referred to as Papapapaitai Waterfall as well as Papapapai-tai Falls or Papapapai-Uta Falls) was probably the easiest of the Samoan waterfalls that we experienced as it was a roadside waterfall.
All we had to do was pull up to the signed lookout right off the Cross-Island Road (see directions below).
From there, we looked across the canyon towards the impressively tall waterfall, which was said to have a height of 100m.
The best views of the falls were from the left side of the lookout, where there was a small retaining wall preceding a gully right between tall grass.
The right side of the lookout was mostly blocked by tall reeds as well as branches from a big tree essentially growing near the middle of the field of view.
So as far as our experiences with this waterfall went, we pretty much just pulled over to take a look and then head out. There didn’t seem to be an official way to actually swim at this waterfall given its location across a deep canyon.
Thus, we typically spent perhaps less than 15 minutes here for each time that we made a stop here.
I’m not sure if this waterfall was part of the Lake Lanoto’o National Park, but we did not have to pay to experience it.
This was surprisingly rare for waterfalls in Samoa.
Finally, according to our LP book, there was an unmarked track about 100m before the lookout that led to the Tiavi Waterhole, but Julie and I didn’t do this so we can’t comment on that any further.
Authorities
Papapapaitai Falls resides in the Tuamasaga District. For information or inquiries about the area as well as current conditions, you can try the MNRE website.
Getting to Papapapaitai Falls was pretty straightforward as it’s right off the Cross-Island Road, which connects the city of Apia with the south coast of Upolu Island.
From the junction of Beach Road and Cross-Island Road, we went south on Cross-Island Road for a little over 14km (taking roughly 20 minutes).
The signed turnoff for Papapapaitai Falls was on the right roughly 3km south of the signed turnoff for Lake Lanoto’o.
The car park had quite a few deep potholes so if you don’t have a high clearance vehicle, there seemed to be space to park closer to the Cross-Island Road than closer to the lookout.
Going in the other direction, Papapapaitai Falls was on the left roughly 7km north of the junction of the Main South Coast Road and the Cross-Island Road (taking roughly 10 minutes).
Finally, for a little local context, the town of Apia was about 23km (over 30 minutes drive) north of Maninoa (South Coast), about 50km (over an hour drive) northwest of Matatufu (Southeast Coast), about 62km (under 90 minutes drive) northwest of Lalomanu, and 41km (under an hour drive) east of Mulifanua (Northwest Coast).
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Dedicated sweep of the lookout focused on just the falls
Sweep of the lookout area under overcast skies
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