In 1888 author Robert Louis Stevenson left his native Scotland to sail the world aboard a skippered sailboat in search of the ultimate south seas escape. He hoped his ailing lungs might fix themselves with the sweet fragrance of salt and frangipani on a far warmer breeze. He sailed the high seas, circumnavigating the globe. And then he found Samoa; and he gave up a life at sea and made a home here for his family. You'll still find him here today: his grave on Mount Vaea forever looking out across the capital, Apia, to his beloved blue Pacific beyond.

A whole world to choose from, and yet he chose this place of all places. Why he did so has intrigued me for three decades: one of my favourite authors, entombed forever in Polynesia, where I myself grew up. Stevenson loved the mountains that climb high into the blue sky not far from the coast, and the clean, clear waters, but most of all he loved the simplicity of life, and the role that family play in this blissfully simple life. He'd never seen such contentment before, he wrote in his journals.

More than 125 years have passed since Stevenson stepped off onto Samoa for eternity, but Samoans still live much the same way. Paramount chiefs still rule the land (police are just there to take care of the few Samoans who choose to step outside their strictly enforced laws), while their subjects live out quiet, sleepy existences in tiny villages that shut down entirely on Sundays, when Samoa goes to church.

There's few of the markings of modern life at all. Many houses here, called fales, have thatched roofs and no walls. Those that do have them are simple, brightly painted affairs of orange, pink and blue. Their residents mostly live outside anyway, often sitting atop the graves of relatives buried in the front yard, sharing cups of tea. Chooks, pigs and horses still rule the roads – dogs too, the laziest by far in the Pacific (they keep sleeping even as you drive right by them in your 4WD).

I'm on my way to one of Samoa's sleepiest corners – the honeymoon suite of Seabreeze Resort on the far eastern edge of Upolu, Samoa's most populated island. Unlike Stevenson, I'm planning only a short break.

Nowhere in the Pacific offers quite the same peace and quiet. But then Samoa is Polynesia the way Polynesia used to be, without the colonial influence of the French, the New Zealanders or the Americans in other island groups in the Polynesian triangle.

It's a fair trek from the airport to Seabreeze Resort, and in the quickly brightening dawn my driver avoids four startled piglets, three chickens, two sleeping dogs and a teenage boy catching a runaway rugby ball right in the middle of Upolu's only real bitumen road. Considering we won't get above 25 km/h on this journey, they needn't worry too much about injury.

For life ambles along at a gloriously sluggish pace in Samoa. Once I check into my suite, on top of a rocky headland in a perfectly sheltered blue-water bay, I put my phone away – its digitised time display looks out of place here – and allow myself to forget the routines it imposes.

My room has 270 degree views across a clear lagoon through floor-to-ceiling windows; its pointed balcony makes me feel like I'm on the bow of a ship sailing through the South Pacific. Just ahead of me is a tiny volcanic island containing the bodies of Samoa's most important rulers, around it other tiny islets topped with coconut trees jut from the aqua-blue water. Beyond, large waves smash onto a barrier reef, it's a noise so loud it takes me a whole day to get used to, although their rhythmic breaking soon makes me sleepy.

In this room I have the energy of a cat in its golden years.

After a dinner of seared tuna steaks the size of a country pub's heartiest rib-eyes, served up at the resort's lagoon-side restaurant, I try to stay awake to watch the stars that shoot with alarming regularity across a clear night sky, but I'm soon napping on the day bed set out on the balcony. I stay there until sunrise stirs me.

Breakfast is coconut nui (water) straight from the green nut and slices of candy-sweet pawpaw, then I paddle my way across the lagoon below the restaurant, claiming the tiny islets as my own, or swimming from the hidden beaches across the bay; making my way further yet to an abandoned 1870s catholic church. From here the vista opens out to a dramatic rocky hinterland that drops down to Lalomanu, and one of the southern hemisphere's top-rated beaches.

This is my third trip to Samoa and I'm still finding secret spots – completely empty bays where forest grows right to white-sand beaches surrounded by blue lagoons and unridden surf breaks. Or waterfalls where I can jump right into the cascade, then sit beneath the freshwater torrent, surrounded by rainforest.

Samoa has some of the South Pacific's best waterfalls – from cascades 80 metres high to gentle, family-friendly swimming holes. I like to waterfall-crawl on Upolu's south coast – taking in Papapapaitai, Togitogiga, Sopoaga and Fuipisia Falls. There's never another tourist in sight. On three visits to Samoa I could count on two hands the number of westerners I've seen at the island's best-known sites.

I don't have the time to stay long but here in Samoa it doesn't take many days to shed the life I know. Some nights as I doze off, I can hear people in the village down the road practising Polynesian dancing. It's the only time they'll move faster than a crawl in four days. Most days here the fronds of the coconut trees hula dancing on the gentle easterlies seem the only things moving at all.

Amidst this slumber, it's a simple task to unwind; to allow myself to switch off and leave the city and its headaches and heartaches behind.

Back at Samoa airport for my return flight, the parking attendant is fast asleep at his post. My driver laughs. "Free parking," he jokes, but he understands.

The writer travelled courtesy of Seabreeze Resort and the Samoan Tourism Authority

NEED TO KNOW

Getting there Virgin Australia flies direct to Samoa three times a week.

Staying there From $391 a night for an Ocean View Villa, from $694 a night for the Honeymoon Point House, including breakfast and complimentary mini bar