Cook Islands

Last night we had debated getting a Smart car for the day; originally we were going to get scooters but we would have had to go into the main town to pass a driving test which seemed, ever so slightly, too much hassle.

When we woke up though, all thoughts of car hire disappeared in a flash. A mini tropical hurricane was lashing the island, swamping the ground below us and swaying the palm trees with some ferocity. We would have had to walk two miles from the apartment to the car hire place, and in the conditions it just wasn’t feasible.

So, with the car hire option disappearing, we did the only other option available to us, which was lie on the bed, read our books and watch the weather try to rip the island apart!

After about half an hour, we saw a head pop around the dividing wall between our apartment and the one next door, and pretty soon we were sat outside chatting to the other owner of the Muri Retreat, Phoebe.

And half an hour later we were still chatting! Phoebe was very friendly and chatty, and told us how they’d come to run the place we were staying in. Both her and Steve had worked for Kellogs in Sydney, and had been made redundant. As she was from the Cook Islands originally, they had decided to move back and look for a business and a few months later they had bought an old house and converted it into where we were now staying. They had deliberately targeted the traveller market by adding kitchens, dvds and book swaps to differentiate themselves from the competition, and seemed to be working really well for them. It reminded us of the “No Going Back” series of programmes on TV back home, where people had given up high stress jobs to start a business abroad, and was fascinating to listen to. It was also funny when she mentioned that one of the feedbacks she got from someone staying there was that it was too noisy. We both looked at each other at that stage; the only noise was from a rooster and the sea! It was probably the quietest place we have ever stayed!!! We normally avoid speaking to owners of places we have stayed at , but it was really good to hear from a Cook Islander about the place, and we got quite a good insight into island life.

After Phoebe had left, the weather picked up again, and blue sky actually appeared! Making the most of it, we headed down to the beach again, this time heading in the opposite direction

The water in the lagoon seemed to change colour by the minute, as the sky above varied between cloud and sunshine.

The sight of the sea pounding the coral barrier of the lagoon was transfixing. And the temperature started to rise by the minute.

Having walked for about a mile, we’d gone as far along the beach as was necessary, so (one “kiddie tarzan swing that I found in a tree” ride later) we headed back onto the main road and nearby town, stopping off at an internet café on the way back to the apartment.

We timed our return to perfection; the wind picked up again, the heavens opened, and another storm hit the island; we were going nowhere for the rest of the day onwards.

So, we spent our last night here in the apartment, with just a friendly gecko for company.

We’ve really loved our stay in the Cook Islands. Its been totally relaxing, seems like a wonderful place, and the people are extremely friendly. Our only regret about the place is that we can’t stay longer. But, as always, tomorrow we’re on the move again, this time flying by a propeller driven plane to Tahiti. We’ve got one night and then all of the next day in Tahiti before getting the midnight flight to Easter Island. And, despite having to leave Rarotonga, we’re looking forward to it.

We woke up today totally confused. We had distinctly remembered waking up on the morning of Sunday 21st June in Christchurch, and yet here we were waking up on Sunday 21st June in Rarotonga. One Sunday in the week is bad enough, but we now had two this week! And we’d gone from being 11 hours in front of the UK to being 11 hours behind overnight! Very confusing!

So, having a second Sunday in a row, we had to decide what to do with it. Our thoughts turned (naturally) to food, as in was there anywhere that would be open on a Sunday. In fact were we even near anywhere? The van last night had seemed to veer off the road onto the dirt track in the middle of nowhere. Straight away, thoughts of rustling up a toilet paper fricassee came to mind!

Before going on a food hunt, we had a proper look at the room, and the view. Our first impressions last night were confirmed; it was idyllic.

We were set back from the coastline, going up one of the hillsides, but from our veranda we could quite easily see the sea, and the whole area around us was completely lush with tropical vegetation.

We soon heard a knock at the door, and it was one of the owners, Steve, who brought us a big bunch of bananas, which were growing outside! Regular readers of this blog (if there are any out there!) may recall my Mum’s strange addiction to buying bananas on holiday. Why she’s like this I’ll never know (although a story that she’s expressly forbidden me to tell involving monkey impressions may explain some of it; but that’s for another occasion!). Well she would be in heaven here because the whole place is surrounded by them! And here Mum, especially for you, is a picture of our bananas.

Steve wasn’t too hopeful at anywhere being open, but pointed us in the general direction anyway. So, knowing now that as a last resort we could live off bananas today at the very least, we set off on an explore of the immediate vicinity.

Again, it felt like another world. Heading down the dirt track, we passed rows of banana plants, swamp land, and cows tethered by the track. It was like a scene from another century.

Even reaching the main road, we saw very little transportation. There were very few cars; indeed the two most common forms of transport that we saw were mopeds and foot!

By a miracle, the convenience store we’d been directed to was open. The prices came as a complete shock, with several items costing three times as much as they did in New Zealand. So, as we seem to do in every country we visit, we adapted our taste buds to the cheapest possible combination of foodstuffs and bought our provisions for the next two days.

Our next objective was to find the beach! We had seen the sea from our veranda, we could hear the waves pounding the coral lagoon, but we couldn’t find any access point whatsoever to get there! It seemed like every single bit of coastline was occupied by private houses, all displaying no entry signs on their paths!

So we did the next best thing; we found a nearby luxury resort, and just walked through there instead! With our plastic shopping bags in tow and general dishevelled appearance, we seemed to be an item of curiosity amongst the residents of the luxury resort. But we held our heads high, strutting our stuff as we headed towards the beach, safe in the knowledge we had paid around three times as less for our accommodation as they had, and were going to use their beach access regardless of whether we had paid for it or not!

The beach was astounding. The area of Rarotonga we were staying in, Muri Beach, is protected from the South Pacific ocean by a coral lagoon. This meant that the water in the lagoon was extremely warm, and gave a spectacle of the waves from the South Pacific crashing furiously into the coral someway from the beach.

The beach was golden sand, palm trees casting shadows on it from the banks of the bay.

There were small islands in the middle of the lagoon.

It truly was awesome.

We took a long walk to the nearby headland,

and then walked through another (even higher standard) luxury resort to get back to the road, and ultimately our studio apartment.

And then, realising that all the stresses of the past few weeks had left us, we decided to completely and utterly chill out at our apartment, relaxing on our veranda as we watched the day slowly fade to be replaced by the pitch black darkness of the Rarotongan night.

And so ended the longest Sunday of our lives, having lasted a mammoth forty six hours! And June 21st in New Zealand is supposed to be the shortest day of the year!

Today, like Marty McFly and Doc, we were to become time travellers. We weren’t attempting to go back to the 1950’s, having more modest aims. But, we were going to attempt to arrive in the Cook Islands before we had set off from Christchurch!

We left our IBIS hotel in Christchurch and caught a taxi to the airport. The taxi driver was Portuguese, and among the stories he told us on the way was that he was the first foreign football player to play in New Zealand!

Our first flight today was between Christchurch and Auckland. It had taken us three weeks to drive between these two destinations, but only an hour to fly! We then had an uneventful 3 hour wait in Auckland airport, where the only thing of note was that I bought my first item of new clothing since setting off four and a half months ago; an Adidas All Blacks rugby top which cost the princely sum of £12 after redeeming a discount voucher we had!

And then, the airport having waited right until boarding time before posting up the boarding gate, we had a semi-mad dash to our gate and we were off to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands.

The flight took around three and a half hours, and just before landing we crossed the International Date Line. So, having set off from the hotel at 11am on Sunday 21st June, we arrived in Rarotonga at 1am on……. Sunday 21st June! So, we finally became time travellers (and we didn’t even need a souped up De Lorian or a flux capacitor to do it either)!

Arriving in Rarotonga was quite a surreal experience. Having been in very anglicised countries for three months, Rarotonga was definitely something different. Although a territory of New Zealand, it feels a world apart.

From the warm weather on leaving the plane, the Cook Island singer playing a guitar in the passport area, the locals greeting relatives returning home with garlands of flowers, through to the confusion searching for our transport to our accommodation, we knew we had entered a different world.

We eventually (after ten minutes of aimless wandering) worked out which was our transportation (it was the unmarked van obviously! – how foolish of us not to realise!). The general feeling of surrealism then continued, as the van (which was exactly the same size as our campervan) was loaded up with thirteen people and we set off in pitch blackness on the only road on the island. Each bump in the road that the van hit reverberated throughout the interior, so as well as being jolted all over it was virtually impossible to hear a word the driver was saying.

Having dropped two other parties off at their respective premises, it was our turn, and he pulled off the road and headed up a dirt track towards our accommodation for the next three nights, the Muri Retreat. Pulling up outside, he looked for the room with the light on, and helped with our bags to the room itself. This just added to the bizarreness; we found ourselves thirty seconds later in our room, having not checked in, not even seen the owners, being told which room was ours by the van driver, and walking into an unlocked room with the key left inside!

And the room itself was simply breathtaking. We had ordered a ground floor studio apartment (which looked very nice) but found ourselves in one of the more luxurious top floor studios, which even had it’s own veranda and comfy chairs from which we could hear the sea and just make our the white of the waves in the distance.

Although we feared a mistake had been made, and that we’d be moved into our correct room tomorrow, we made the most of it, staying up for a further hour despite the time; even getting into the spirit of the Cook Islands by wearing flowers in our hair like demented hippies!

So that’s time travelling for you; I’d highly recommend it!