Rarotonga,
Southern Cook Islands,
Cook Islands
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Like Aitutaki but bigger and busier. But it's a volcanic island rather than coral & is 20 miles round with one road that circles the coast & a second built about 600 years ago, that partly circles it a little inland. The middle of the island is all volcanic mountains covered in jungle & uninhabited. So not much choice for moving around - you go either clockwise or anticlockwise on the hourly bus!The beaches are more picture postcard beaches than Aitutaki, no sea slugs & no coral, but lots of rocks that the fish swim around so snorkeling is still good. we hired bikes & cycled around the whole island but the straggle of building is more or less continuous so few good sea views from the road. More fish for supper each day! we headed into Avarau the main "town" on friday night as we had heard it was the big night out, but it wasnt! Caught the 10pm bus all round the island rather than staying out til 2am! but in the dark couldnt see where we were staying & got off about 3 miles too early! The saturday market was better than expected, we treated ourselves to some local bland food, pineapple meringue - which we should have guessed was a mistake as we have not seen any pineapples on the island, and a pudding of Arrowroot in coconut milk - which really had no taste at all!Experienced a tropical downpour from our bungalow balcony & went onto New Zealand with wet clothes!the airport departure lounge has to be the best in the world - a little garden right next to the runway with Frangipani trees.
