Our flight over the South Pacific meant we passed the International Date Line, which meant, we left New Zealand, on Friday May 16th, Marie's birthday. As we crossed the date line, we went from Friday to Thursday, and had gained an extra day. How this works is that as we have moved east from the start of our trip, heading through Asia then Australasia, each time we went to a new spot further east, we lost a little time with each new destination. This lost time is than given back to us as we cross the date line! Crazy world, but it's cool as we get Marie's birthday twice because of this! We have now passed the Equator and now the date line, two significant geographical milestones in our trip. (And birthday wise this means I get 2 lovely cards!!)
As we approached Rarotonga we could see the reef encirculating the volcanic island. You can really appreciate how small this island is from the air. We encircled the island and then touched down on the runway, which is actually built into the reef. The Americans built the air strip in World War II, and then the cook islanders extended the runway, into the actual reef due to the countries terrain for tourism.
The Cook Islands are an archipelago made of many small coral atolls and quays, as well as the largest of them all Rarotonga.
Once off the aircraft, the landscape reminded us a lot of the Philippians, lush greenery, dark soil and blue sea surrounding it.
We were greeted at the air port by a guy playing island music on his ukulele as we geared up for pass port control and a lady put a sweet smelling flower necklace round both of our necks.
By the time we had checked in, it was into the swing of things, cocktails watching the sun drop below the stunning horizon. The resort we were staying in was unlike most of the places we have stayed in as we have travelled; it's a large holiday type resort, with the usual activities. First night was a crab race! Basically they get a load of hermit crabs, and place them in a bucket, then you choose a number (ours represented England) and the crabs are then let loose to crawl away from the centre of the circle to the outer ring. Unfortunately England crab was a bit slow off the mark, and only made it half way when the New Zealand crab passed the line! Hopefully this is not a sign of things to come with the Olympics pending!! We lost 2 dollars and the winner took all.
The next 2 days the weather wasn't great, cloudy with rain.......but we were on holiday and as far as we were concerned it was tropical rain so we didn't let it dampen our spirits. ( We are usually working hard at the travelling lark so we treated the cooks as a relaxation holiday, that was well over due............all this not working for a living can really tire a person out, tehehe)
We booked our hotel so that the strip of beach was directly in front of us and we literally stepped 3 meters from the pool and we were swimming over coral and many tropical fish that we had not seen at the Australian, or Thailand reefs, or even in the red sea which was a really thrilling experience, and it was definitely the clearest water we had ever been in, we couldn't believe it when we looked at the pictures and it looks like there is not any water in the picture just a fish.....amazing. We have since learnt that an even better place to snorkel is about 10 minutes away on Muri Beach where the water is much deeper so it is easier to snorkel.
I was really lucky as my Birthday fell on Friday night island night, it is the one night when all the locals and tourists can go out clubbing until 2.00am, all other nights including Saturday night bars shut at 12.00 and there are no clubs open..................that is just how un- touristy this place is. We had no expectations what so ever, there are no shops to speak of on the island, it is really un developed so what a night out had to offer we really couldn't imagine.
It turned out to be a wicked night out. The people are well friendly, it is a Christian island and everyone is strong in their faith and always giving out lots of love, when they greet you, praying before eating food etc, and all that love and friendliness makes for a good night out. We chatted to lots of the locals who were letting their hair down, all the staff from hotels and restaurants were out. There were 3 main clubs, which you could only see when you literally stumbled upon them from the dirt roads, but all playing really funky remixes of house and R+B, and really civilized. One was like a tree house affair made of wood and up on stilts, the other was huge and open air ( this one we had to avoid as we discovered the teeth whitening I had done for my wedding glowed fluorescent in the lights and Mufajel couldn't bear it when I smiled which was a lot after that much vodka) and the third was just like a big club back home. All free to get in so one of the locals already prepped us that the thing to do was to get there about 11.30 and people usually visit all the clubs about twice in a night. Mufajel not wanted to be out done by the local men wearing skirts and fresh flower necklace, grabbed 2 flowers and put them behind his ears...........we must have blended in well as at "The BC " they asked us if we would appear on the Rarotonga channel next month to promote the club, and a pissed kiwi girl came up to me and stroked my hair and said pretty island girl, as I shouted back I'm from the UK but she had already walked off. So we blended and had heaps of fun for my 32nd birthday, we got invited to a house party which I got really excited about, how cool to be in the cook Islands and actually get to go to a locals home and party with them. At 2.00am I was dragged home under duress by my loving husband who managed to find us a cab, and in the morning I woke up thinking thank god Mufajel had the sense to get us home........god knows how we would have got home, we would have sobered up at 4.00 am stuck round the other side of the island with no way of getting home and sleeping no doubt on a non European standard floor ( if you get my drift). I know many of my friends with sympathies with this scenario as I can think of a few nights where we have been all too enthusiastic to go back to that house party to only find ourselves walking into the nearest garage at 6.00am in the morning saying where are we? And can we borrow your phone to call a taxi !!!!
After 3 days we left our resort and headed back to the airport to catch out Rarotonga Air flight to Atutaki. The flight was a short hop to the Northern island group, which was approximately 200km north of Rarotonga. Our flight had about 10 passengers and was a small propeller plane, very South Seas feel to it.
More thumbnails ...
