Christmas In The Cooks

We flew to Raratonga, the main island in the Cook islands where we would spend a week over Christmas. On route crossing the International date line meaning we arrived the day before we left. Effectively giving us another go at the 23rd of December, which was nice if a little confusing. We arrived late on Saturday night and went out to see the town the following day. It was the last Sunday before Christmas and so we were surprised to find everything in town closed. They really take their day of rest very seriously! We decided to explore and find the nearest beach and after a long walk and an encounter with some big angry Alsations we found it. (They have lots of stray dogs here!)

More or less the entire beach surrounding Rarotonga is beautiful and there is a reef a few hundred feet out breaking the sea and creating a calm clear lagoon which is great for swimming. The lagoon is home to a multitude of sea creatures too including sea snakes, huge fish and thousands of eels. The local kids obviously collect the eels as we saw some abandoned on the road a little way from the beach.

We were planning on cycling around the island which is only 32 km's but the weather was so unpredictable we decided against it in the end (Rarotonga is a place where you can get sun burn and trench foot in the same day!). We took the bus instead which travels in a loop around the outer road of the island, stopping to take a look at the famous Muri beach over the far side which was very pretty but much busier and had several swish looking resorts along it.

Christmas day was quite sunny and hot and we spent the morning having races in the pool. We took a walk down to the beach in the afternoon and saw lots of families having their celebrations on the sand, with big buffets laid out. We were just thinking how lucky we were that the weather had held out when the skies opened and we were soaked in seconds! We headed home to dry off and cook our Christmas dinner. A bit different from the usual meal we opted for a sweet potato curry followed by cheesecake which I must say was excellent. And sticking with tradition we ate far too much! Then we pitted our wits against each other in a chess showdown to end a top day (Jed wins!).

Rarotonga is an interesting place to spend some time, with everyone getting around by motorbike and plenty of friendly faces offering us lifts. One fascinating thing about the Cook Islands is that each house has their own little family graveyard in their garden which is different from back home. The prices were another surprise - for many things they were more expensive than back in New Zealand or even England. Taxi prices were insane and we decided to give them a miss and walk to the airport along a dark lane. The night was very clear and we were amazed at how many stars we could see. It was incredible and we think we definitely saw a planet, which looked much more orange than the surrounding stars. A good finish to our Cook Island visit!

Next stop Los Angeles to see in the new year!

Sam and Jed xx

---

Part of trip: Oceania

---