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Published: November 9th 2008
Ruth woke me around 4.30am she was a little frightened as the wind has not ceased and she feared the roof would blow of or that we would get washed away in a tidal wave, after providing comfort and reassurance we slept till 8.30am. The wedding planner (Teresa) is due at 10am so we showered, dressed and had some breakfast getting ready to face the day, Teresa arrived on time and we spent about half an hour organising the ceremony, cake, flowers and reception location before heading to the Court House in Avarua where we completed the necessary forms to get the wedding license.
Teresa then took us on a quick orientation tour around town before driving us to the preposed reception venue at Tamarind House before being dropped at my parents bungallow. The bungallow is fully contained and much larger than the one we have, we then took a walk up to the top of the hill through all the different fruit plantations to the home of a local jeweller who specialises in black pearl jewellery. After about half hour looking at pieces and chatting with the jeweller Ruth, Mum and I headed off down the hill to the
main road, my dad as is his way had to gas bag and got left behind.
By the time he caught up we were in the closest car hire place organising a 5 day car hire before heading into Avarua to visit the Police Station, it is necessary to have a local drivers license so dad and I had to get one, there is no test at least for foreigners anyway, before heading to a dockside gourmet burger joint for lunch. Ruth started crying here because I got a manual car instead of an automatic, why she did say something before I did'nt know, I will swap it later.
We then visited some souvenir shops in the main street and purchased some provisions from foodland before driving the rest of the islands 32 km circumference stopping occasionly to take some nice photographs and to book an Island night at the Crown Beach Resort for the next evening. I then dropped of my parents off and went for some fish and chips for dinner. The wind is still blowing on our side of the island, hopefully it will drop during the night.
The next morning was still windy
but we did have blue sky's for the first time, Ruth's mum and aunty arrived during the night and are in the bungalow next to my parents on the hill. After breakfast I drove up the hill and picked up my parents taking them to the car hire place so they could get there own little car, then returned to pick up the three women and take them to Avarua so they could see the main town and so the Ruth could go get her license. We then went and visited a couple of small museums and by small I mean tiny but there were a few interesting exhibits including the record of how Captain Cook met his fate, quite gruesome.
Trader Jack's a famous island bar was the next place we visited popping in for a having a cold beer or two it was a pleasant way to spend some time while we waited for Ruth mum and aunt to finish shopping. I then drove the long way back to Muri Beach to show them the island, before changing the manual Swift for an automatic Corolla before returning to the bungalow for a 4.30 meeting with the celebrant.
Later Teresa informed us that the reception venue was booked out and we would have to move to the Vaima Restaurant instead.
Around 6pm I picked everyone up and we headed to the Crown Beach Resort for the Island night, the resort has a beautiful beach and the sunset was gorgeous. The girls all drank cocktails while dad and I had a few beers while we listened to an Island String Band, soon the buffet began, it inconsisted of many traditional dishes in copious proportions and was fantastic. The dance performanced commenced while we were eating and consisted of girls, boys, woman and men performing a variety of dances in traditioal dress including grass skirts and flowers, the women wore Coconut shell bras.
At the end the dancers selected people from the crowd to go on stage, knowing this would happen I took the opportunity to disappear avoiding this indignity LOL. The evening ended with a range of desserts, all of us agreed that the show and dinner were well worth the price.
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