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Published: April 17th 2009
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When telling people we were next headed to the Cook Islands we were met with comments like "it must be paradise" or "sounds amazing". Little did they know we were headed for a typhoon. We arrived at midnight the day before we left Auckland and were shuttled to our less than lovely hostel for our first weeks' stay on Rarotonga.
Needless to say we spent our first week bonding with the other travellers in the hostel (which became a bit like a Big Brother house in short order) due to the torrential rain. We passed each day with a walk to the local shop to see what we could afford (which wasn't much) and spent our evenings preparing culinary creations based on the many ways one can prepare super noodles, schooling each other on the numerous uses of potatos or the possibilities that tinned spaghetti on toast actually is a wholesome meal. The rest of the time we spent reading, chatting, playing cards and watching movies.
Ev impressed us all by declaring one morning that he was headed to town to rent a moped and pass his driving test to acquire his Cook Islands license (a requirement for all
tourists). After he left the storm reached its worst yet but Ev returned successful although wet to the bone. Luckily the typhoon passed, the sun came out and we all remained friends!
We spent the rest of our first week in Rarotonga exploring the island by moped (truly gorgeous!), enjoying sunset nightly from our beach and catching any rays of sunshine we could.
As our first week ended we said our goodbyes to our hostel mates, thanked our lucky stars we were finally escaping the fleas and stray animal infested hostel and set out for the airport for our flight to Aitutaki.
Aitutaki, a 1 hour flight north of Rarotonga, is part of the northern group of the Cook Islands. Our flight, due to the recent typhoon, was more like a roller coaster ride as the pilot looped us around thunderheads and swerved left the right and back again coming in for landing. We arrived on the single runway that is Aitutaki International Airport, unclasped our fingers from the armrests and walked into the opened air building that is the terminal. After our greeting with a floral ei (lei) we made our way to Paradise Cove, our
home for the next week.
The accommodation was lovely, a massive step up from our flea and cockroach infested habitation in Raro. We had the best stretch of beach on the island just off our front porch. We spent our week soaking up the rays (can't come home without a tan- not after 5 weeks on South Pacific Islands), exploring the island by moped, enjoying an authentic Cook Islands church service (the singing was amazing! although the service entirely in Maori), indulging in good books, snorkelling in and outside of the lagoon with a lunchstop on Mania island and having numerous dips in the sea. Aitutaki was lovely with such an amazing turqoise blue lagoon!
After our blissful week on Aitutaki we headed back to Rarotonga for one last week of rest and relaxation. This time we stayed in much nicer accommodation at Aremango Guesthouse on Muri Lagoon. One last week of reading, strolls down the beach, trips around the island on the one and only bus (somehow we always got stuck going the long way around), eating steak sandwiches at the Saturday market (our first meat in ages!), a hostel BBQ and lots of rest and relaxation
later brought our 3 week stint on the Cook Islands to an end.
We flew from Rarotonga to Los Angeles for a single whirl wind day with Janelle (our mate we met in Nepal). Thank you J- our 24 hour LA savior! J picked us up from the airport, gave us a driving tour of LA (inadvertantly- so confusing those LA motorways 😊, took us out for frozen yogurt (mmmm!), introduced us to her 10 housemates (don't think I could do it!), took us for the one and only In and Out burger (which Ev loved!) and shuttled us back to LAX the next day for our flight home.
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janelle Jenison
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aww thanks for including me in your lives. I feel privileged that you both stayed intouch. Somethings are just meant to be ;) Like yak rugs in Nepal...