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Published: January 9th 2024
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After a quick overnight in Papeete, it was a 2.5 hour flight to the Cook Islands. We spent a week on Rarotonga, the largest of the Cook Islands. It is a beautiful tropical island, almost completely surrounded by the beautiful turquois lagoons. There are about 10,000 people on the island, so has a very rural small town feel to it. Renting a car, it took @40 minutes to drive completely around the island on the only 2 roads.
We spent our first 4 nights at a small guesthouse, and then splurged 2 nights for a beautiful oceanfront room to celebrate New Years Eve. We enjoyed just meandering around the island, stopping at small shops along the way. We watched a lovely older couple attempt to teach 3 Asian women the traditional art of tano(?), basically block printing on the cloth using a paint roller in 3 different colors. Spent Sunday morning enjoying the beautiful music at one of the church services, some snorkeling, although the water was a bit murky, and lots of great seafood! Trader Jack’s right over the water was our favorite place, a very local watering hole, where I think we ate 4 meals! And
gorgeous sunsets~!
Then back to Papeete for another quick overnight and an early morning flight to Nadi on AirCalin a New Caledonian airlines, which was the only direct flight to Nadi, avoiding an extra overnight in Ackland. It is always a little ‘gee, I hope this works’ when you book on the smaller airlines. But, it worked great! Arrived by 11am, picked up our rental car and drove along the coral coast thru beautiful tropical vegetation – variety of various types of palm trees, tall ferns, even pines as we climbed alittle higher, and the gorgeous ocean peeking out at times. Again, very rural with random small block homes, and small fruit stands along the road selling, fabulous pineapples, bananas and papayas. We stayed at Crusoes resort, just randomly picked because it was halfway between Nadi and Pacific Harbor where we had booked 3 nights for our open water dives.
Yep, scuba diving! Never done it, and neither of us are that strong in the water, nor very good snorkelers. But after looking at way too many gorgeous photos of Fiji and listening to Beverly at work describe the process of getting certified at
a local dive shop… we decided to try it. After 4 weeks of adult swim lessons at the Y, practice swims at the gym, we did our 4 pool dive lessons with the concept of doing our open water dives in Fiji! That was the plan. And Ed did great, passing all levels of instruction. But, I could just not get comfortable with the whole concept! Just breathing underwater stressed me. But, I managed to plow thru most of the skills, except I could not clear my mask. And unfortunately, that is one of the skills you will use. Your mask, at times, will have water seep in.
Meeting Manoa at Aquatrek in Pacific Harbor he agreed, let’s do some review in their pool and see how it goes. And he was great! Very, very patient and a great review of the more difficult skills. But, by the end, we agreed, let’s do a discovery dive where he will be right there with us. And it was awesome. Our first dive was from the shoreline, so very easy entry. And the fish were amazing, so many, with such a variety of colors. Manoa is a
Marine biologist, so he was able to identify. For the first time, I understood what people were talking about.
And the 2
nd dive was even more incredible. We had to scissor jump off the boat into deep water with a current, then hold on to the bow line and climb down. The water was pretty choppy, but once down to what we would later learn, 25’, there we were right at a gorgeous coral pinnacle that had just an unbelievable amount of fish swimming all around us. I felt like I was in the middle of an aquarium. Just a kaleidoscope of colors! I hope to buy a pamphlet of all the fish so I can remember what we saw.
I did seriously consider just holding onto the rope and watch all the fish swimming around us. But we both let go and swam around the pinnacles. There was fan coral, brain coral, purple coral, yellow, etc and other types that I can not remember. I have been told, these dives may have spoiled us for future dives! Unfortunately no pics, as we could not get Ed’s phone to work in the
water, plus there was just too much to see!
We are now back at Crusoe’s resort. The snorkeling is here is great, and shallow so at any point you can just stand up. The blue starfish were especially beautiful. Tomorrow we drive back to Nadi for one night and then take the ferries for 12 days in the Yasawa Islands, hoping to do some more exploratory or ‘assisted’ dives! The weather has been hot, and although we are here in the rainy seasons, the rains are only late afternoon, so doesn’t interfere with what we are doing, and does help to cool it down abit.
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Joyce Barthold
non-member comment
Scuba????
Wow! I am really impressed with your scuba adventure. Good for you!!! Happy New Year!!! Doing ok here.