The Beautiful Cook Islands

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Kia Orana! (Long may you live)

We arrived in Raratonga on Friday 27th July at 17.30, which was a little confusing as we had departed from Fiji at 12.15pm on Saturday 28th July… Of course, this was explained by the fact that we had passed over the date line thus gaining an extra day! Woohoo!

At the tiny airport we were greeted by a troupe of Polynesian singers, all brightly dressed in “hula” skirts and flower garlands. It was certainly an exciting welcome for us as we located a shuttle bus to take us to our hostel, which was about 15 mins down the coast.

We were immediately struck with how beautiful the island was, quite unlike mainland Fiji which was sadly quite littered and dirty. Raratonga in contrast was clean and lined with attractive hut-like houses and brightly coloured flowers. There were palm trees and banana trees, with volcanic mountains in the middle of the island covered in greenery and small white limestone and coral churches everywhere with many attractive well kept gravestones in the churches yards, as well as in people’s gardens. A quiet road ran all around the edge of the island and took roughly an hour to drive around in a full circle. The Cook Islands are made up of 15 islands (a necklace of precious gems). The Cooks are self governing and have been in free association with New Zealand since 1965. They are famous for their ‘black pearls’.

Our hostel was just off the coast and we were pleasantly surprised to be shown up to a triple room. It was $15 a night, which equates to about £6.

On Saturday we took the 8.30am bus into town where we visited the Punaga Nui Cultural Market. This was a bustling mix of fresh food stalls, pearl and jewellery stalls and colourful flower garlands and fabric stalls. We all bought some chunky shell jewellery and tried a variety of different foods, including fresh coconut milk. Many of the locals were wearing flower “crowns” on their heads, known as an “ei”. They really were very attractive and we were quite tempted to buy one as well!

Unfortunately Bean wasn’t very well on this day, so she decided that she would feel better if she got her ears pierced again… Fee and Bean disappeared into the chemist and came back 10 minutes later each with 2 new piercings to commemorate our trip! (We were going to have a tattoo each although couldn’t quite decided on a design). Anyway, the new earrings looked very pretty!

From town, Fee decided to walk back to our hostel whilst I escorted the poorly Bean back on the bus. During Fee’s walk back she was stopped many times by friendly locals offering her a lift!

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