Advertisement
Published: June 27th 2008
Edit Blog Post
Don’t you just love the South Pacific?! I think out of all the places that I’ve visited on my travels; the islands of the South Pacific are what have surpassed my expectations again and again. Flew on Monday to Rarotonga (in the Cook Islands, and yes I know that I’ve been here already!) and have to say that flying from NZ makes much more sense than when I flew from Sydney last time, but the crossing the date line thing still freaks me out a little bit! The plane journey was fine and I was very excited to be able to watch the film of ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’ and whilst I enjoyed it, I found that it was a poor second to the book (which has to be one of the favourite books I’ve read whilst away, and I’ve read a lot of books!). Anyhow, I digress - so landed in Rarotonga and this time didn’t fly onto Aitutaki, probably just as well as there was going to be a protest at the airport for the flight to Aitutaki as the Cook Islands people don’t want a Sunday service - they’re pretty religious out here. Took a cab to my
hotel - Muri Beach Club Hotel - and its lovely, the beach is right outside of my window and I had a much needed ‘splash’ in the pool before getting ready for dinner. There seems to be more choice of places to eat (and drink?!) around Muri beach, so am planning on sampling more than the hotel restaurant’s cuisine... But not the first night, little steps and all that. Actually that statement ended up being false, as I found the ‘problem’ of the hotel that I am staying at - their restaurant is totally devoid of atmosphere and doesn’t create any ambience that a girl eating on her own would want to partake in. So after a couple of G’n’T’s at the hotel bar, I asked for their recommendations for somewhere to eat and duly headed off along the beach to Sails restaurant. This was much better and had a lovely meal (fish - gawd how much do I appreciate eating fresh fish!) and a few glasses of vino and then just because a glass of port (which reminded me of Christmas, as it always does).
The sunshine on Monday morning was glorious and so after the ‘complimentary’ breakfast,
I headed to the beach. Muri Beach is a public beach and the nearest car park seems to be the rugby pitch that is next to my hotel (I swear I’m not joking!), so whereas in Aitutaki I felt like I was intruding on people’s honeymoons, here there is a much broader mix and also a few kiddies running around too. Felt so good to lie in the sunshine after the cold temperatures of NZ, and managed to devour a book in a day too (the new one by the ‘Devil Wears Prada’ author, which is ok but a bit trashy). Had a mini-explore later in the afternoon down the road to the local shops and then did a few lengths in the swimming pool - well, got to work up an appetite somehow given that I did sweet FA all day... Went on an explore to find a restaurant that was busy (enough) to hide a ‘table for one’ and after finding somewhere that had the most amazing menu (Pan-Asian stuff at ‘The Flame Tree’) however they unfortunately had barely 5 people in the whole restaurant so I headed off to Sails again for a repeat of the previous
night (fish, vino and a glass of port!).
Tuesday was pretty much a repeat of Monday - laying in the sun, devouring a whole book (this time the new one by Khaled Hosseini - the Kite Runner author - and the book was fab), and a splash in the pool too for good measure. Decided that there was no way that I could eat at Sails for three nights in a row, so asked reception to recommend somewhere ‘busy’ and so off to Tamarind I headed. The food was delicious and the place had a good feel to it - always nice to eat with the sea making those reassuring noises next to you. Also saw three little dots of light in the water, which I was told was people out in the water with torches looking for crayfish!
As much as I am trying not to gloat, but Wednesday was yet another amazing day full of sunshine and warmth. After giggling to myself en route to breakfast at all the people doing water aerobics (with more concentration and respect for their teacher than we had in Goa, Verity & Kirst!), I proceed to spend my day in
much the same fashion as the previous days. Although this time I ventured into the sea too and it wasn’t that cold, but disappointingly didn’t see any fish - not like I did in Aitutaki and Fiji anyway. The water is crystal clear, if that’s not too much of a cliché, and the lagoon of Muri Beach has pure white sand (derived from coral) on the bottom of it and hardly any rocks at all - although in typical style for me, I managed to get spooked/panicked/freaked out by a piece of abandoned rope that had been discarded on the bottom of the sea! Needless to say later that evening I headed back to Sails for another yummy supper, and then it was bed (via watching ‘Pride and Prejudice’ which I found playing on one of the three channels that my hotel TV has).
I promise that I tried on Thursday to do something more than the usual routine of sunbathing and reading (am now being intellectual and reading ‘Anna Karenina’, which is getting better by every page); unfortunately circumstances conspired against me as the catamaran trip that I wanted to take during the afternoon was cancelled due to ‘lack of interest’ or some equally vague excuse. No matter, as I was quite happy dozing/doing not much at all in the sunshine on the beach. By pure coincidence, the band that I had previously encountered on my 7 hour ‘break’ in Rarotonga en route back from Aitutaki (on my first visit to the Cook Islands) was playing again at the same bar by the airport - Nu Bar - so back I headed and was pleased that people remembered me (thankfully in not the same infamous way that people remembered me in Christchurch from the Auckland test!). Then before I knew it, it was on the lovely 3am flight to Christchurch and a day of avoiding the rain, doing laundry and not much else.
Seems very exciting and just a little bit weird to think that I’m going to be back in London in 4 days...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.078s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 8; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0534s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb