Advertisement
Published: April 12th 2009
arrival in Rarotonga
Even at 1am we were greeted in traditional style 11th April
It’s Tuesday 7th for the second time this week; this time in Rarotonga, the largest of the Cook Islands. We arrived to a warm welcome - flower eis draped around us and a ukulele playing even though it was 1a.m. and very humid temperatures. We awoke later to see a magical turquoise lagoon and white sandy beach at our door. We swam, snorkelled and kayaked around the lagoon for most of the day with a bit of laying on sun beds thrown in too. You can see the edge of the lagoon where the big ocean waves break on the coral reef leaving the inner lagoon perfectly smooth! Idyllic! The contrast between the deep blue of the sea and the turquoise of the lagoon and the white coral sandy beaches will be difficult to reproduce in our photos.
We had dinner on the beach with the lagoon and coconut palms as background. The island bus service is interesting - there are 2 routes; clockwise and anticlockwise and they each take an hour to circumnavigate the whole island, so if you miss one bus - just go the other way around! We are about 20 mins around one way.
Rarotonga Miro Beach
the view of our resort from the mountain We went on a day trip to another of the Cook islands - Aitutui. It’s a 40 minute flight away, about 150K. We had a fabulous day on a motor powered catamaran skippered by the mayor! It is an atoll, a large turquoise lagoon with 16 tiny islands around the edges and stunningly beautiful. We snorkelled and saw giant clams, corals and fish of many colours who came to nibble at us to see if we were a large food source. It was a lovely day, we had a BBQ lunch of fish on the edges of the islands used for the Castaway TV series. We stopped at One Foot Island where you can get your passports stamped{if only we had known} with a stamp the shape of a foot. Too much snorkelling meant lots of us got a bit sunburned on the backs of our legs- the price you pay in paradise.
We’ve been to fun Island nights eating food cooked in a beach dug cavity an umu. The local dance team came to entertain us with Cook island dances. Grass skirts and coconut bikini tops for the girls and grass skirts and feather headdresses for the boys. Their
Aitutaki
looking from the air at the island hips and knees never stopped wiggling!
It’s been 5 days of luxury and lazy relaxation, but it’s over and we are now ready to go and see Dan and stay in his little cottage on Venice Beach, California, so you can’t feel too sorry for us having to leave here!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.134s; Tpl: 0.037s; cc: 11; qc: 47; dbt: 0.055s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
jean
non-member comment
Rarotonga
RESULT!