Cook Islands - Honeymoon

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Rarotonga
After a hectic week leading up to the wedding, the wonderful wedding day then saying our goodbyes to family and friends, we were finally off to the Cook Islands for 12 full days to relax and soak it all in. To get to the Cooks we had to stop over in Auckland and take a connecting flight over to Rarotonga, a little bit of a mission but we have done much worse and it's the places that require a little more effort to get to usually turn out to be better with less tourists and from our experiences in the past - better diving with more fishies to ourselves! So after an exhausting couple of transfers we arrive close to midnight in the cosy little airport of Rarotonga, The Cook Islands Capital. Straight to the duty free of course to stock up on spirits and tobacco (Sam could only purchase some local baccy – no Drum in the Cooks) after that we got layed (even at midnight) and hopped onto our taxi bus to be taken to our little shack right on the beach. We decided to stay on the East side of the island in Muri. The whole island is only about 32km around and the buses of course run in both directions so getting to other places we knew would be easy! The good thing about arriving somewhere at night time is the surprise you get in the morning. We awoke to a beautiful view of the lagoon right outside our balcony and only meters to the beach….stellar!! First day we decided to catch a bus into town to get supplies, as we were staying in a fully self contained bungalow we could cook most of our meals ourselves. Avarua on the North side of the island is where the hub of all the shopping is – it was like being in Queenstown again with all the familiar NZ goodies. We walked down the beach to one of the local restaurants the first night for dinner and drinks, the good thing about a small island if you are in the right location is you don’t usually have to walk too far for food and drinkies. We set off to go snorkelling at the Fruits of Rarotonga and also the lagoon area just outside the flashy resort The Rarotongan where we were told it was some of the best on the island. This particular beach outside the resort we practically had all by ourselves and the snorkelling pretty great too. Unfortunately though, our sunshine days were nearly over. We hired a funky little red car (no air-con of course) for three days which came with the package of our accomo and got around the whole island, exploring what was about. One place we did manage to get to was the jail, from memory I think it housed about 50-60 inmates and when we arrived to have a look at the inmates craft shop where they make ukuleles and sell them to the public, they were just walking around the place like visitors themselves. I guess apart from the crazy heat they would have to endure in the tin roofed prison, life seemed pretty laxed there. We were lucky enough to have 3 full lovely days of sun before the clouds came over and it rained on our parade. The remaining four days we had on the island we didn’t get any more sunshine but it’s the risk you take on any holiday – you just can’t plan the weather! Sam’s brother Steve and his partner Lucy bought us a double dive for our wedding present – lucky us! So we headed out with the lads at Dive Rarotonga and unfortunately for me, the waves out there were fairly rough and the surge was unlike any we had experienced. I didn’t take my sea sickness tablets early enough and felt rotten as soon as we headed out there. Once in the water I wasn’t too bad but that was it for me – I couldn’t make the second dive, I passed out in the car back in the marina and Sam went out on his own with the crew. The vis was pretty good but the surge was hectic, probably the worst we have ever encountered I reckon.

During the not so great weather we still got around the island a bit, ventured up to Papua (Wigmore's) Waterfall where we came upon a waterfall with no water!?! I guess they just hadn't got enough rain at that point (to us it felt like it just wouldn't cease). And of course followed Happy Hour up and down the beach of an afternoon. One of the last nights in town we lashed out and went to the over water night show and buffet dinner at the Te Vara Nui village where we stuffed ourselves silly at the buff and were entertained by traditional dancing and fire shows of the Cook Island Maori. Pretty good show I thought, Sam not too impressed when one of the girls pulled him up to have a dance - not a fan of that the big sook, ha!

Aitutaki
After 7 days on the capital island we packed up ready to head North to the lovely little honeymoon island of Aitutaki which is only an hour away by plane. We boarded the smallest plane (apart from the one we jumped out of in South Africa) on earth with only about 15 seats in the whole damn thing and set off with high hopes of flying into bright blue sunny skies. Being a Sunday we found out upon landing that the locals were not too happy with flights operating on the day of rest and were greeted by a bunch of protestors on the way out of the airport. They have apparently been protesting this for many years now - kind of strange it being their day of rest and they waste their whole day sitting there with their signs and plackards.....bless.

We were picked up at the airport (layed again!) and upon arriving at our little beach bungalow on the North West side of the island at Paradise Cove, given a coconut to drink. The weather was not the best when we got there, kind of spurts of sun here and there but at least it wasn't raining too much. Our bungalow was awesome, right on the beach again and only about $130NZ a night. We had some good snorkelling right out the front an were constantly surrounded by many chickens and roosters with their wake up calls, a strange sight to see on the beach I must say. We were lucky enough to also see a couple of whales breach out of the water right from our balcony - I really got to test the digital zoom on the camera then. Being a Sunday also meant not much open, it was Sam's 31st birthday so we were lucky to at least find one restaurant open not far from where we were staying and had a very yummy (but expensive) lunch. We headed back there for dinner the same night but unfortunately they couldn't be bothered serving us so we never went back there again and had jam sandwiches for dinner which we managed to tax from the communal fridge where we were staying - It wasn't someone elses food it was the owners so we didn't feel too bad, Happy Birthday Sam! He still holds a grudge and brings that night up whenever someone asks us how our honeymoon was.

The islands vast lagoon is only 45km around the island and on our second full day we hired a scooter to get around and have a look at what was on offer. Having a scooter made it super handy to pick up groceries and drinks, there wasn't a lot of choice when it came to food and surprisingly the fruit and veg didn't look appealing at all but we found beer and wine that we both liked so all good!

There was only two dive centres on the whole island so we just went with the one that had the best reviews. The vis was amazing, about 35m and no one else out there. We did a double tank dive - pretty expensive (about $90 NZ per dive) compared to our Asian adventures so we were glad that they turned out to be really good. The unicorn fish was a new species we hadn't come across before and we were lucky enough to finally get a few photos of some white tip reef sharks and swim with some magnificent turtles (just never get sick of seeing turtles). Those two dives really made our trip, it's what we base our sunny getaways on so if the diving isn't great it's hard for us to shake that letdown feeling and this was something we didn't want on our honeymoon of all times.

Our last day we did a lagoon cruise with Bishops Cruises where they took us on a bit of an island hopping expedition across the lagoon to a number of different places to go snorkelling and soak in the sun. We stopped for a beautiful BBQ lunch at One Foot Island, the home of the world's smallest post office, yep - check out the pic below, not sure how long the post will take to get to it's destination but its fully functional - classic! You can also get your passport stamped there too which we did of course.

In all The Cook Islands were lovely and relaxing but if the weather is poor you can get a bit stuck for things to do like on any tropical island, this put a bit of a dampner on our stay there at times, the diving in Aitutaki made up for this of course and the great little shacks we got to stay in. You just have to make the most of what you have - still, just being away on holidays regardless is a good thing and we have now ticked off another tropical little destination off our list. I hear Malaysia calling again.......

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Photos

Aitutaki - Para - Para - Paradise
This is the island they shot Survivor on