Dodgy as a Three Dollar Note

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We spent a week on Rarotonga at the Pacific Resort on Muri Beach at the east end of the island.

After the drizzle and cool of Aitutaki, we were a bit disappointed that it didn't seem much better there. It struggled to get out of the high teens, and was definitely too cool for swimming. Ah well we thought, Western Samoa is a lot further north; it'll be warmer when we get there in a week's time. The very amateur photographer in me was keen to get some snaps of the sunset. All was going to plan until I realised we were at the wrong end of the island for that. No matter, I thought, surely sunrises would be just as good, so I got up just before dawn one morning and made my way down to the beach in the pitch blackness. It was more than a bit cool, and also a tad breezy, so I crawled under an overturned boat to try to keep warm while I waited for a spectacular red ball to make its appearance. I now know why photographers take pictures of sunsets and not sunrises, and it's not just because the latter tend to happen when everyone should still be tucked up in bed. It's because sunsets are worth photographing, and sunrises generally aren't. Perhaps unsurprisingly I didn't try again.

Whilst it was too cool to swim, we did spend time lying on the beach trying to extract some warmth out of the sun's rays. The fine sand beach was excellent, with a view enhanced by some small jungle clad islands just offshore inside the reef. We discovered that sleeping on the beach whilst keeping half an eye on a wandering toddler was no easy task. We took it in shifts. We learnt many things in the early years of parenthood, and one of the first among them was that our toddler didn't seem to have inherited his parents' shyness. We glanced away for a few seconds one day and when we looked around we were horrified to discover that Scott had decided to befriend a young bikini clad maiden lying peacefully on the sand a short distance along from us. That might have been alright, except that his idea of befriending was to sit himself unannounced on her back. Interesting pick-up move, and not one that I'd ever thought to try. I don't think we went as far as trying to pretend he belonged to someone else, but I am fairly sure we retreated to our room shortly thereafter to avoid the possibility of further embarrassment.

We made good use of the local bus that did regular laps of the island to make some trips into the capital, Avarua. We had a couple of longish lunches at an establishment called Trader Jacks where we were told we should keep an eye out for whales frolicking offshore. This was undoubtedly a good sales pitch. I think we spent so long staring at the waves that we probably came close to convincing ourselves that we had actually seen one of these creatures. I now struggle to remember what I had for breakfast, so I've got no idea how I recall the name Trader Jacks, or indeed that tracks from a CD by The Mommas and The Pappas blared constantly from its speakers.

The resort provided a baby sitter, Manasi, who adored Scott and vice versa, so we were able to enjoy nightly meals at some of the many restaurants scattered around the island. This also provided some well earned respite from the rigours of constant toddler monitoring.

I was determined to hike across the island to get a closer view of the spectacular rock spires near its centre. I joined a group with a local guide named Pa Teuruaa. He was, and apparently still is, a local legend, and I think it might have been him or someone who looked a lot like him who I watched demonstrate the not too subtle art of palm tree climbing when I'd been there a decade earlier. He made it look so easy - he was up and down with coconuts in hand in less than a minute. The Google machine tells me that Pa is now in his mid-seventies and is still taking tourists on nature walks. He was still doing the "challenging" cross island treks up until 2016, but now leaves these to his nephew. I was hoping he might have taken us to the top of one of the spires, but when we got closer it became clear that this was a task reserved for those equipped with ropes and crampons. We did however get to the bases of some of them and they did indeed look very impressive from close-up.

Now I'm sure most people are familiar with the phrase "dodgy as a three dollar note". Well not here in the Cook Islands, or at least not at that time. I got one as change one day. I only realised later, and assumed it was a fake. I wasn't particularly enthused about the notion of getting locked up for trying to pass counterfeit currency, but I seemingly had no issues getting it accepted. We didn't hire a car on this trip, but the three dollar note reminded me of one of the other local quirks - the local driver's licences. They don't accept International Driver's Licences in the Cooks. You wouldn't catch me dead on one now, but when I was there a decade earlier I decided to hire a motor bike to get myself around on. I'd never ridden one before, and haven't since. I collected it from the hire shop, where I was told that I now needed to go to the police station next door to get my licence. A very serious looking young constable then followed me as I drove a few hundred metres up the road and back to the station. I was advised that I'd passed the practical test, but that I now also needed to pass a "rigorous" test of my knowledge of the local road rules. There was an awkward silence as he seemed to be struggling to come up with any questions, so I thought I'd take the initiative and kick things off. I told him that from what I'd observed, I should probably drive on the left hand side of the road. He nodded knowingly, and told me that I had now also passed the road rules test. I handed over ten dollars, and was given my licence. I remember the date - it was the 29th June. Why do I remember? Well his closing comment to me was that all Cook Islands licences expire on 30th June, and if I wanted to keep driving after that date I would need to come back before they closed the next day and fork out another ten dollars for a new one.....

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[D MJ Binkley]

Raratonga
When I was there in 1980 I went scuba diving and enjoyed riding a bike on the circle road around the island.