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Published: October 27th 2007
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Cook Islands Welcome!
A bit friendlier than LA! Sorry for the lack of updates but the Internet here isn't the greatest so we decided to wait until we got to New Zeland to upload our photos and post this blog!
Getting out of LAX wasn't the most fun experience in the world! After being searched, searched, and searched again. We had to queue, queue and queue so more. Finally we boarded our Air New Zeland flight to Rarotonga. Ahhh a nice night flight you may think, relax, watch a film, sleep. No. This was 9 hours of hell with uncomfortable seats, terrible food and Kim's exploding nose!
Finally, at 6am, after what we thought was a near death landing in the sea, we landed in Rarotonga. We were greeted at the arrivals terminal by a small man playing a ukilalie who was also the airport PA announcer.
We were upgraded for our first nights accomodation to a beach front unit as our hut wasn't ready. Didn't complain about that one! Our first night in Rarotonga and there was a commotion on the beach. We wondered what it was and then we looked out past the Reef's edge and saw a whale splashing around in the water!
It was an amazing experience and later the whale swam on with a calf by her side. Not bad for our first night eh?!
The island itself is surrounded on most sides by a coral reef which shelters it from the pacific waves and makes for great snorkelling and swimming spots. The inside of this island has several hilly peaks covered with forest. It actually looks alot like the island on Lost!
The main town of Avarua is more of a village than a town. There is a supermarket called Foodland and a few gift shops and cafes etc. I don't think they've heard of vegetarian's out here and our lunch of salad, chips and wedges wasn't the greatest meal in the world! But the fact you're on a sun soaked (most of the time) pacific island more than makes up for this!
We decided to hire some bikes and cycled around the outer road of the island. We stopped off a few places along the way to go swimming and had lunch in Muri lagoon which has some small islands that you can boat out to. The total circuit was 31Km. Kim's legs are still recovering....
The nexy day we had a well deserved rest and just lounged around on the beach! You have to really!
That evening we went to see a traditional island show. There was lots of dancing and drumming, all very entertaining. Afterwards we danced till the wee hours of the morning with our new Kiwi friends Fee and Hannah. We had to save Hannah from a local who, in his own words, wanted to "bonk" her.... Anyway, we had a really good time and nearly missed our ride home!
The day after the weather was beautiful so we decided to go snorkling and made our way down to Muri Lagoon on the bus. Around the lagoon there are 4 small islands which you can swim or catch a boat to. There are restaurants along the beach and the scenery is breathtaking. The water seems really cold when you first step in but once you have been brave and ducked under its actually quite warm! There were loads of fish around, also a large amount of sea cucumbers! Joe got chased by a little yellow and black fish, it was quite amusing to watch! There were also some huge
Catfish and some scary looking long ones that on first glance looked like sticks! After all that excitement we had a bit of a sunbathe and got some food!
We watched the Rugby World cup final at 9am in the morning, and to commiserate Englands heroics we decided it was only fitting to lie on the beach and sun and mourn their loss! All of this lying on the beach and sunbathing does have its downside.... despite coating ourselves in high factor sunscreen we still manager to get burnt! The backpackers we stayed at was on the west of the island which meant on a clear night the sun set's were amazing (check out the pictures!) And it's about this time of night lots of little crabs come to life in the sand and start running all over the place.
And as if we weren't lucky enough to see one Whale, on our second week a huge humpback jumped right out of the water, did a little mid air roll, and splashed back down just past the reef! Unfortunately it caught us by surprise so there are no photos of that one!
Kim managed to catch a
cold in the Cook Islands! So spent 2 days resting up, watching DVD's and laying in a hammock! Joe did another walk up to Raemaru, the hill just behind the hostel. It was only a 45 minutes trek but the top involved rope climbing up some rocks and rather unsafe looking metal rungs stapled into the rocks.
We've been lucky at our Hostel and had a great bunch of people staying with us to hang out with. We also made some friends whilst in our taxi to LAX, Ross and Kay who came to stay at the hostel in our second week. They were on a diving course and we managed to get on their boat while they went diving and went snorkelling outside the lagoon. The water was much warmer in the ocean, 26 degrees! But the swell was huge and Fi (our friend from NZ) was sick over the side. Then a wave came and washed the sick back into the boat....
We all decided to go on the cross island walk. Kim did take some convincing..... The start of the walk isn't so bad and took about an our and a half to get the
"The Needle" which is the peak at the centre of the island. The trek down was somewhat more difficult! Going through quite dense forest, lots of mud and streams to get the the waterfall at the end. Kim thought that it would be more fun to fall over ever 2 minutes and get covered in mud, rather than walk! We then had to get the bus to the hostel. There are 2 buses on the island, clockwise and anti-clockwise. We needed the clockwise bus which would have taken about 10 minutes to get back, but thought the best thing to do would to get on the first one which came along. So just as we sat down on the anti-clockwise bus, the clockwise one turned up. So we had to sit, caked in mud, roasting in an old Chinese bus for 45 minutes until we got back.
To celebrate our walk we thought we'd all go and have some authentic island food. So we went to the Indian. It was a rather tasty indian (and very cheap) and we deserved it after the walk. We had some cocktails in Trader Jacks, which is a really nice bar on the
sea's edge that gets destroyed every few years by a big storm. Kim got hammered and fell asleep on the bus on the way home (as did Ross) getting some funny looks from the other passengers!
Our last day was Gospel Day on the island so eeeverything was closed, and there was hardly any buses, so apart from a walk to the cash machine, we lazed around by the pool and ate pizza! Its a hard life, but someone's got to do it!
Kay and Ross were lovely and stayed up to say goodbye! Lucky them having another week in Paradise hey!
When we arrived at the Airport to sit in the departure lounge and there were chickens walking around and most of it was outside! Only in the Cook Islands. It was still very hot so we were glad of a bit of breeze! The plane landed and they had everyone off and us on within about an hour!
Just arrived in Auckland and its a little chilly! Just like home!
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Griffin (The crazy American from the LA hostel)
non-member comment
Must Be Nice
Hey y'all, It must be nice globe trotting to exotic locations. After I left LA, I had to come back to my real life. It's not so bad, (I get to work in the air conditioning). It looks like too much fun. Enjoy it (And have some fun for me)!. Hope those itouches work in New Zealand. Take care and can't wait to see where you end up next, Griffin