Rarotonga – where life is for living…part 1 of 2

Kia Orana or hello in Maori. Having spent a week in Rarotonga (capital of the Cook Islands), it is understandable in many ways why there are more Cook Islanders in Australia and New Zealand than the Cooks. Consisting of 15 islands (the majority inhabited) and only 20,000 inhabitants it really is a paradise, however given that the main road (and only road) around Rarotonga is only 32km long there is a limited amount to do on such a small but beautiful island.

Arriving at the airport with the “Guitar Guy” playing away (old chap who plays on arrival and departure and has apparently not missed a flight for 20 years), we expected to be greeted by Bill (the guy who ‘runs’ our first hostel). Unfortunately Bill had decided to pick up another English couple but obviously thought it would be best to leave us at the airport. Fortunately for us however, there were a number of people outside to help, one of which was called Steve (or Serena to friends). Built like a brick shit house, he/she offered us a free ride to our hostel, although a very strange situation as he/she acted very femininely yet lacked all of the female ‘bits’ to go with it.

After getting used to our surroundings (noticeably the smelly and bug ridden room) we set off on finding something to eat and maybe a beach. The latter of which made up for our rather grotty room as two minutes down the road, the beach was picture perfect – golden sands, palm tress and clear blue water…bliss. After acclimatising ourselves both with time and temperature over mini golf followed by a cold local beer, we met the favoured English couple Bill had decided to pick up, Rob and Rhea. It was really good getting to finally meet some other travellers, themselves both having arrived from America we arranged a few card games in the evening (I know, exciting aye!) with a few bevvies, however after deciding to ‘rest our eyes’ for 5 minutes, we ended up sleeping for 12…hours and eventually woke up at 7.30 the next morning.

Following a mammoth sleep, we decided to get the ‘clockwise’ bus into town - the choice is pretty simple really, as we were at about 8 o’clock on the Island, and the town is at 1, we chose to go for the clockwise option rather than anti-clockwise. Having decided the previous day that we would hire scooters, we presumed we would just be able to walk in and hire one. No no no, we firstly had to take what they described as a ‘driving test.’ Coming from England that was no driving test, driving around the block and back surprisingly we passed! Following this a brief visit to the police station to get our Cook Island driving license we were on the open road, again, open road being loosely applied as 32km round isn’t too far really.

After a whistle stop visit to the beach so we could test out Soph’s waterproof camera (whilst taking some cool pictures of the fish), we headed back for the night, where we would actually manage to play UNO for the next 3 hours, along with a couple more friends (popular these days).

Having decided before we got to Rarotonga that we would stay in three hostels, each for two nights, the plan was to move to our new one. However, due to rain falling constantly from 4am until 12pm we were in limbo. Having a 4x4 tour of the inner island booked for 1pm we presumed we could leave our bags at our current hostel, however they took exception and I was forced to drive the moped through the intense rainfall while Soph didn’t pull the short straw and got a dry…warm lift with our bags.

The tour lasted for three hours, where we were told about different aspects of the island as well as its interesting history and finished at one of the highest points of the island, overlooking Muri beach, the place where 7 wakas (Canoes) left in search of new land - where they discovered Aotearoa (New Zealand). Our tour guide J was a typical Maori man, built like the side of a house and infatuated with rugby. Something we noticed whilst being on the island was that most men are twice the size of your average Caucasian (not fat…musclely), whilst the woman were all fat - we later found out that 76% of people in Rarotonga are obese (probably 50% of that accounted for by the women).

Following the tour, we head back to our second hostel – Aremango Guesthouse. Far superior to our first hostel, and located a stones throw away from Muri beach (the most picturesque beach on the island), we settled in and met a few of the other people staying there, including a nice Dutch couple and a really nice older Canadian couple – who we kept bumping into during the next few days.