Exploring Rarotonga

Wednesday 20 December

We did wake up this morning in time for breakfast, after about eleven hours sleep. We had got up once in the night to sort out the coloured lights flashing around the room – the DVD player flashed green with “no disk” and the air conditioning flashed green or red or both at the same time. Colin soon managed to sort it - what a star! – and then we crashed out again.

Breakfast is continental style with lots of different fruits from paw paw, passion fruit and fresh coconut, to the more normal melons, grapes, pineapples and bananas. There are lots of different breads and cakes, with spreads, to choose from, and a wide range of juices, teas, coffees or chocolate to drink.

The sky was quite cloudy this morning with even a few spots of rain, so we decided to take the local bus to town, but while we were gathering our things together (lucky we were in our room), the phone rang and it was Juz and Co – they had realized that our mobiles and email were not going to connect here and tracked down our hotel and our room. For the first five minutes we couldn’t get a word in as those back home were obviously still celebrating and having a good time. We eventually managed to impart news of our travels between garbled conversations from the other end. It was lovely to hear them all, and such a surprise.

We reached reception just in time for the 10.00 clockwise bus – one bus travels round the coast road clockwise and another anticlockwise. There is only one main road on the island hugging the coast, with a few short turnings off that are unmade and lead to the few remote houses in the hills. The total circumference of the island is 31 kms, and we are nearly half way round, anticlockwise from the airport and town. The bus took us on the route we had traveled in the dark last night, making several stops as people hailed the bus from the sidewalk. The journey into town takes about twenty five minutes

The centre of Rarotonga island is made up of several peaks between 500 and 650 metres high, all covered in tropical rain forest. There are three or four walking trails to some of the peaks following the courses of small rivers and streams, but mostly it is uninhabited and no roads. When we set off today, it was still overcast, but warm, although low threatening dark clouds hid the uppermost parts of the peaks. By the time we reached Avarua, the main town, the sun had come out, the low clouds disappeared and it was “hot”.

We knew we were at “Cook’s Point”, the centre of town, because everyone else got off the bus. Before we left the hotel, we saw a man on the hotel internet (how come the IT man didn’t mention this when we asked about connecting the Thai Shite to a ‘hotspot’?) and he told us that there were “internet cafes” in town that were much cheaper than using the hotel computers. So one of our first missions was to find a “café” and check and send emails. The main disadvantage of this is that I cannot publish the blog, so the entries are mounting up.

Avarua is definitely a town for tourists – one large department store, selling everything from sofas, to camping equipment, and DVDs, toys and kitchen appliances (Juz will be interested to know that the only electrical brand here is Fischer Pykel – although I didn’t see her “wish for” dishwasher on view), and lots of clothes, jewellery shops – everything is either mother of pearl or black pearls here – and cafes. We spied a large supermarket from the bus on our way in, but apart from that, there is very little in the way of foodstuffs, or everyday household items on sale – has the one supermarket got the monopoly for these goods? Most of the shops are spread out along the esplanade – and we mean spread out – there is one terraced row, of about a dozen shops but the rest are built higgledy piggledy along THE road or around Cooks Point. There are a few turnings, a couple of hundred metres long at the most, with a few more shops and cafes hidden behind foliage, but I would not want to come here to do my Christmas shopping! Having said that, the department store had Christmas carols blaring out from a hi-fi sharing a small tent with a camping equipment display, outside on the pavement, and garlands of tinsel on some displays.

We found a internet site in the post office and bought a ticket with the necessary code. It enabled us to read and send a couple of emails – although at one point, whilst composing an email, it froze and we had to change machines and start again. But at least it means that we can keep in touch. From here we explored the rest of the town, found a book shop (might need that before we leave) as well as a couple of interesting cafes. We stopped for pizza for lunch, which took about 45 minutes to arrive – (was the chef making it from scratch or is this just another example of people working to “Island time” (when? – who cares!?)

We caught the 15.00 bus back to the hotel and read and blogged for a while, before changing for drinks and dinner (no need really, but it revives you from a lethargic state, ready to face making a choice of what to eat from the menu). One of the “chef’s specials” tonight was sirloin steak, but served with paw paw (which I am not keen on – it tastes very perfumy to me), so I chose a rib eye steak instead. Colin had game fish – a very dense white meat fish – much more so than tuna– you needed a steak knife to slice it through – but which was very tasty. As you had barramundi in Australia, almost to the exclusion of other fish, here it is game fish - they eat it in salads, batter it for ‘classic fish and chips’, grill it, or even casserole it in a sauce – very versatile.

The Cook Islands is very similar to what Koh Samui must have been like ten or more years ago – which surprised us as the advertising portrays a glittering, modern island of paradise. The people are extremely laid back and friendly and the atmosphere is great, but the infrastructure is undeveloped and tatty, out of the 1950’s. Having said that, now we are getting used to it, it is very relaxing, and I can see we will be spending our days as we did at Smile, doing nothing much at all.