19th October 2009
Flying into Rarotonga at 5.30am, we saw a glorious dawn breaking over the horizon as we dipped below the fluffy clounds into Avarua (the main township). The airport hadn’t changed much in the 10 years since I last visited, you still pretty much land outside the terminal building and there was still a man with a guitar singing to welcome you and you still got garlands of flowers on arrival.
However, on the drive from the airport I noticed a lot more buildings had gone up, especially along the beach front, which is a shame because it limits the places where you can just pull off the road and cross a short grassy area and be on the beach, but I guess that’s progress. There also seems to be more tourist accommodation, tours and tourists which is good for the Island’s economy but still makes me appreciate how it was 10 years ago much more, and glad that I had seen it like that.
After a 9 hour flight with very little sleep, we were glad to get to our accommodation, Rau’s Guesthouse, which is across the road from the beach and get our heads down for a couple of hours.
After a swift (and quite cool) shower - it seems the water heats up during the day, so hot showers in the evening only, we decided it would be a good idea to get ourselves mobile. In the Cooks, you have to have a Cook Island’s licence to drive any hire vehicle, car or scooter, so we caught the anticlockwise bus (there’s also a clockwise one) to the Police Station in Avarua. Since our UK license for some reason doesn’t show that we can drive scooters, we had to take a test which consisted of weaving in and out of some cones, round the give way sign at the bottom and back to the police officer. We both passed and (after about 2 hours) came away with our licences and a scooter between us.
We scootered over to Fruits of Rarotonga for a toasted sandwich and fruit smoothie for lunch, before heading back to the guest house and over to the beach to read for a while. The weather has been a little overcast at times today and there is a cooling onshore breeze, but it’s still very pleasant, without the outrageous temparatures we were experiencing in the States.
