The day before we left for the Cook Islands was the longest day of the trip so far, or at least that's the way it seemed. Our plane from Bora Bora landed back at Papeete around lunchtime, giving us around 14 waking hours to kill before leaving for Rarotonga at 4am in the morning.
There didn't seem any point in booking any accommodation as we'd have to be up at the airport at 2am to check in, so we dumped our bags at the left luggage counter and caught 'Le Truck' into Papeete. We whiled away the afternoon trailing round the shops, watching the ships and the retired American cruise passengers come and go, and paying several visits to the cheap and blissfully air conditioned Mac Donalds - the only place in Papeete you could buy an affordable cup of coffee.
At 9.30pm we decided to head off up to the airport, even though our flight wasn't due to leave for another 61/2 hours. We jumped back on to 'Le Truck' and just as I was settling into my seat, the girl opposite shouted 'Look out behind you!', I turned around to see one of the most reviled insects in Tahiti heading my way - a huge cockroach, with wings! I was up out of my seat quicker than you could say 'hideous winged beastie' just in time to see it take off and cause everyone sat at the back end of the bus to run screaming in panic to the front. We all sat squeezed together and watched in horror as it batted it's way towards us, finally coming to land on Charlies neck and disappearing inside his T Shirt, only to reappear a few seconds later out of his sleeve. He was remarkably calm about it, casually flicking it off his arm, while the rest of the bus watched in horror. After doing another couple of circuits of the bus, it finally came to land on the back door. One brave passenger got up, strode purposefully down the aisle, and stamped on the cockroach so hare that the back door flew open. A humid rush of night air filled the bus as the driver brought it screeching to a halt. He casually strolled round to the back of the bus to see what all the fuss was about, peered in, took one look at our sheepish faces, and slammed the door shut again. We arrived at the airport without further incident and for the next hour sat nursing two cups of tea while we pondered what we were going to do for the next six hours. After several laps of the terminal with the luggage trolley and countless attempts at sleeping across a row of wooden chairs we finally boarded our Air New Zealand flight to the Cook Islands.
About half an hour into the flight the stewardesses brought round the customs and immigration forms for us to fill in. It was at this stage that I realised that all my meticulous pre trip planning hadn't been quite meticulous enough. In capital letters at the bottom of the form it stated that visitors were allowed a maximum stay of thirty one days. Our return flight was in forty two days, oh dear! Fortunately by this time we were too delirious with sleep deprivation to care. When we landed at Rarotonga airport we were greeted by an old bloke playing island tunes on his ukelele, he interrupted his songs to give instructions to the arriving passengers - 'Non residents queue to the left please' and 'baggage claim through the doors at the back'. In the arrivals hall we were enthusiastically greeted by Ingrid, the owner of Atupa Orchid Units, were we'd be staying for the next few days. She placed wonderfully colourful fragrant leis (flower garlands) round our necks and bundled us into her car to give us an early morning tour of Avarua, the main town on Rarotonga. Back at the Units, we sat on Ingrids' wooden terrace drinking tea and watching the sun come up. We commented on the fact that there were a lot of cockrels on the islands, and she explained that most of them round her house were limping because her husband was such a bad shot with the rifle.
Shortly afterwards we headed into Avarua while Ingrid got the bungalow ready for us. First stop was the post office were we picked up our poste restante and eagerly tore open letters from friends and family back home. I'd received a big envelope from work, full of little chocolate bars that were slightly squashed but tasted great, we'd had nothing to eat for hours.
Over the next few days we began to get a feel for what the Cook Islands were really like. They had so far managed to escape Mac Donalds, Burger King, mobile phones, high rise buildings and the daily rush hour. We basked in the warmth and friendliness of the locals, it was impossible to walk down the street without being smiled and nodded at by the friendly islanders. Their favoured mode of transport was the scooter, usually ridden bare foot and piled high with shopping, chickens and babies.
The few days we'd booked in at Ingrids flew by, when we were getting near the end of our stay she casually approached us one afternoon and told us she was going to have to 'shift' us for our last 2 nights to a shared bungalow. We were a bit annoyed as we'd booked a place to ourselves for the length of our stay. Nevertheless, it worked out in our favour in the end, because if she hadn't 'shifted' us, we'd never have met Frasi. After unpacking all our gear again in the big bungalow next door we cooked ourselves a meal and wondered who our fellow house mate would be. At around 10pm that night we found out, Frasi turned up, small, Swiss, tanned and full of great stories from her travels. She'd arrived in the Cook Islands after crewing on a yacht from Panama, across the Pacific via Ecuador, the Galapagos Islands and Tahiti. She'd previously spent three years cycling round the world, and paid for her adventures by working as a secretary back in her home town of Zurich. Frasi left the next morning to other accommodation on Rarotonga and we headed off to the tattooist in Avarua to get Charlie 'inked up'.
The next day it was our turn to pack up and ship out. We'd rented a house on the coast off an old lady, a few miles out of Avarua. This was when we got our first taste of riding the Cook Islands bus, running once an hour, clockwise or anti-clockwise around the twenty mile coastline of Rarotonga. The bus we needed didn't turn up, so even though the house was only a few miles away we had to ride round the whole island to get to it. But it was really no hardship, with a warm breeze blowing in through the windows, the turquoise lagoon and white sand beaches on one side, and the lush green mountains on the other, tall palms swaying lazily in the breeze, little wooden houses with colourful curtains flapping in the windows, and tanned islanders drinking beer barefoot on their terraces, it certainly beat catching the Number 86 bus into work back in Manchester.
We enjoyed our last few days in Rarotonga, the little house was a real 'home from home' and the old lady who owned it was really sweet, she dropped by for a chat and told us lots of stories about the Cook Islands and the natural plant remedies they used. We bumped into Frasi in Avarua countless times, she was usually loaded up with fresh supplies of paw paws, and reviews of the latest films she'd seen at the tiny cinema.
On the last Sunday we went to church, not because we'd suddenly turned religious, but we'd heard that the church singing in the Cook Islands was really something, and we weren't disappointed. All the locals turned up in their Sunday best, locally woven straw hats and white dresses for the women and colourful island shirts for the men. Most of the service and the songs were in Maori, so we didnt understand much of what was going on, but when they started to sing, all the hairs on my arms stood on end, it was so moving, they really raised the rafters.
It was soon time to leave Rarotonga and explore some of the other Cook Islands, and on our last day we bumped into Frasi again, on the beach. She was leaving the Cook Islands at the end of the week to make her way back to Switzerland via Hawaii, Canada and the USA. We'd be in Hawaii in about a months time for a few days that would coincide with her being there, but as it's such a big place and our travel plans weren't set, we said our goodbyes thinking there wasn't much chance of meeting up again.
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