Rarotonga is the largest of the Cook Islands, a nation comprising 15 small islands dispersed over 0.7 million square miles of South Pacific Ocean. Located between Samoa and Tahiti at approximately the same longitude as Hawaii, they are as far south as the Hawaiian Islands are north. Although the largest of the Cook Islands, “Raro” is still relatively small. We hiked across the island in 3.5 hours!
Rarotonga is encircled by white beach and turquoise waters. It’s just the sort of place you might imagine fleeing to explore colder, inhospitable climates. In fact, Maori legends say the explorer Kupe sailed from Rarotonga with a fleet of vakas, or sailing canoes, when he discovered New Zealand. At the time, Polynesian sailors and sailboats were the most advanced in the world.
The Cook Islands continue to have a special relationship with New Zealand. They were once, in fact, part of New Zealand. And today there are more Cook Islanders living in Auckland than the Cook Islands. English and Maori are the official languages.
We stayed in the Pole Cottage overlooking Muri Lagoon on the southeast side of the island. From the back deck we had an excellent view of the motus—little islands—in the lagoon. Closest to us was Taakoka, a volcanic remnant. The others are sandy islets.
The moon waxed during our stay, becoming full on our anniversary. The honeymoon continues. Moonbeams lit up the lagoon and the sea beyond. At night we enjoyed watching the coral reef flatten massive waves that otherwise would have easily washed away our little pole cottage. During high tide an occasional breaker would jump the reef and send a small wave across the lagoon to the shore beneath our feet.
We crossed the date line traveling from New Zealand to the Cook Island. We left Wellington at 7 o’clock Saturday and arrived in Rarotonga 14 hours earlier (3 a.m.). Although technically travelling back in time, we felt much older on arrival.
The sun rose hot the first morning. We stumbled out of bed and down the road past the cow on a leash to the scooter rental shop. The authorities require all drivers, even tourists, to obtain driver’s licenses.
I dropped Hillery off at the Pananga Nui Cultural Market in Averua and then went to the police station to make my license permanent. Can’t wait to whip out my official Cook Islands driver’s license the next time I’m pulled over.
The market was fluttering with locals, tourists, and feral chickens. Hillery bought star fruit, avocados, lemons, limes, and a drinking coconut. Sadly, we couldn’t find fresh mint to make mojitos with the rum we’d bought at the Auckland duty free store.
Mouthwatering smells radiated from food stalls crowded by hungry customers and flies. I had a steak and mushroom sandwich drizzled with hot mayonnaise, which I washed down with a paw paw smoothie. Hillery had ice cream and iced coffee. Later, we had beef kebabs smothered with BBQ sauce.
Polynesian hula dancers swung their hips in the grandstand. Peddlers sold painted textiles, woven carpets, baskets, wood carvings, and black pearls. Hillery bought a pareu—the dress that goes on 100 different ways and falls off all by itself.
The grocery store had no mint, either. Nor did the liquor store or any of the dairies between Averua and Muri Lagoon. In our delirious state, brought on by heat and sleep deprivation, we tried making mojitos with the dried mint and mint extract we bought at the grocery store. Fortunately rum works no matter how poorly mixed and soon we were napping.
We rented kayaks and snorkeling equipment at Captain Tamas’ and explored Muri Lagoon above and beneath the waves. The sea life was beautiful but competed with our desire to lie in the warm sand and dream about our children nagging their grandparents.
Staying on the beach provided not only romantic ambiance but also wonderful entertainment. Our first morning, a Papa Hemingway lookalike—bearded, pot-bellied, bare-chested, sunburned—came wading through the shallows, upended a coral boulder, and caught an octopus by the tail. He savagely beat it on a rock and peeled away its (waxy? greasy? slimy? toxic?) skin and ate it on the spot, shaking on a little Tabasco from the small bottle tucked beneath his swimming trunks waistband.
“Well I’ll be damned,” I said to my wife and drank the rest of my Metamucil.
We also saw a native delivering a bride. He was pushing her along in an outrigger canoe festooned with flowers. At least, we think it was a bride. Cannibalism was only recently outlawed. So it’s possible she was to be served with a side of breadfruit and taro root or maybe fresh octopus. Who knows. She disappeared around the bend and we never saw her again.
A steady stream of stray dogs transited the beach. This bothered me at first. Stray dogs! I’ll probably get rabies on my vacation, I thought. But Raro seems to be home to the world’s most emotionally even-keeled dogs. Dirty muts? Yes. But I did not witness a single neurotic ill-behaved dog. Nor did I witness any annoying territorial fighting or barking.
“When did we get dogs?” I said to Hillery one morning as I crawled down from the loft. She’d invited three very dirty but friendly yellow dogs to keep her company while she read on the deck.
Zoe, who belongs to Gwen, owner of the pole house who lived next door, was a regular visitor. Timid, she preferred to be a shadow than the center of attention. Her intense gaze reminded us of our dog, Mathilda. She followed us whenever we went out for a stroll on the beach, keeping her distance but staying right with us.
Monday we drove a loop around the island, stopping periodically to look for wild mint. We snorkeled at Black Rock and hiked up the hill behind the hospital to see the view from high above.
We hit the mint jackpot at the Maire Nui Garden Center and Café. They were all out of cheesecake, but the proprietor sold us a plastic bag for two dollars and told us we could pick all the mint we wanted. It was backbreaking work but well rewarded.
The rest of Monday is a little hazy, but I know we finally made mojitos and at some point I learned to climb coconut trees.
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Tuesday, Tom Daniel took us on a tour of the Takitumu Conservation Area, two-hundred acres of habitat set aside as a refuge to protect the endangered kakerori flycatcher. Tom was quick with a machete, joke, and story. On our hike we saw the little grey flycatcher and a good number of flying foxes, which are huge fruit eating bats. Tom says the natives hunt and eat the bats in November/December.
A citrus grove lies just outside the conservation area. We picked oranges after our hike. They were juicy and delicious but their peels were rusty brown. “A presentation problem,” said Tom who told us Raro couldn’t sell their oranges to New Zealand until they built a juicing factory on the island. They’ve had trouble finding markets for their limes and avocados, too, which are as big as coconuts.
Wildlife is scant on the island. Indian mynahs, geckos, and skinks are the most common land creatures. Geckos consider fruit or sweets left out as an invitation to come eat. Occasionally we’d hear them creeping around the pole cottage in the middle of the night and on more than one occasion we woke to find bites take out of whatever we’d forgotten to put away: bananas, paw paw, gummy worms.
Surprisingly, we saw no seagulls on the island, although we saw a few shorebirds and reef herons making the rounds in the lagoon. On our cross-island trek we saw tropic birds—terns with long, red tails—taking flight from the stone mountaintops where they must nest. Oh...and this very familiar peahen.
Wednesday we toured Highland Paradise, site of the Tinomana village before the missionaries arrived in the early 1800’s. Rarotonga was home to several tribes, who all lived in the mountains. The missionaries coaxed the tribes to take up residence near the shore and put down their weapons. In the 1980’s, Raymond Pirangi, a descendant of the last Tinomana chief unearthed the village and turned it into a cultural centre to preserve Cook Islands’ history.
“Danny” showed us around the beautiful gardens. We visited the remains of the marae, sat in a typical Tinomana hut, and looked out over the stones laid high on the hillside to teach ancient mariners to navigate by the stars.
Danny also showed us the rock where humans were sacrificed to the gods. The rock was positioned so that blood ran down channels and into the wooden bowl. It was all cheeky fun until Danny reminded us that people really died on this rock. “Ahem! Can I get down, now?”
After the tour we had lunch in the meeting house with Christina and Shane, honeymooners from Sydney who joined us on the tour.
Wednesday afternoon we snorkeled the lagoon on the south side of the island near the Rarotongan Resort. We saw fish of every color and pattern imaginable. Hillery found a spotted moray that by the looks of its thick trunk, seen in a hole about three feet behind its head, could have eaten a canoe for breakfast. We saw giant clams with iridescent blue mouths. Sweep your hands in front of them and they close. We also saw bright blue starfish.
Afterward, we warmed ourselves in the sand and ordered tropical drinks from the bar at the Rarotongan. Now we’re livin’!!!
Toward late afternoon we scootered to the west side of the island, grabbed hot chips and beers at a roadside stand, and ventured out to the beach to watch the sun go down.
That night we were the guests of honor at our own party for two. The moon and stars light up the lagoon giving the impression of some 4th dimension, like daytime in black and white. The bung stayed off the rum long after we’d grown tired of splitting coconuts and grinding mint leaves. We listened to old favorites, talked about old times, and danced. We would have looked like fools if anyone were watching.
May 27. Ten years!!!! One Ph.D., two kids, three moves, five jobs, four houses, four days in the NICU, one internship, one fellowship, two cars, four sailboats, two people, one marriage. Thanks to the countless special people who have enriched our lives, especially those who have given us more than we deserve and more than we could ever repay.
Sadly, we also had one empty bottle of rum and two hangovers. Despite my whining, we left our scooter at the trail’s end on the south side and rode the bus around the island to the trailhead on the north side.
“This is great, Hon!” I said sarcastically as we ambled into the steaming jungle, my head throbbing like a stubbed toe. But as we ascended the narrow ridge to Te Rua Manga (The Needle) so too did my spirits. The views along the way were magnificent! From the top we saw waves lapping the northern and southern shores. Tropic birds soared above the needle. A rooster, of all things, greeted us.
The trail back down took us through a dense jungle forest of rubber and chestnut trees and enormous king ferns. We crisscrossed the Papua stream at least a dozen times, scanning the water for eels and freshwater prawns, before emerging at a lowland fern prairie. The trail empties out on an old dirt road leading through farmland—bananas, citrus, and taro—past the incomplete and deserted Sheraton Resort, and on to the beach, where we’d parked our scooter (under a coconut tree).
After swimming with the fish for an hour or so and drinking a few Coronas on the beach, we decided it was time to clean up and go to dinner. The Flame Tree on Muri Beach turned out to be an excellent choice.
Friday we nosed around Averua looking for souvenirs and gifts. Black pearls are cultured in the Cook Islands and for sale in many of the shops. We picked out a pair for earrings for Hilllery’s mother. Now I know how pearls get sorted.
That night—our last on the island—we returned to Highland Paradise for island night. With about a hundred other guests in the open air dining room overlooking the sea, we enjoyed traditional Polynesian cuisine—fish, breadfruit, coconut, pork, taro, and arrowroot—cooked in traditional underground ovens.
While the staff cleared the dishes Danny gave a pareu demonstration with the help of a lovely island girl. The pareu really looks fabulous 100 different ways.
Polynesian dancing and drumming followed.
Saturday morning, Numar, our Canadian/Cook Islander shuttle driver, picked us up at 3:30 a.m. to take us to the airport. After paying our departure tax, “that’s the tax you pay when you depart,” we rode the time machine back to New Zealand, arriving in Auckland at 8 o’clock Sunday morning. Ron and Ivy met us with big hugs at the airport. And Mia and Sawyer had big hugs when we got home.
The best part about leaving is coming home.
