Rarotonga, Cook Islands

 

When you land in Ports on a cruise, you only ever really get a “glimpse” of the place, in the six hours or so that you are there. Sometimes you get a good enough glimpse to satisfy you, sometimes you have an unexpected great glimpse of it (such as the time we had a few hours left after doing a shore tour in Honolulu, went for a short walk not too far away from the ship – and finished up smack-bang in the middle of Honolulu’s Chinese New Year Parade!!). But this time for us, on the absolutely breathtakingly beautiful island of Rarotonga, we had one of those disappointments that come along every now and then. Such is life!!

We took a morning ship’s tour which took us around the Island. It was a good tour – BUT it travelled mainly over the inner circle road on the island, not the outer one which parallels the beautiful Coastal Lagoon. Hence we saw a lot of banana trees and coconuts – but not too much of the Lagoon. “Never mind”, we thought – when we finish we will find a nice bar/restaurant somewhere on the waterfront and enjoy the rest of the day. BUT – it was Sunday – and on Sunday, the town of Avarua (the largest town on the Island and where the ship docks) is firmly CLOSED FOR BUSINESS!! ….. Yes!Yes! – NOW we know what we SHOULD have done !!! Travelled on the local bus to Muri Lagoon – swum and snorkelled amongst the BIG fish there (have now seen others photos) and had food, wine and maybe song at one of the lovely touristy restaurants in the area (which WERE open for business).

But, in spite of this, we did come away with a good perception of what the Cook Islands are all about – and we very much liked what we saw. We had to do some serious reshuffling of our already long “bucket list” last night!!  It is much cleaner and neater than the ports we visited in Tonga – and a week here with transport (car or scooter) would be very nice indeed.

Early morning arrival to Rarotonga	Tender into the town of Avarua	Cook Islands' welcome
Lots of coconuts – watch where you walk!!	This place looks wealthier than other       Pacific Islands – mind you, this is the Headquarters of a Church	Beautiful singing inside the old Church – unlike anything I have heard before
The lagoon stretches right around the island – except for a few breaks in the reef	A passing parade of boats – while we   wait for the sailaway “party”	AAH! – the last tender returns to the mothership – now we are off to Tahiti!!