Rarotonga Kura's Kabanas September 2009

We had this outlook for 9 days, duration chosen for the time it takes us to use a tub of margarine.

The weather was kept so busy constantly changing I felt a bit sorry for it, but generally there was a good warm temperature nevertheless. We soon learned that if there was cloud over the mountains it was going to rain – if there was no cloud over the mountains it was going to be wet.

On some days the humidity was so high that if you took a deep breath you floated to the ceiling. In these conditions it was pretty hard getting to sleep, however both temperature and humidity dropped around 3:00 am. The roosters started crowing at 3:00 am until some time after dawn!

Our shower head had only two nozzles that sent water downwards the rest went upwards and sideways and it was better to shower outside the shower using the water coming over the top. I eventually took the shower head off and stuffed a piece of stag coral into the pipe; that improved things a bit.

Now I don't want this to look negative as we had a great time, the warmth, friendly people, good food, nice scenery and clear water ensured it.

I caught a coconut - they have three eyes but they all face the same way. This design fault leaves them with a very large blind spot. So it is easy. I chose one with a liquid sound inside and husked it on a sharp stick stuck in the ground as I saw locals do many years ago, and put it in our fridge. Later I took it out and went to a handy piece of concrete where I hit the nut around the top in several places again like I had seen locals do. By a stroke of luck the top came off in a neat circle and left me with a perfect and full cup of chilled coconut milk in my hand. I walked back to Catriona as if I did this every day and knew it would work like that. We drank the milk and then chipped out the flesh. She looked impressed at my skill so don’t say anything.

Canoed to one of the outer islands and chose a beach to ourselves for a while then dropped in at a restaurant to make a booking for that night. On the island I made a sailing coracle from a half coconut with a large round dried leaf standing as a sail at one end and a length of coconut frond trailing over the other as a drogue – a bit of coral in the bottom served to not only hold the pieces in place but also as a keel. I named it after the half coconut’s traditional use on the islands. This sailed happily ahead of the wind towards the mainland and then I saw this kid standing on a surfboard a long way off but paddling towards us, I said to Catriona I bet he’s going to destroy that boat. Sure enough he paddled some distance to one side just to hit it with his paddle, aggression ingrained in his nature. The sad loss made me feel a bit like Tom Hanks – “Bra cuup…!!!”

When Sky Pacific was made free for the elderly, cancellations practically ceased and penetration of Sky increased to the point where there are nearly more installations than there are households in the Cook Islands. An interesting statistic has been that many subscribers have completely ceased complaining about program quality.

We bought local food to cook and for some lunches. Pawpaw were $1 each (we were having half of one, a paw, for breakfast each morning). We made our own chutney from pawpaw, onion and tomato with sugar and pepper from the tea stuff. I must say that tree-ripened bananas taste so much better than the gas chamber ripened ones from home.

Went to the Saturday produce and craft market and had chicken and coconut curry on the beach then off to Trader Jacks for some drinks at the harbour entrance. The week after we were to leave there were Island games and sports on Rarotonga. The islands involved - Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, others? take turns in hosting them. Some outrigger canoeists were training for their event and we watched them going out through canoe-swamping waves over the reef.

From the bus we saw the Hilton standing derelict. There were many wings and buildings and they had never been occupied although we were told many had full bathrooms installed. Financial backers pulled out and several other groups have also failed to make a go of it with only the land lease remaining until now when at last the land is reverting and the eyesores dotted around can be demolished. Probably too American too soon, the Rarotongan hotel fits the Island style much better although modern glitz is now arriving. When cycling later we stopped nearby for a snack we carried with us (lunch at the Hilton).

Down the beach from us and just beyond our three islands is a gap in the reef caused by a couple of fresh water streams – coral does not grow in fresh water.

The effect of the gap is to cause a constant one way current past our kabana as the waves that crash over the reef overfill the lagoon and look for somewhere to get out. We were able to canoe against the current for a couple of kilometres and then drift back watching the reef fish around the coral we passed over, closely followed at all times by the dog which had adopted us and was determined to keep us safe, fighting off other dogs which tried to come near ‘our’ island.

Next day we took our snorkels by canoe out to the island where we again had the beach to ourselves. One afternoon I had gone there on my own for a swim and there was a picnic party there with three locals playing ukuleles. I lay some way off and listened to the sound being disturbed by the breeze in the trees and mingling with lapping waves on swishing sand – the melody seemed to fit the situation perfectly in rather the same way bagpipes fit being heard, almost but not quite out of range in drizzly weather. But I digress, the dog followed us and when another chap (a builder from Christchurch) tried to land the dog bravely resisted his landing. Later when Catriona and I left the island we paddled right around it and the dog followed on the shore. When we made off across the open lagoon the dog entered the water and swam in an arc following Catriona’s canoe all the way back to our kabana, about 2 kilometres. Kura our host told us the dog belonged to a neighbouring home. All the dogs in the Cook Islands are registered and neutered and seem to give no trouble, rarely even barking.

I was last in Rarotonga some 30 years ago, things are a bit different. We watched a native cutting coconuts from a palm in one of the resorts – he was wearing a safety harness and special climbing boots and he clipped himself onto the fronds before he did any cutting. Two men protected the base of the tree from people wandering nearby and there were crowd control tapes stopping folk on paths from passing too close – in short OSH has hit the Cooks. I wonder whether the old way of a chap jumping his way up a tree with coconut fibre twisted around his feet and people catching the coconuts he threw down ever caused any injuries? Progress?

Scrabble - over a gin or two C and I scrabbled. Her set is an old one where the tiles are made of wood and you can get away with placing one upside-down and calling it a blank – enough said!

Each bus trip (there are two buses labelled clockwise and anticlockwise) took us past a hardware shop with a sign that read Trader Downs’ Tools. This always made me smile as downing tools seems to be a well-recognised and widely pursued occupation in the Cooks.

Here's a new accommodation development island style.

Went to capital Avarua on the bus and looked over the museum. Then we went inside (that one’s to pre-empt a tongue-in-cheek comment from Earl). There were some bush beer barrels that are hollowed from the bottom of large coconut palm trunks and could hold up to 40 gallons of bush beer. The missionaries to the Cook Islands, unlike in many other pacific islands where kava is still popular, caused drinking kava to be outlawed – “bad mistake missionaries, kava is pretty harmless stuff”. Many locals felt deprived and tried first to ferment spirits but that was stopped also so they went underground. These wooden barrels were hidden in the bush and ‘beer’ was fermented in them to be consumed surreptitiously. The recipe, peel and crush several sacks of oranges, add a little yeast, cover for 2 days then drink. Four days provides a much stronger brew. Oranges it seems turn out the quickest alcohol.

The missionaries succeeded in their main aim, the Cook Islanders took to Christian religion like Moses took to fishing, there are more churches and religious training institutions than you could shake a collection tray at.

The museum also had a bit about each of the other islands in the Cooks. Suwarrow, which was called Suvarov when Tom Neall lived there as a hermit off and on for 25 years, was one of them. We both read his book “An Island to Oneself” some time back and seeing the pictures and an account of him in the museum was fascinating – his is a very readable story about self-reliance and surviving alone. He died in 1977 back on Rarotonga after fulfilling his dreams. He was a Kiwi but the New Zealand Government would not accede to his wish to be dropped on a deserted island and ‘left to die’. The Australian Navy had no such qualms and obliged “what’s another Kiwi more or less?”

Our neighbours in the next kabana Hans and Bridgetta were completing the first 6 months of an 8-month trip around the world from their home in Switzerland. Both had given up their jobs to travel and then a month back a friend of Hans’ had told him of a suitable job back home. They were carrying a small computer and using this with the aid of VOIP with full video he had applied for, been interviewed for and got the job, starting next January. One for technology!

Hired mountain bikes for 24 hours with front baskets for our gear and rode right around the island using many inland roads that wandered up and down through the plains and foothills that abound with farms, market gardens, homes, churches, studios, boat builders, human and vehicle graveyards and other interesting places not seen from the main circular road. Biked to the waterfall which features in all the brochures, it has a lovely swimming hole below it but on the day it did not tempt us. Saw a local who was four axe handles around riding a scooter. It was raining so he had what on him looked like a child's coat that would have been tight around one of his legs draped across his front held in place by the wind pressure and stopping rain hitting him as long as he kept his speed up.

There are a lot of potholes in the inland roads which are mainly gravel. The heavy roading machinery which could fix them is not used very often.

We passed a sign on a 5 wire fence which read “prison, keep out” couldn’t read the other side but I imagine it said, “freedom, stay in”.

Dead people lead very colourful and sheltered lives in Rarotonga.

Biked to the marine reserve with our snorkels. There are plenty of very tame fish, hundreds of them fighting each other to get close to you if you rub your fingers and cause vibrations. We didn’t have fins but they would have been superfluous as we didn’t go to the fish, the fish came to us. In fact the sheer numbers and size of some of them could be a bit daunting as evidenced by a girl snorkelling nearby who began squealing, stood up and moved rapidly backwards. Returning the bikes after about 50 kilometres on them we ran into Auckland folk we knew at Muri beach – amazing how often that happens.

Friday went to the Island night at one of the local resorts. The dancers with men shaking their legs and women shaking their hips were good but a level below the Tahitian dancers we had seen in the past who move more sensually, but what struck me the most was the rhythm of the percussion, hollowed logs, coconuts, drums, and sticks on anything that would make a noise. It looked so random and yet it was so synchronised and had such a well-timed beat and volume that rose and fell that it got the heart racing. I have video of Catriona dancing with the locals available for private viewing.

Rarotonga now charge a departure tax of $55 per person, I think they should make it an arrival tax as the memory of having to fork this out to get away is not a good one. Made worse by the bank at the airport whose predominant job is to collect departure taxes, not accepting credit card payments and not having eftpos. So I had to head off down the road to a hole in the wall.

Overall I think we will happily return one fine day.