What a beautiful place! Although we did not see any of the other islands of Cook Islands, we absolutely loved Rarotonga. We had a great place to stay with a very friendly couple, serving a magnificent breakfast every day, including great German salami, ham, chicken salad but also curry and rice, and – requested especially by the boys – fresh green coconut! We also got great tips where to snorkel, hike, and buy things so we had a busy time during our stay. The only drawback were the very noisy chickens and roosters, that did not really know that the day actually only started at 5am and not at 2 at night… on the flip side, the boys loved chasing the chickens around and gave some of them almost heart attacks…

One of our highlights in Rarotonga was the cross-island hike. After a week of some rain every day, we decided to at least tackle the ascent to the ‘needle’ on our second to last day on the island, after a full day of no rain. We had been told that it gets very slippery, when the tracks get wet, so we decided it is now or never. The way up was steep but beautiful along a ridge in the jungle and the boys walked easily up the steep incline. Sharing the top with a rooster, we made up our mind to continue onwards as we thought it might not be as steep a descent (haha!). Our decision was rewarded with a great view of the needle, over the island, towards the lagoon, reef, and open ocean and to top it all, with a rainbow across it all. The descent was steep indeed as well, but besides a few slips here and there we reached the river as per description alright. A while later, we encountered a few slightly tricky river crossings, and finally, were caught in the tropical rain. The reward for the successful hike was a bath in the pleasantly cool water of the waterfall at the other end of the island – unfortunately the mosquitoes also seem to like that place. We walked the last bit to the bus stop and were in time to reach the last round island bus of the day – being scolded for the mud all over us by the driver. A taxi took us back to our car for the last bit and we stopped for the deserved pizza at the night marked in Muri before reaching home, tired, but satisfied with the day.

We spent the days at the beach, snorkeling all the way over to the little island in the Muri lagoon, looking at some big and large schools of fish in the different lagoons, playing along the beach, finding shells and coral and visiting most of the sights around the island. We did not manage to go for a fishing trip in the lagoon as it was too windy on the first day and on the second day, captain Moko had disappeared from his shack at the mooring. Well – this is island time, after all, if not today, then tomorrow (or never)…

Although we had already given up on going to one of the island nights due to the rather high prices, I managed to win us a ticket at the Saturday market Polynesian dance contest… participation was not really voluntary as I was pretty much dragged on stage – much to Dylan’s chagrin who for some reason does not like to see me dance – but must have done the hip swinging right… so we ended up going to a rather entertaining and educating show at Highland Paradise, where we also got a chance to walk around on an ancient and authentic Marae, a sacred site.

Our last day was spent with making sarongs in the creative center, a daycare place for the elderly and disabled and Kenny even got to spontaneously print his white shirt as well in rainbow colours; buying black pearls and a lunch of slightly warm oysters at Trader Jack. Luckily, none of us got sick… 🙂

Next day, we were driven to the airport by the customs offices (who happened to be our host) and off we were to our next destination – French Polynesia.