raratonga - GORGEOUS. raratonga is the only cook island of any significant size/population, and look pretty much identical to the island in lost, ie big jagged mountains and dense jungle surrounded by white sandy beaches. mmm. lonely planet even listed the black rock as the main sightseeing destination, although unlike in lost it was actually just a big, black, rock. the other main tourist hotspot was 7 palm trees growing, as if by magic, in a circle. although we were quite disappointed when we got there to discover one had been cut down, so there were in fact only 6 palm trees in a circle. nightmare. so we arrived in raratonga in the afternoon, again with nowhere to stay, but again found somewhere really easily via a slightly crazy kiwi lady at the airport, who took us to a pretty awesome hostel about 20 mins walk from the main town of avarua. decided the best way to get involved in the island culture was to find a bar, so we went straight to whatever bar &grill and ordered what we thought was a standard beer, although somewhat embarressingly it turned out that we had bought a "stubbie" and that a standard beer was in fact a 660ml job called king kahuna. not wanting to lose face we got involved with king kahuna and the mini burger (actually a massive burger) and had an awesome time talking to random people, and an even better time sitting in silence trying to figure out who all the songs that came on were by.

the next day we cleverly declined the offer of an early lift into town, possibly due to us being slightly hungover, and eventually staggered into avarua around midday to try and sort out some scooters to get around the island. obviously by this time all the scooters had been hired out, which left us in a bit of a pickle, although eventually we managed to rent a ridiculous banged up suzuki jeep to cruise around in. this turned out to be the best thing ever however, and we had an immense time cruising round the island stopping off at random beaches and stuff. there's only one proper road that runs round the circumference of the island, bout 35km, so basically saw everything in a day. cant remember what happened that night really, probably had some beer and went to bed. didn't get much sleep though due to some genius keeping loads of chickens outside our window, so as soon as the sun even hinted at rising we got woken up by c*** A DOODLE DOO every five bloody minutes. livid.

anyway pretty much the only other thing to do on raratonga other than drinking and sitting on beaches is to to some hiking, so having accomplished the first two already we decided to take on the cross island trail. lonely planet claimed it was a pretty demanding 6 hour slog across the island and that you should leave early in case u got lost. naturally we assumed that this advice was for girls and that it would be far too easy, so we set off in the blazing midday sun armed with a compass, a few bottles of water and vast quantities of jelly beans. the walk we were doing was meant to rise pretty steeply up to a peak called the needle, then descend gradually down to the south coast. made storming progress and made it to the needle in record time, although we decided against going all the way to the top as it involved climbing up a bare rock race with nothing but a rusty chain seperating you from a sheer drop down a cliff face. got some awesome views tho, and had just stopped for a bit of lunch at the top when a bloody cockerel came strutting out of the jungle which had either followed us from the hostel or was some new breed of mountain chicken. either way it almost got booted off the cliff after last night's antics, but luckliy flew away in time.

we were now faced with a conundrum however, as it wasn't entirley clear which way to go, and someone had unhelpfully removed the "way home/certain death" signs from the junction. luckily we had the compass though, and using a combination of this and our male intuition we headed down which literally had to be the right path. we became slightly doubtful of this judgement about half an hour later when instead of the long slippery descent promised by lonely planet, we were halfway up a near vertical climb which seemed to be getting steeper by the minute. by the time we realised we had definately gone the wrong way however, going back was pretty much out of the question as it was far too steep, so the only option really was to back ourselves and keep climbing. at least we were going in the right direction.....

basically the next few hours consisted of proper hardcore jungle trekking, climbed up this huge mountain and shuffled along a shoulder width ridge between mountains with sheer drops on either side, got some awesome views and laughed in the face of lonely planets feeble route. however we soon got to a point where the only way was down. very steeply down. cue quite a lot of sliding down muddy hills, swinging from tree to tree, trying to avoid starting avalanches and a bit of vine based abseiling. basically it was AWESOME, and due to our expert navigational skills, jelly beans and a hint of blind luck we stumbled upon the right path again and crawled out of the jungle, bloody, muddy but unbowed, and probably startled a few tourists looking like we had crawled through hell. TOO EASY. had a couple of beers to celebrate and a brief swim in the hostel pool, also met a kiwi family with a girl our age who kept talking to us, a dad who spent the whole time in the hostel drinking beer, and a little boy who gave me a coconut. also the previous day we spent about half an hour trying to open a coconut on the beach, failed miserably. its really hard. although this kid seemed to have managed it somehow, must have hit it really hard with a rock. cant really remember anything else from raratonga, spent the next morning drivig around looking at the aforementioned sights then got the flight to auckland. got rid of williams for a bit at this point, he was staying in cook islands to go to aitutaki which apparently is the most beautiful place ever, but unfortunately we didnt have the time and it was too expensive for a day trip. anyway raratonga was immense, onto auckland.......

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