The plane journey to paradise began at 11.15pm on Sunday 14th March from Los Angeles aiport! The aircraft was bigger than I had anticipated it being hence there were more passengers on board than I expected, but I later found out this was due to the fact that the plane journey only occurs once per week! During the 10 hour flight we recieved a late dinner and an early breakfast, I got a couple of hours sleep and I watched the Hangover! I was impressed by Air New Zealand, who I flew with, and am glad I have my next four flights with them!
It was appromiately 6.30am by the time we landed in Rarotonga, as the Cook Islands are 3 hours behind the time in the west coast of the states! This meant that it was still dark when we landed, so we didnt get a good view of the Island as we flew in which was a little dispointing, and after reading the Lonely Planet book at the hostel later on in the day I found out that the locals joke that the reason all the international arrivals and departures land and take off at night is so that tourists cant see how small the runway is! That said we could certainly see how small the airport was! I departed from LAX airport which had countless numbers of terminals and was a huge airport and I land at this tiny aiport which had 'one' terminal, if that! Once the aircraft had come to a complete stop we had to walk down the steps and onto the runway and then make our own way to the baggage claim which was only a short walk! As soon as I left the aircraft I felt the heat and the humidity straight away, I was wearing a t-shirt, hoodie and a jacket as I knew we were arriving early, I anticipated it being a bit nippy, but it was far from it, the heat was just so intense, and as I was too find out it only got worse in the day time! As we entered the baggage claim area, there was a local Cook Islander singing us into the Island, playing the guitar at the same time, and I was to find out he is at the aiport for every flight that arrives and departs from the airport, he is perched in the centre of the carosel that the luggage comes round on! First of all we had to go through customs where we recieved our visa, then we went and waited at the baggage claim which was so old fashioned, looked as though it was falling apart and the bags came round at snails pace, once I had retrieved my bags we had to go through the declares section, as they were quite picky about what food and drink you could bring into the Islands, but I knew I had nothing to worry about, so once through I was pointed in the direction of where I was staying which was Backpackers International, and was greeted by Bill, who took me to the free shuttle, where I sat and waited as Bill went to collect another guest, named Lars, from Germany, who I was later to find out was going to be the only person in my dorm, as Bill drove us back to the hostel, we chatted and got to know each other a little bit as Bill made a quick stop of to check on his fruit which was growing in a near by field!
The hostel that I stayed at was 'Backpackers International' and it was a small family run place, run by Ana and Bill primarily and their daughter Tisha, who also had a daughter that was always there being noisy as well! The facilities were very basic, as the showers were luke warm at best and on a couple of occasions only a trickle of water would come out at any time unless you turned the temperature down to freezing, but as the weather was so hot, having a cool shower was quite nice! The dorms were small and poky and had no security lockers or anything, they had a bed, and a mirror plus a fan with years of dust on it, we had the fan on 24/7 yet it was still baking so god knows how stuffy it would have been without the fan on all the time, the dorms also had the glass blinds open all the time which couldnt be shut, meaning that you got all the noise from outside coming into your room really loudly, which wasnt helped by the cockeral singing its heart out at 5am every morning! On the plus side the dorms only had two people in each one, so I had Lars in mine, until he left the day before me and I had the room to myself! They did offer free water, which was a bonus as well as free bananas after a few days when they were ripe enough to eat! The kitchen was a decent size to be fair but the pots, pans, cutlery and dishes were battered and bruised and had seen better days, the whole facilities were pretty grubby, but it was only a base for me as I was out most of the time and it was only a stones throw from the beach as our most things in Rarotonga! I cant moan about the facilities though as it was only £8.40 a night and the family lived under the same conditions as us and they worked their hearts out everyday, Bill was building something all the time while I was there, and Ana kept the place ticking over along with her daughter Tisha!
So once Lars and I had arrived at the hostel for the first time from the aiport, we were told that we wouldnt be able to check in until 10am, the time was 7am at that stage, we were both knackered as we had got pretty much no sleep on the plane, but knew we werent going to get in our room for at least another 3 hours as it was currently occupied! So we decided to take a walk out of the hostel to discover a little bit of what the Island had to offer! We didnt walk to far, just 30 minutes or so down the road and back again but it was enough for me to realise just what the Cook Islands is all about and why it is so Idyllic! First of all we went onto the beach to have a general look around, there was no one on it as you would expect at 8am in the morning, but then again the beaches were pretty sparce throughout the whole day every day! Then we went to have a look in the shop at the bottom of the road from the hostel to see what they had to offer but they were shut and we had a look through the windows instead, it called itself a supermarket but really it was no bigger than a corner shop back home, and they always offered very few products and they only had 3 or 4 of the same product on the shelf, so say they had a tin of beans they would only have 3 or 4 on the shelf, not like back home where the shelves are jam packed, so there was plenty of room on the shelves! After this we just strolled along the coastline, until we come across another one of these 'supermarkets' except this one was open so I brought a coke as I was so thirsty, and was getting extremely hot at this stage even though I had taken my jacket off and left it at the hostel along with my backpack, I was still adjusting to the heat! After being ripped off for a bottle of coke, we walked a little further and then headed back to the hostel!
We only saw two 'supermarkets' and a couple of hotel resorts and a Budget which rented out scooters, cars and bicycles! The Cook Islands is still largely untouched by tourism, it was all just how I imagined it to be, everybody would speak to you, and the Cook Islanders were on the whole all so friendly! Rarotonga is 32km in diameter, and is surrounded by golden sandy beaches and crystal clear seas the whole way round, there were plenty of good snorkelling and diving opportunites around the island, although I did niether as you could see the fish swimming around you as you sat in the water! All the buildings in Rarotonga are all so small, no tall buildings, all the family houses are pretty makeshift just as I expected! It was just pure bliss, with palm trees galore! Virtually no traffic on the narrow 'seen better days' roads, most of the time the road is clear, if not there is the odd scooter which nearly every tourist rents as they are so useful to get about the island and cheap, but you need to buy a licence for in from the Cook Islands and take a test, sounds hard, not when you have to get on the scooter and drive to the end of the car park and back, as this is what gets you the licence! I didnt rent a scooter however! There are a few people that rent cars as well, and many Cook Islanders use cars to get around! There is just one road that goes around in a loop around the island, and also a backroad which does the same loop of the island, then there are just connecting roads between the main road and the back road, which have houses built along them if not then its just fields! The centre of the Island is covered in many tall mountains! Many Cook Islanders have to head to New Zealand and Australia for work as there is simply no business for them on the Island, and then they return for a couple of months a year to see their families, who tend to grow their own fruit and then sit outside the front of their house and sell it everyday!
Once back at the hostel it was about 8.30am, so we still had an hour and a half to wait so I decided to go up the steps and sit in the chairs on the balcony and read one of the lonely planet books that they had sitting up there, there was also a tv and dvd player on the balcony! After reading this until about 9.20, I was back downstairs to see Lars and he said that Ana said that we can use the shower facilities before we check in, so I had a shower and got ready for the day in the already described very basic facilities! Then at about 10am, the room still wasnt ready so we left our belongings in a private room which wasnt in use then went to catch the bus to go to the biggest town on the Island called Avarua! There was an english bloke who was going into town, so he said he would show us where the bus departed from and gave us the general directions as we tagged along! The bus came and we paid our $7 for a return ticket which I though was quite expensive actually considering the size of the island, as we were only going around a third of it to get to Avarua! It is $4 for a one way ticket! There are 2 buses on the Island, one goes in a clockwise direction around the Island, and one goes in an anticlockwide direction, they both leave from Avarua once and hour, one leaves on the hour and one leaves at 25 past the hour, the last bus was early at 4pm and then it had a night bus for a couple of hours except on a Sunday! After the 20 minute bus journey from the hostel we got of at the bus stop in Avarua and got to see the London of the Cook Islands, only it was slightly different, as you could imagine! It had a few little shops selling souvenirs to tourists, and one tourist information centre as well as a couple of bars and a nightclub, as well as a few small restaurants, there were a couple of other small shops as well such such Raro Records! There was a shopping centre which was no bigger than a usual sized shop back home, and a food supermarket, which is where I went to get my shopping, this was the second biggest supermarket I had spotted on the island, the second I saw on the bus on the way back to the hostel, and it was no bigger than a local tesco express type shop in the UK! So Lars and I walked around the town to discover all these shops and then we headed into the supermarket to stock up on food supplies, for which I grabbed some noodles and pineapple pieces, which I was to have for dinner for the following 5 nights and I got an apple and a mandarine for lunch for the next two days, as well as some weetbix as they call it out here and milk for breakfast for the duration of my stay! After paying for this I went back to the bus stop to get the bus back to the hostel whilst Lars went to the local internet cafe and came back at a later stage! I was so tired whilst on the bus on the way back that I could feel myself falling asleep! After putting all my food away in the kitchen at the hostel, I went to the room where my luggage was stored and saw that Ana was in room 6 which was to be our room just finishing making up the beds, so I could go straight in there! It was about time though as we were due to check in at 10am and it was now 2pm! So I moved all my luggage from one room to another and then sorted all me bits and bobs out, then decided to go down to the beach near the Rarotongan resort for a few hours in the afternoon to just chill out, which is just what I did! Upon returning to the hostel I made my noodles for dinner, and had my pineapple as a dessert type thing, then went and sat in my room to read my Lonely Planet book on Vietnam, so I laid down on the bed and read a couple of pages before falling asleep! So there I was waking up at 2.30am the next morning fully clothed from the day before, laying on top of all my sheets with the book closed laying upon my chest, I gathered I must have fallen to sleep at about 6.30pm, but I had had very little sleep the night before so I had a reason to be tired! So I got up and got out all of my clothes and put my book away and put the sheets on top of me and then went back to sleep and woke up at nearly 10am in the morning so I managed to have an excellent sleep and had fully recouperated on all the sleep that I had lost out on the previous night!
It was now Tuesday and me and Lars decided that we would hire a bike today and cycle around the Island, so after having breakfast and getting showered we went down to the local bicycle hire shop at the bottom on the road from the hostel and hired a bike each for $10, we got to choose the bike from the limited selection, gave it a quick test drive and then we were away, the bikes were nothing spectacular, they looked as though they had seen many days of being hired out but they did the job and got us around the island! We started off by biking to Muri, the second biggest town on the island about 11.30 from the rental shop, and it took us about an hour to bike there, where we stopped to sit on the beach for a couple of hours and chill out listening to our ipods and reading our books and such like! Although the second biggest town, it was still so tiny as you would expect, it had a couple of shops and bars and that was it! From here we cycled for about another hour into Avarua, the biggest town that we had been to the day before, where we made a refreshment stop before continuing on, for about another 45 minutes back to the hostel, we got back at about 5pm and had cycled around the whole Island which gave us an even more informed opinion of what life on the Cook Islands was all about! We sat and chilled out in the hostel dining area talking to fellow travellers, we then had dinner and then we went to a bar at this local hotel where I asked to try Matutu which is the local beer brewed in the Cook Islands but they didnt have any so I had to settle was a Samoan beer which was good I have to say, and it was the first legal drink I had been able to have since I left England as I was no longer a minor anymore as I was in the states but now an adult again as I am in England! After this is was back to the hostel, and that was the end of another great day!
The next day Wednesday we were up at about 9.30am and had decided that we would do a trek in the mountains in the centre of the island this day, so we headed out to the start of the trek at about 11 from the hostel and it took about half an hour to walk to the start which was just off of the backroad that loops around the island, after getting past the pigs which looked a bit grumpy but where thankfully tied up we found the start of the trek pretty easily, but there was nothing easy about the actual trek at all! It was all strenuous hiking up into the mountains up steep inclines on uneven ground or walking through narrow sections of the mountains with bushes scratching at your legs and feet, there was also many lizards up in the mountainside! But once we reached the summit, the views were amazing, we could see over half of the island and were able to get a birds eye view of the coastline and see the rest of the mountainside as well as the tiny houses and shacks making up small villages! We didnt quite reach the real top of this mountain trek however as to get to the top you had to climb a 20 metre rock face, which was all rough and jagged, it did have a rope to aid you when climbing up it but still you required saftey equipment and an instructor if you wanted to climb here which we didnt have, so the summit for us for at the foor of this rock face, where we aited for 5 minutes as a recouperation period to catch our breath, have a drink and admire the views before making our way down which although was a lot quicker than on the way up obviously, it was still hard work as the hills were so steep that you had to concentrate fully and make sure that you didnt fall over or slip, but Lars and I made it down safely and didnt have to make any breaks to catch our breath on the way down, as we did on the way up as the climb was so taxing and knackering, but we had achieved our practice trek and it was time for the real deal in a few days time! After feeling as though we had achieved something from the day Lars and I decided to go down to the beach near the hostel, and chill out for the afternoon as we felt we actually deserved this relaxation time as we had worked hard for it! We stayed there at the beach until we came back to the hostel for dinner and just relaxed around the table with our fellow travellers, and that marked the end of a very strenuous day!
The next day, Thursday however was going to be just as hard work, if not more so than the day before however, as I had 'stupidly' as many people said to me decided to walk around the whole island, and found out that there was a reason that the Cook Islands did not have any paths, and why the Cook Islanders never walk anywhere! Firstly because the heat is so overpowering and there is never any hiding place from it, as it just beams down on you throughout the whole day long! Secondly because it takes so long to walk around and there are many other cheap efficient ways to transport around the island! But anyway I had decided to challenge myself and believe me challenge was the right word, I set out from the hostel at around 10.45am after stocking up on my usual weetbix, and decided that I would try and walk it along the beach as it would be a lovely walk and as I would get the breeze from the sea and have the sand beneath my feet rather than grass or rock hard roads, but I soon found out that the sand would be my downfall as every step you take you slip and it just makes it such hard work to walk along the beach so after bumping into a German girl from the hostel on the beach, I got onto the main road and carried on my adventure from there! I walked on the road until there was a vehicle coming when I would simpl get onto the grassway at the edge of the road until the vehicle had passed after which I would simply get back onto the road again until the next vehicle arrived as the road was much flatter then any other surrounding section of land!
The footwear that I had chosen wasnt exactly the best available for a 32 kilometre walk which would translate to a walk lasting just over 20 miles.....I think! I was wearing flip flops, probably the worst footwear I could have chosen but if I had worn trainers, my feet would have got so sweaty and that wouldnt have been very nice either, so which ever option I had chosen I wasnt going to win! Upon completion of the walk my feet were a wreck, they were covered in sores and cuts and scrapes and god know what else but they werent a pretty sight at the end of the walk and I could hardly move my feet once I had stopped and sat down for a while, as my feet just went so stiff, and ached so much the next morning! But before it got to that stage, I had to complete the walk and at present description I am only just at the beginning! So anyway back to the walk, I had purchased a banana from the small house shop at the bottom of the hostel for my walk, and decided that I would eat it once I got to Muri as I had stopped here when I was on the bike so I knew that there was somewhere to sit down and take a breather! Muri was about a third of the way around the island from Backpackers International as well! It took me a lot longer than I had anticipated it taking in getting to Muri however, as I didnt arrive until about just before 1pm, but once there I found a picnic table to sit at to eat my banana and have a drink just to refuel me for the next part of the walk, by this stage I was already hot and sweaty but it didnt bother me as I was getting used to the climate by now! Walking along the road did mean that there was a very limited breeze however as the palm trees guarded the breeze from getting past the beach! After a 10 minute stop in Muri, the walk continued and it allowed me to get some real good pictures of the island as when you are on public transport you are always moving so its hard to stop and get a good picture so whilst walking it allowed to photograph everything I saw that was of interest! You also get to see the island with a different perspective when you walk as you can take it slower and see things that you would miss by going via a different transport method as you are going to quickly!

Continues in Rarotonga Continued!