Cook Islands - Day 9
The gang are off early to the airport back to Sydney. So it's just Jeff, Courts and the new pet cat to carry on the journey.
We check out of the villa and jump on the anti-clockwise bus back to Avarua. The bus is roughly on time considering its only hourly. There's one doing clockwise laps and another doing the reverse. Sometimes they put on more if it's busy.
We get to town and it's already hot and sweaty. We trek around and try and book a car for a day. No dice. Nowhere has one and we can see why there was an article in the paper about a guy starting a tuk-tuk hire company on the back of not enough supply.
We head to the Saturday market for one last souvenir before taking a breather with a Nu and a mango smoothie.
We jump on the heaving clockwise bus to our new accommodation which is about a 6 min drive from town. We wait for check in and do some blogging with the welcoming committee (dog) for company.
The motel is a bit tired but has a million dollar view for a hundred dollar price tag, so we're happy. It was the only option available for under $500 a night.
We walk up the road to a convenience store which usually have an accompanying take-away joint slinging the standard burgers/fried-chicken/fish and chips. We grab some burgers and apologise to the local cat and dog who can't get a chip out of us this time.
It's hot and sweaty work out here at 2pm so we retreat to the room and take 5.
We head back out and do a little walking inland tour. Past some goats and pigs, and always plenty of dogs and chickens for company.
We end up at Club Raro, a "no kids" resort which seems pretty fancy. Their beer garden overlooking the ocean with a swim up bar seems like a good place to sit and reminisce on the week that was on Rarotonga.
We both enjoyed it and both agree that 5 days was probably enough. We discuss what it would be like to live on an island of this size which can be circled in 30 mins. Jeff loves the beach and the water but he thinks the novelty might wear off. And the sun is a killer here.
The Cook Islands in general seem to be heading in the right direction, but the fact they need to import so much stuff makes a few things difficult for them. Some things are cheap. We thought restaurant food prices were decent most of the trip. But anything that is import dependent is expensive, as expected. Including their petrol ($3 a litre) and electricity. 95% of their power comes from burning diesel! 5% comes from a small solar farm near the airport.
The upside is that they are pretty aware of their situation and are very good with biodegradable stuff like straws and utensils and they've banned single use plastic bags. The down side is that they burn their rubbish everywhere. We had to close all the windows at our motel due to a big fire burning up-wind.
We head to bed happy that we've got as much out of the island as we could have and started to scratch the surface on Polynesia, which we previously knew nothing about.
Kia Orana, Rarotonga.
