May 23rd - June 4th
Other than what we’d read in the guidebook, we didn’t really know much about the Cook Islands. It isn’t a typical holiday destination, and the amount of people we know who have been there can be counted on one hand. This of course added to its appeal and we certainly weren’t disappointed given that we had spent enough time there to find out just a little more of what the place was about underneath the artificial surface that usually exists solely for tourists.
Straight off the plane and into the tiny airport building, we were collectively greeted by Jake Numanga, a locally-famous native and one-man-ukulele-band, who has apparently received every inbound flight, without fail, for 25 years. Being a former colony, the airport, which is the size of a mere garden shed in comparison to some of the world’s international airports, was regally and officially opened in 1987 by Queen Elizabeth II. Accommodating three flights-a-day, the staff seemed well-practised in their duties as they shuffled about on island time in their flowery shirts and lei’s expertly looking like they were doing nothing when in actual fact they were busy at work. On the strength of the greeting and atmosphere on arrival, it wouldn’t have been silly to assume that we had arrived in a standard tourist trap as eager to take our money as much as we were to spend it. But what we found was surprising.
There are no high-rise buildings of any sort on the island, including hotels. There are a good number of resorts but none with any recognisable commercial name. There is not an abundance of overpriced restaurants serving fayre seasoned to tourist taste buds or bars where it’s always happy hour. Consequently, there is no ‘strip’ to speak of, no central hub that satisfies every need of the holidaymaker. These places exist of course, but rather they are scattered around the island in clusters of no more than two or three at a time. Those people in positions of authority with the power to develop the island beyond all recognition but have resisted must be acknowledged - the island is peaceful and quiet because of it, and has subsequently retained its aestheticism, ambience and charm. It is refreshing that, while a portion of the Rarotongan economy obviously relies on tourism, it isn’t what holds it up.
Rather than spending time in an artificial resort hidden and separated from everyday society, in Rarotonga it is more a case of existing with the locals, which allows you to really experience island life as it should be, alongside the natives. We rented a garden bungalow (a sixty-second walk from the beach on the other side of a road), where passion fruit, avocado and coconut grew liberally in its grounds ready for picking. Almost invariably, the beach closest to our bungalow would be deserted, just waiting for someone to ‘discover’ it. Since no beaches here are owned by or have any affiliation with any hotel or resort, it hadn’t been raked, swept or aesthetically prepared beforehand in order to please the eye of the visitor. Though consequently more rugged, it effortlessly retained its beauty with cartoon palms scattered along its fringes and crystal-clear water that behaved calmly inside the coral walls of its surrounding reef, creating a pretty lagoon.
We hired a motor scooter for the duration of our stay and made sure we explored every inch of the island from the beaches and towns to inland residential areas seldom seen by visitors. We sampled the local produce on offer from fresh hand-picked fruit and vegetables to the locally-made banana, pineapple, coconut and carrot cake topped with butter and caramel icing to which we faithfully returned on more than a couple of occasions. We were lucky to be there for the Cook Islands national rugby league finals held at the BCI national stadium too, for which we gladly paid our five dollar entrance fee. In attendance was none other than the Prime Minister himself (no doubt he arrived in his car complete with the number plate PM1, which can often be seen around the island) and Miss Cook Islands 2011. As is well-known, southern hemisphere countries love their rugby and, since the whole island appeared to be in attendance, this was abundantly clear. Forget any of the finalists winning silverware though. The trophies consisted of large, intricately carved wooden pieces undoubtedly handed down for generations.
One of the things most notable about Rarotonga, we agreed, is that it is a place where it seems like the locals only play at working. Not that the locals are lazy – it is just simply the way things operate on an island – on island time. Life here is in such stark contrast to life in the western world and it is almost as if they work in pretend jobs, like in the Truman show. As we found while touring the place on our rented motor scooter, our aim being to explore every nook and cranny, the societal differences living on an island of this size are such that there exists one Dentist, one Plumber, one Television Engineer, and so on. You get what you get there since competition is scarce, unless your business is a bakery, of which, bizarrely, there are three.
I could write three times as much about Rarotonga if I knew it wouldn’t become tedious to read. It is a place where not much happens but life itself, albeit at a much slower pace than we are used to in the western world. The island is charming, and it is not hard to tell that Rarotongans are proud of it. About as charming as anything on the island is that the two local buses run clockwise and anti-clockwise and are named as such. And therein lay a perfect example exemplifying how simple life is there.
