Rarotonga was really fun, but as I've mentioned, the weather was less than desirable. We were seriously expecting hot days sitting on the beach with warm, turquoise blue water a few feet away. Instead, it was a little like Auckland in the spring -- you can go swimming but you need to get used to the temp, and once the sun disappears behind a cloud it gets chilly.
It was raining and hot when we arrived at 2:30am. The flights into and out of Rarotonga are at the worst times. I guess it works in their favor -- you're half awake and less likely to argue when the Cook Island Immigration Officer tells you your New Zealand Residence Visa is expired and you might have trouble re-entering the country (which happened on our way home and had to get sorted when we arrived in NZ at 5:00am).
We should've known the vacation was slightly doomed when we arrived and were told that the flower lei's for our resort hadn't arrived, so we weren't given the traditional island greeting. The lei's arrived the next day, left to wilt miserably in a plastic bag tied to our cottage door.
Most days, we hopped on our rented scooter and explored. The entire island is only about 35 kilometers / 21 miles. There's one main road, and then a secondary road used by the locals. We decided to get a feel for the "real" Rarotonga and wandered around the backroads. There were chickens and dogs everywhere, plus a few goats, cows, and cats. The homes were extremely modest but mostly well-maintained. There weren't signs of extreme poverty, like we saw on our honeymoon or in the Virgin Islands. What's interesting is the tradition of having large, flat marble gravestones in people's yards. These are usually decorated with flowers and some have chairs around them, for people to sit and pray? Hang out?
We found a great beachfront bar that looked straight out of a movie set, but we were the only ones there, so we left.
Because of the bad weather, the fishermen had trouble catching anything, so there we were on this beautiful South Pacific island and there was virtually no fish, except frozen albacore. We made do with pasta dishes, which were surprisingly good. Honestly, I had better pasta in Raro than I've had in Auckland.
Our resort featured Island Night which was supposed to give us a sample of genuine island food. Instead, it was a bunch of rather gross picnic items like egg salad and mushy potatoes alongside the most overdone steak EVER. The chicken was good, though. That was the worst meail of the trip, thankfully. We had some great meals during the rest of the week. There was a grocery store, so we bought steak, bread, pate, salad, etc. and enjoyed dinner inside two nights.
The beaches are all public, so there's no pretentious rules like "This beach is reserved for guests of the Little Polynesian ONLY." We made sure to check out all of the resorts and their beaches, deciding that our beach was one of the better ones. A few days into the trip, we discovered the lovely and quiet Muri Beach Club - an adults only resort that was slightly our of our price range when we booked the trip months ago. Muri Beach Club had a beautiful pool that was sheltered from the wind, so we hung out there for two straight days, paying rent for our loungers by ordering food and booze from the bar.
On our last night, we splurged and had dinner at the Little Polynesian -- another resort with beachfront bures, only theirs cost $900 a night. Chumps!
Overall, it was a nice time, but the next "tropical" holiday we take, we'll make sure to do some MAJOR investigating beforehand to determine which island (Fiji? Samoa? Tahiti?) has the best weather. We'll also look into renting a house -- there were quite a few that were right on the beach, and at $150/$200 a night, it really made you wonder why you'd bother staying in a resort.
Best part: "Captaim Tama's Lagoon Cruizes". We didn't actually go on one of these, but we loved the name, of course.
A million pictures are below:
