Until next time Cook Islands!

I landed in Auckland this morning and now that I'm in a civilization with decent internet… it's time for updates!

After spending 10 days on Rarotonga- the biggest and most populated of the Cook Islands this is a great place to go if you want to have a relaxing vacation on some beautiful beaches. The island is quite small, about 10,000 people live there and there is a 32km main road that circles the island where all the action is. There are few activities on the island, so a lot of my days were spent reading on the beach and trying not to get sunburned.

One of the first things I did was the cross island trek. The path takes you up to Te Rua Manga, also known as "The Needle" because of its needle like appearance in the sky. The hike was about 450m elevation gain over 5 miles. This seemed like a quite easy trek, but it turns out most of the elevation gain is in a stretch of < 1 mile, which made that part SUPER steep.

Once at the base of the needle, there are some beautiful views to the north and south of the island. The official path ends at the base of the needle, but there is a metal chain bolted into the rock that you can use to scramble to ¼ of the way around the needle at which point there is an old rope that goes straight up! Going to the top is not recommended and I did not feel like trying my luck that day.

After you reach the top, you descend back into the forest and navigate along a stream. We ended up losing the path at one point and had to spend half an hour backtracking to get back on course. Once at the end there is a waterfall… but since it is at the end of their dry season there wasn't much to it. Our first thought was that it must be further down so we didn't take any pictures!

Other highlights include:

TONS of great snorkelling if you're willing to take the time to explore a bit and find where the good spots are. Given that there really isn't a ton of other things to see or do on the island (especially for those on a budget) I spent many a days exploring the waters. The beaches here are shallow for a ways out and there is lots of reef where the fish like to stay. Some of the highlights were finding some pockets of hundreds of fish that you could swim with and not scare off and seeing a couple of sting rays. I wish I had an underwater camera because there were some fantastic photo opportunities.

Opening a coconut and drinking the milk. This was a quite tedious task. First we had to throw stones at a tree to knock a young and fresh coconut down. After that you have to crack the husk and peel it open. Once that is done, you gently crack a circular section out of the nut so that you can drink from it. All in all it took about 30 minutes, but the juice inside was soo sweet and tasty and totally worth it!

Rugby! There was an international rugby 3-day tournament while I was there. This was a 7 player version which plays much faster than the traditional 15-man version. Luckily, I met a girl from my hostel who plays for the Houston professional team so she was able to explain all the rules to me so I wasn't a completely clueless American. It was quite fun to watch the games although they were played in under 20 minutes so I didn't feel a lot of back and forth or deep investment in the game. Still was a great day and I hope to catch another game in NZ or even try my hand at playing.

Island nights are a traditional song and dance of the Cook Islanders. This features dancers in traditional garb dancing to the beats of a drum group. The drumming was awesome and it was cool to listen to all the different rhythms and beats they would interweave with each other.

Farewell for now Cook Islands, I hope to visit again in the future!