May 6th, 2006 Cook Islands

May 6^th, 2006

9:30am

Got up early today to go to the market but it is pissing down outside so we are waiting for it to let off a little before we venture out into it. Caught a lizard today as well.

8:25pm

Had a great day at the markets despite the heavy rain. Bought a few souvenirs for us and a toy for Jake, sorry Susan-it is noisy. We got a lot of really cool pictures as well. For lunch we paid $10 NZD and got a huge platter of lamb chops, chicken, arrowroot (not the cookie), a banana-like thing and some creamed spinach with a coffee of course. We poked around at the local stores and saw someone getting an island tattoo and thought…umm that looks cool maybe we will get a traditional tattoo while we are here as a permanent souvenir.

We ended up buying some cheap speakers and a radio, as the portable speaker I brought here cannot be recharged with the 240-volt current and what not. They only have one radio station here and it is really funny as they seem to play all the modern hits only they are all re-done with an island twist by the locals I guess (ukuleles and stuff).

We went back to Trader Jacks for another Cook’s Lager of course, watched some dude snorkeling with a spear gun looking for fish and bunch of people going out in Polynesian canoes. We managed to find another grocery store with more reasonable prices. When we got home we went up to Dougie’s Internet café (not Doug Harris) and had more coffee and uploaded some pics. This guy is really cool, originally from Wellington, NZ, then he moved to London, now lives here.

For supper (they say ‘supper’ here not like in the USA where it is Lunch and dinner) we had a barbecue of chicken sausage, garlic and onions, garlic cheese bread and baked potatoes. There is only one barbecue here for everyone to use but Lawrence said as long as no one else requests it he will just keep it on our deck.

Anyway going for a walk up the beach now. We have a safari tour booked for Tuesday which should be cool (www.rarosafaritours.co.ck ) . We are also planning to do the Cultural Village tour (www.cookislandsculturalvillage.com) hopefully on Monday or Wednesday. The other things we want to do include PA’s mountain walk which takes you across the island’s center, a day or day/night trip to the island of Aitutaki (45 minute flight), rent (hire) a car for the day and go everywhere we can to take pictures. We also need to take in an ‘island night’ kind of like a Hawaiian Luau (not sure I spelled that right) but a hell of a lot cheaper (probably go to the Edgewater resort).

By the way everyone here rides a scooter (I guess it is cheap with the gas (petrol) prices). As ludicrous as this might sound, the Cook Islands does have a lot in common with Newfoundland…they are losing people to New Zealand like we lose people to mainland Canada at a rate of 1.4 per day. Everything here costs a little more due to the isolation of being an island. They really know isolation here. Imagine taking Newfoundland and breaking it up into a bunch of islands and then putting those islands hundreds on miles apart…that is the Cook Islands. Imagine if we were a thousand miles from mainland Canada how much things would cost.

Also there are many many dogs here that people own but they are all off leash kind of like Newfoundland in the old days but they are all friendly.

9:03pm

Speaking of animals we just had a cat come to the door that went away after we played with it and now there was a dog we named ‘creampuff’ here at our door wagging his tail so we let him into our villa he now he is passed out asleep on our floor. He is very well behaved though.

That’s all for now.