May 7th Cook Islands

May 7, 2006

Some facts about the Cook Islands Geography

Total land area: 241 sq km (about 25% as big a Rhode Island)

This area is chopped up in 15 islands divided into a Northern and Southern group and then scattered over 2 million sq km of sea (area the size of Western Europe)

Roratonga is 3447 km from Auckland, New Zealand. That is isolation.

12:30pm

Got up and went to church today. First time I stepped foot in a church in years (considering I don’t really think of myself as Christian). Anyway it `1 was really nice, all the men and women were dressed in white and the women all had hats on. Most of the sermon was in Maori and a little in English. Man these people can sing!!! After the service all the tourists were invited over to the minister’s house where they had coffee, tea, biscuits and sandwiches. We stuck around and chatted for 30 minutes or so with a nice Cook Island lady from New Zealand that is in the process of moving back to Aitutaki (as a side note, the new season of survivor is being filmed there now). We also met a nice backpacker couple; the guy was from Slovenia and the girl from the Netherlands. She is actually moving to Walnut Creek (in the San Fran bay area) this Thursday, as this is where her parents live now. Small world. Probably going to rent some bikes today and go around.

9:30 am May 8^th, 2006

So we ended up renting bikes (bicycles) today and we will probably keep them all week. They are a great way to get around without having to worry about gas or getting the motorcycle license which is necessary if you are renting a scooter. We biked about 8 km each way to get to this really nice waterfall where we swam with the locals and actually got to meet PA, the guy who we are going to do the cross island trek with at some point.

After spending the day riding around, we went the to internet café but I had trouble uploading more photos (will try again today). Dougie, the owner invited us to his place to cook up some food so we ended up going there and we had a bunch of sausages, lamb chops, salad, beer etc with a bunch of people from New Zealand, Ireland, and the UK. It was a good time. Anyway, got lots of stuff to take of today (marriage licenses and stuff).