DAY NINE - RAROTONGA

It’s Thursday October 30th and as I write we are midway between Rarotonga, where we spent yesterday, and Raiatea our Friday destination. Raiatea is the first of our four French Polynesia ports and we will be there from 8am ‘till about 5pm.
We arrived at Rarotonga at 10am and the first tenders started to deliver people to shore at about 10.30. There was quite a bit of complaining at how Princess handled things this morning. There were several hundred people milling around on deck seven waiting for the tender tickets to be handed out. This in itself causes problems. Too many people in one place at one time. Princess have decided that every passenger must be there to accept his or her own tender ticket. Apparently in the past it was possible to send one of a group to collect a number of tickets. Not any more. So, here we have several hundred people waiting for tickets so they could get to shore and do their own independently arranged tours while at the same time another many hundred were in various meeting rooms around the ship receiving preferential treatment because they had paid the exorbitant cost of a Princess tour. Mary and I were finally given our tender tickets and then stood in a cue for a further 50 minutes watching the tour people get on to Tenders ahead of us. Not the best way to start a day.
We spent the day with Peter and Evon in a hire car. Evon had organized this from home via the net. The car rental company were at the dock waiting for us and soon had us in our very roomy family size car. The company Evon had booked with were simply known as Friendly Cars and Scooters and our car cost us a total of NZ$61 for the day. This included insurance and a one day Cook Islands driving license.
Armed with a map of the island we headed off in a clockwise direction. It’s either that or anti clockwise. There really is only one main road on Rarotonga and goes around the island for a total of 32 kilometers. The island of Rarotonga is home to about half of the 19,000 population of the Cook Islands and it’s main town of Avarua is home to the main commercial hub of the island. Here you will find banks, supermarkets, medical facilities cafes petrol station, etc. The rest of the coastal road is mainly dominated by resorts and homes with the occasional café. The island is surrounded by a lagoon inside the reef and inland is dominated by a mountain range covered in lush rainforest vegetation.
We stopped at Muri beach and I had a swim in water so clear that standing in waist deep water I could see detail of shell and coral on the sea floor as if I was looking into a glass bowl only inches deep. At the halfway mark we stopped for some lunch at a small café run by a New Zealander with his local Polynesian helper. This guy has what I would describe as the perfect working location and ethic. He is directly across the narrow road from another beautiful beach, his tan lets on that he spends a lot of time there and the sign at his front door tells you that he’s open 6am ‘till 4pm Monday to Friday, closed Saturday and Sunday GONE FISHIN’. What a life!
The weather was a very pleasant 25c with humidity if about 77%. The people we spoke to all were all very friendly and eager to help. This is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen and certainly the highlight of our cruise so far. Mary and I have put it into our “ must return for a longer stay” list.
Tomorrow we arrive at Raiatea and this will be the first of 4 consecutive days on land so I’m not too sure when I will post again.