24 hours in (a very hot) paradise

24 hours in (a very hot) paradise - Sat 4th Jan

January 05, 2025

So it turns out roosters are a thing here. Writing this at 10pm, all the little roosters are tucked up in their little rooster beds, with their little rooster alarms set to go off in about 4 hours so they can serenade us with beautiful little rooster songs through the rest of the night. We did consider having rooster stew for dinner, though interestingly if your ears are under 20 years old you apparently can't hear roostersong in the night. One more reason to miss my youth! There have been a few naps had today, and I'm sure that within a night or two we will have acclimatised to the Rarotongan equivalent of traffic noise.

This morning we had set alarms so that we could be out of the house by 9 to get to the market ahead of visiting the car hire place. The Punanga Nui market is a huge community occasion, with cars and scooters parked as far as the eye can see. There were tons of stalls, selling products ranging from fresh fruit and veges, food and drinks - lots and lots of food and drink, Cook Islands tourist merchandise, craft items, clothing, ukuleles, large wooden carved phalluses made into bottle openers (how handy), as well as quite a few stalls marketing tourist experiences. There was a stage with entertainment from around 10, dancers and fire spinning etc. Basically every man and his scooter seemed to be there, along with all the sticky red-faced tourists with their newly purchased straw hats. We had a lovely hour or so browsing, and came away with new stocks of fruit, including some new things to try, eg dragonfruit (both pink and white varieties), and starfruit. A couple of souvenir purchases were made, but on the whole there was a lot of self-control shown at this stage in the holiday!

The anticipated showdown at the car hire place was a storm in a teacup - by the time we went in to talk to them, they had updated their system to show that the van we had acquired yesterday was to be ours for the week. When Peter and I got back to the car, the remaining passengers had agreed that they were going to stage a sit-in, should that have been required. Luckily for all concerned, it was not.

Our next stop was the supermarket - quite large and with bulk bags of some products rivalling Trents wholesalers. Our favourite section was "The Igloo", which is a refrigerated / air-conditioned corner of the supermarket where the fridges and freezers are housed - not a fridge in itself, but just a comfortable place to hang out. We may add it to our daily preferred activity list. Peter was beyond stoked to see that his caffeine-free drink of choice, Inka, which is no longer stocked in NZ, was on the shelf here. He MAY have purchased Rarotonga's entire stock of Inka - look out for a return trip by Peter in about six months from now.

We completed the anti-clockwise circuit of the island back to our accommodation, including a stop at the Rarotonga bakery for lunch (another item for our daily list perhaps!) and spotting a couple of nice-looking places for a beach swim in the afternoon. I'm not sure what time peak discomfort-temperature/humidity occurs, but there were definitely some puddles of humans in our vicinity in the early afternoon.

We headed to the beach in the afternoon - so so stunning. The white sand, palm trees and blue water are just so beautiful, and the fact that the water is at a temperature that you can spend over an hour in there is a happy bonus. Some locals gave us gentle advice about the first location we chose to base ourselves, right underneath a coconut tree. We had borrowed some snorkelling gear from our accommodation and headed out into the lagoon with our brand new beach shoes. Caelan and Peter went out quite a distance with the snorkels and then Peter came back with the news that Myrtle the Turtle and her friends were swimming quite a way out. I was able to walk about halfway and then had to swim the rest, but luckily Amelie was able to touch the bottom all the way out, and she provided a handy resting spot for the less fit and less lengthy among us. It was pretty amazing to see turtles just hanging out around the coral, checking out all the interesting fish like we were.

When we returned to our accommodation, Alyssa and Callum cooked us pizzas for dinner while some more naps were had. Over dinner we considered some other options for our activities during the week as the forecast is for thunderstorms by about Wednesday. Then it was time for the compulsory cannonball into the pool, a marvellous 'manu' demonstration by Alyssa and handstand demonstration by Peter, and now we're all ready to fall into bed.

Our words of the day:

Island time

Tropical fruit

Rooster

Turtle

Naps

All sorted

Lagoon swim

Coconut naivety

Sticky

Pegged

Mosquitoes