Teamed up today with Daniel and Katrin, a German couple who'd been on our flight from Tahiti. We hired motorbikes to explore the island and discovered it's possible to get right around in about an hour. Beer stops notwithstanding of course.
The Cook Islands are 15 tiny specks in the middle of the Pacific, and at 12 miles tip to tip, Rarotonga is by some margin the daddy of them all. We'd been toying with taking a flight to one of the neigbouring islands at some point, but our quick circuit convinced us there'd be plenty to keep us amused here for the next ten days.
Essentially there are 2 roads on Rarotonga; the main one, which hugs the coastline in a big loop, and an older one running parallel further inland. All the restaurants, resorts and bars are on the outer loop while the inner road is mainly residential, showing a glimpse of what island life must have been like before tourism took a hold, with lots of chickens milling about, fruit & veg allotments and at least one pig outside every home.
Tourism is the life-blood of the island but thankfully it hasn't squeezed the character out of the place. There are no high rise developments and even the more up-market resorts are fairly small scale and unobtrusive.
There's a wonderful laid-back feel to Rarotonga. You get a sense that the locals are very proud of where they live, and quite rightly so in our opinion. Daniel pointed out that everyone seems to be smiling all the time. He finds this pleasant but at the same time mildly disconcerting; he reckons if a stranger smiles at you in Hamburg it means they're either a lunatic or are about to run a switch-blade across your face.
Nice. Note to self: decline any invite from Daniel and Katrin to visit them in Germany.
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