On To the Cook Islands

Note:  I don't plan to add in more pictures until we are back in North America.  The ones I added for Christchurch took forever and then I found it used up most of my allocated time.

We flew from Christchurch to Auckland and then on to Rarotonga.  We crossed back over the International Date Line arrived after dark.  As a result we had no sense of where we were once we arrived at the resort we were staying at for 2 nights.  In the morning when we woke we found we were on the beachfront with a very nice tropical setting.

It was Sunday and basically the Cook Islands close down on Sunday.  Raratonga is the largest of 15 islands in the group that are spread over 2 million sq. km. in the South Pacific. We went on the “clockwise” bus that makes a 50 minute trip around the island. Rarotonga, and the rest of the Cook Islands are not the least bit commercialized – only little family owned shops.  It was all very interesting to see although it would have been more interesting if the shops had been open and we had been able to see what they were really like. The most unusual sight was all of the graves in the front yards of people’s homes!

At suppertime, we walked down a short distance from where we were staying to a very nice beachfront restaurant where the tables were right on the sand.  One of the staff had gone to WLU and was from Mississauga.