Roratonga, Cook Island 10-10-08

Rarotonga, Cook Islands 10/10/08

Rarotonga or Raro is the capital of the Cook Islands and is a New Zealand Protectorate. Raro is self governing. Their genealogy and history were orally recorded by the Taungas. This data is passed down to each generation. They arrived in the Cook Islands in 800 AD. The land is owned by the natives. They had 5 cyclones hit the island in 2005.

We took a tour with Raro Mountairi Tours.and Safari. This company is owned by a native who has dug out the roads and is building shelters for tours near his home at one of the sites. We climbed into a four wheel drive jeep with bench seats for ten and a canopy for a roof. We headed off for a 32 km circle tour of the island with stops at the highest viewpoints. We took the Ara Metua road built with lava stones which is centuries old and is now paved.

As we went uphill we left the paved road and took a wild ride on a rutted, cavity filled (about two feet deep) dirt road holding on and hoping we stayed upright. We stopped on a plateau and viewed the Needle, a large rock formation. We took a total of three off road adventures into the mountains. My favorite was the eastern heights overlooking Muri lagoon with four isles or Motus. We had our picture taken as we overlooked the Motu called Long Beach! The view was stunning with teal and blue. The reefs of Raro are more shallow then we have seen before and such a beautiful color.

We saw two hotels, one was a project started by the Raro government in the early 90s. The construction company was from Italy. They built the initial hotel rooms and were supposed to enlarge the lagoon in a multi-million dollar project. Instead, all the money disappeared. The furniture for the project was already in storage. As the years passed the furniture was decaying so they finally opened the storage units and passed out the furniture to the locals. Everyone has the same furniture! The second hotel is a new large hotel very nice. One of the co-owners is Ivana Trump.

Our guide let us out in the Town to walk back to the dock. We stopped at Captain Jack’s. This is a very popular seafood restaurant. When we purchased our drink, the waitress told us to take a seat and “Watch The View”. We did. At the dock, Wayne took a picture of the water- it is so clean. You can see the fish in the water.