Rarotonga.

Until fairly recently, I didn’t know much about the Cook Islands. I’d heard the name Rarotonga, who knows where, but had no idea that it was in the Cooks. I just thought it was an exceptionally cool name, one that conjured up all the magic of the South Seas in its four syllables.

As I planned my South Pacific adventure, I was hoping to visit the Coral Sea (the Australian barrier reef and New Guinea), Fiji, and Tahiti. Looking on a map, I saw the Cook Islands and remembered that my son John had told me that when he was a dive master on Maui, all his workmates dreamed of going to the Cooks.

 

So I did some research and decided that I did, too.

 

I’m glad I did. I arrived late from my flight. I started in Nadi, Fiji at 3:30PM Sunday, took a three-hour flight to Auckland, New Zealand and after a three-hour layover, a four-hour flight to Rarotonga, crossing the dateline into the previous day. It was 2:15AM Sunday when I arrived, more than twelve hours before I left Fiji!

I stumbled into my room around 3:30AM, dazed and confused, and woke up around 6AM in paradise.

 

Rarotonga, it turns out, is the largest of the Cook Islands, a tiny dot in the largest ocean on earth. The island is a great getaway for New Zealanders looking for earth during the southern winter. In spite of that, it isn’t yet overdeveloped or overcrowded.

Here's the main tourist area at Muri Beach. Feel the congestion.

Named after Captain James Cook, who visited the islands in 1773 and 1777, The Cooks comprise 15 islands in a stretch of ocean the size of southern Europe, about 850,000 square miles. Rarotonga is a volcanic island with a central peak 2,140 feet high. The island is only 26 square miles, though it is still being lifted by tectonic activity The other islands even smaller, mostly low coral reefs that have grown on top of sunken volcanoes.

 

The main Cook Islands language is Rarotongan Māori, but since it is part of New Zealand, the official language is English, and everyone learns it in school. The Cooks are the penultimate point of Polynesian migration, a process that started around 3000 BCE in what is now Taiwan, wound its way through Micronesia to Tahiti, then branched out around 500 AD to Hawaii, Papanui (Easter Island), and the Cooks. From the Cooks, groups migrated south, reaching New Zealand around 1000 AD.

This is the beach where the big migration canoes set out for New Zealand a thousand years ago.

 

The islands are home to about 18,000, with about half of that population on Rarotonga, but there are estimated 37,000 Cook Islanders living in New Zealand and Australia, which gives you an idea about the lack of economic opportunity here.

 

The islanders’ first contacts with Europeans were unhappy. Disease decimated the original population of Rarotonga in the early 1800s, Peruvian slavers kidnapped 75% of the people in the northern group in the 1860s. Ship’s rats killed most of the native bird species. There were the usual conflicts with Christian missionaries. Though one woman told me that they were grateful to the missionaries because “we don’t eat people anymore.”

 

Other than the incident with the Peruvian slavers, there is evidence of earlier contact with South America: the sweet potato. Called kūmara in Māori and kumar in Quechua, it was widespread in Polynesia when Europeans first reached the Pacific. Remains of the plant in the Cook Islands have been carbon-dated to 1000 AD. It was probably brought from South America to central Polynesia around 700 AD and spread from there. By the way, this fact doesn’t vindicate Thor Heyerdahl’s theory that Polynesians migrated from South America. A host of genetic, linguistic, and archaeological data prove his ideas wrong.

Sweet potato is still popular here. So is pork, like this lovely slab of crispy pork belly I got at the Muri Beach night market. It was incredibly delicious, but I got  mild case of food poisoning from it because in my greed I had forgotten the lesson we learned the hard way when eating street food in Vietnam: don’t eat food you haven’t seen prepared.

 

A happier meal was this beautiful plate of smoked marlin that I was served at the Hidden Spirit Cafe hidden away in beautiful grounds of the Rarotonga Botanical Gardens. The gardens are privately owned by an Aussie winemaker and his wife, so he showcases his own wines, in the cafe. They grow all their own herbs and produce organically, too. I had a delicious smoked marlin salad with a tasty chardonnay. The marlin is fresh-caught and smoked for 24 hours. It was some of the best smoked fish I've ever had, so fresh it was almost translucent and tasting of just enough woodsmoke. 

 

Apparently Rarotonga is trying to increase tourism by catering to foodies. I've definitely had the best food of the trip here.

Le Bon Vivant is the best place on the island for coffee and breakfast, with great espresso drinks, excellent croissants and other pastries (like this not-too-sweet cinnamon donut), and perfectly prepared egg dishes.

 

I had read that the diving in the Cooks was not as spectacular as elsewhere in the South Pacific. I found that to be true to a certain extent. Compared to Fiji and the Solomons, the coral here is fairly monochrome and the fish life a bit sparse. Still, I had some great dives with Dive Rarotonga, a top-notch outfit. 

Check out the trigger fish wrestling with a very spiny sea urchin.

 The views of the coast from the dive boat were amazing.

I rented a scooter and drove the backroads.

Marvelous scenery: dense forest, farms, and deserted beaches. 

 

Unfortunately, I lost my phone. I had just stopped to take some pictures with my phone and must not have put it back in my pocket securely. I didn't notice it was missing until I stopped about a half-mile later to take another picture. I drove slowly back and forth  over my route a couple times, but saw nothing. Finally, I went to the town and reported it to the police.

 

I hadn't heard anything from them by the time I left for Aitutaki, so I figured it was gone forever. Two weeks later, when I came back to Raro on my way to Tahiti, I checked back at the police station. The woman behind the counter remembered me and said she would check in the back. She was gone for a long time, but when she returned she had my phone! The battery was drained, but otherwise it was in perfect condition. Someone had found it and turned it in on the day I left the island.

 

It was a great end to a truly magical two weeks.

P.

 

Diving the wild west.

In Fiji, the Solomon Islands are sometimes referred to, disparagingly, as the wild west, because of the lack of infrastructure development, political turmoil, and the relatively recent practice of cannibalism and headhunting.

But the dearth of tourists and development also means that the dive sites here are mostly in pristine condition, especially if you get away from the main islands. In the Solomons, there's the added benefit of many, many undiscovered dive sites. We were able to explore sites no one had ever visited before.

 

I booked a week on the Islands' newest live-aboard dive boat, Taka. The Solomons have always been high on my diving short list, and when I saw a Facebook ad for Taka at 50% off, I snapped it up.

 

Taka is a purpose-built dive boat originally out of Cairns, Australia. New owners moved it to the Solomons at the beginning of this year. Designed for the high-occupancy rates on the Great Barrier Reef, the boat holds as many as 30 divers. On our seven-day cruise there were only five.

 

I like live-aboards--lots of dives at sites that are usually unreachable by day boats (with dive sites, higher traffic usually means damage to the reef and less to see). They're expensive, but for some locations (like the Galapagos and the Solomons) they are the only way to really see the best locations.

 

As a solo diver, the worst part about live-aboards is having to share a small cabin with a stranger. Luckily, in the Galapagos and here, the boats weren't full, so I was able to have a cabin to myself without paying a premium.

 

Our small band included a couple from Taiwan and a retired firefighter and his wife from California. We met on the dock in Honiara at sunset and took a skiff out to Taka. 

We met the crew: Captain Dan the mad Brit, Divemaster Mossy the crazy Aussie, his fellow divemaster Lacey, local guide Action Jackson, and their support team.

They were all great: friendly, helpful and all clearly having a good time. Dan and Mossy especially were a hoot. They kept us entertained the whole trip.

 

Leaving the industrial grime of Honiara harbor with its rusted hulks and floating trash, we motored into a night filled with stars and no light pollution except from the boat's navigation lights. The southern constellations and the Milky Way were intensely bright and clear.

And the next morning we awoke in another world. There's nothing like a South Pacific dawn.

And there were plenty more of those to come.

Not to mention the spectacular sunsets.

 

For seven days we cruised through the small islands of the Solomons chain (there are over 900 of them). We visited the Russell Islands and the Floridas, then sailed out to remote, uninhabited Mary Island.

I never get tired of the colors: the rich azure of the deep channels contrasting with the limpid turquoise of the shallow reefs and the vivid greens of the tropical vegetation.

It is a place of stunning beauty. The only other boats were the locals in their canoes. In the whole week, we saw only one other motorized vessel.

Most of the islands are volcanic rock fringed by a reef that goes from the waterline down to 50-60 feet, then drops off abruptly hundreds or even thousands of feet. The shallow reefs are rich with corals and fish. The visibility almost always good, but near Mary Island it was incredible--at least 200 feet.

 

The coral is profuse and colorful, even more so than in Fiji. We saw a few sharks and rays, but most of the action was on the reef--nudibranchs, cuttlefish, turtles, seahorses, and so much more.

 

Unfortunately, the plague of crown-of-thorns starfish is beginning to appear here. At some of the sites, we saw dozens of them chewing on the reef, leaving swathes of dead coral in their wake.

We did 25 dives on the cruise. One of the most memorable was the Bat Cave. The islands are riddled with caves carved by the waves. At this site, you enter via a swim-through, then surface in a cave filled with roosting bats. There is a hole in the roof of the cave where sunlight comes though (as well as bats). We were warned to keep to the sides of the cave and keep our regulators in our mouths to avoid falling guano. 

Here is some video from three dives we did on some very shallow reefs. Some of the most spectacular sights were in five to six feet of water.

The reefs are owned by the local villages that front them. Jackson, a local who has been guiding for dive boats in the area for many years, knew all the villagers and negotiated the fees we paid to dive on their reefs. The village spokesman and his whole family would come out to welcome us and collect their money.

At other times we were visited by locals eager to sell their produce or fish. We scored lots of delicious bananas and papayas. 

Notice that even the little kid has his own canoe. We would often see small children rowing on their own seemingly far from any habitation.

We were also visited by a large beetle and several giant moths attracted to the boat's navigation lights. No mosquitoes, though.

 Once the diving was finished, we visited a village in the Florida Islands.

Truly an idyllic setting.

The children gathered in a tree to watch us arrive.

As we stepped out of the boat, we were greeted by women in native garb and given leis and fresh, cold coconuts with stalks of ginger for a straw.

Then the women sang and danced for us. They put on a whole show including traditional songs and dances, hymns, and a special goodbye song to end the performance.

It doesn't get much more picturesque.

The local school has separate rooms for each grade. This was the oldest group.

 

It was a lovely end to an incredible dive trip.

 

P.