After well over 90 minutes of sleep it was time to cheerfully start a new day.

We had an 8:15 flight to catch to Auckland. The Pacific island part of our adventure was over and a new part of the voyage was lying ahead of us. I think this was the first time we started to get a grasp of the fact that the voyage was going to come to an end at some point. 5 weeks NZ, 4 weeks AUS, 2 weeks somewhere in Asia and then we would be back home.

It was too early for breakfast. We just finished the little rest of packing and headed across the street to the airport. Air New Zealand had some really large scales and weighed all our luggage in one fell swoop:

73.7 kg (162 pounds). The weight of our luggage has been slowly creeping upwards.

Adrian showed that he has picked up some of my standing and typing skills as he used up the last MB of wifi we had left while we cehcked in. Viktor was doing his morning prayer:

After security we passed by the gate used by Air Tahiti. Their little poster explaining their fascist carry-on restrictions brought back some scary memories. That skull and bones symbol symbolizes their pirate-like attitude to customers:

Note the friendly wording. If you do not check wether your carry-on is small enough “we will check it for you”

In the departure hall the same guy that played for us on arrival was playing again:

By now we had learned that his name was Jake Numanga and that he had played the ukulele and sung for the passengers of every international flight arriving or leaving Rarotonga for the last 27 years. He always shows up, even for the night flights, which there are plenty of. He is over 70 years old and has no plans of quitting. I found this blog entry where you can read more about him.

There is something fascinating about people who find their way of making a difference and then stick to it for decades. It takes a lot of stamina, dedication and plain old stubbornness to do what Jake has done. Kudos to him for making a difference and making people smile and feel welcome on Rarotonga.

I went over to the window and took the standard photo of our plane, a 767-300, for Marius. Little did I know that everything was not as it should be with this metallic bird:

As we were waiting in the departure hall I was very much looking forward to getting on board to get some sleep. Acoustics were terrible in the hall, as they are in most places where many people are gathered and it is important to give them messages. I have always wondered why no one ever thinks about acoustics when airports, train stations, bus stations etc are constructed, The knowledge and technology is certainly there. When concert halls and operas are constructed the experts get to take part, but for transport halls it seems contractors do all they can to make acoustics as bad as possible. So, when a woman shouted some unintelligible message that seemed to contain our flight number and the word “Auckland” we got up to stand in line. It was a bit suspicious that almost no one else did.

After a while a new message was acoustically smeared out over the room. This time we could hear the fragments “free breakfast provided” and  “5 hour delay.” There was a unison “Whaaaaaat?” in the room before total chaos broke out. No one had heard the entire message and the few Air New Zealand employees in the crowd were bombarded with questions.

After a while we managed to get some more information. A bird had decided to end its life by flying into the big round thing hanging under the wing of its metallic big brother when the plane had landed. Bird strike, ladies and gentlemen. They would have to get the barbecued remains of the fowl out of the engine and then overhaul it. If we were lucky we might go to Auckland tonight. Sigh.

We were bussed to a resort hotel not far from the airport and got a very nice buffet breakfast and access to the whole complex, including the swimming pool. We had of course checked in our luggage, but there was a small shop on the site. A small bathing suit investment later the kids were in heaven again:

I used the opportunity to advance a bit with the blogging. This is what I look like when I have had a good long night of sleep:

There was one other child in the pool and the kids seemed to communicate very well. I reflected on how great it was that our kids had picked up so much English before I realized they were speaking Norwegian together. We got to know a Norwegian couple from Skien who were traveling with their son. They were going to continue to Australia. It was great to share information about travelling with kids and also about places we were going to visit in Australia. Not the least, it was great to speak Norwegian with adults again. It had been a long time.

At 11am we were bussed back to the airport and at 1pm we were in the air. Then we crossed the dateline, lost 24 hours of our lives, and had the whole blog system with daily dated posts messed up.

Eirik

—–

I had read warnings on the net about the stability, or rather lack of such, of the flight schedule to and from Aitutkil. You could easily get stuck here for several hours. So, going out of here i had booked a relatively early flight and a night on Rarotonga before continuing to New Zealand.

We packed everything up in the moring and the caretaker, “Mama” Tatui, drove us over to the airport. She is a remarkable woman. She is now 84 but still handles everything at Aretai and Are-a-matatui, the bungalows owned by her son and daughter. She is originally from Aitutaki but married a Rarotongan and lived there for many years. After her husband died she was back on Aitutaki on vacation almost 20 years ago. She found it so nice to be back she didn’t want to leave.

We could soon see the protestors who show up here every Sunday to protest against flights on Sundays. Mama shook her head and said *Look at them. I know some of these people, when they were young they used to party and drink a lot of alcohol. Now they are suddenly holier than the pope. And here they are protesting against disrupting Sunday peace. One of their arguments is all the noise. And then they come here in their large noisy cars. Couldn’t they at least have walked? Oh, such small minds.”

I love how life wisdom can swing in both directions. From my observation old people treat some issues more diplomatically and with a more flexible view than younger folk. On other issues experience seems to disillusion and make you cut straight to the core of the issue. Why fool around when you can just state the obvious?

We said good-bye:

There was no security check, no fuss about hand luggage, just smiles and good relaxed service. Hey, Heathrow, you guys should send someone here to learn.

We flew back to Rarotonga on Another Saab 340.

We took off exactly on time. Just after takeoff we got some last views of the lagoon:

We checked in at the hotel closest to the airport in Rarotonga. It was only 3pm and we could just relax and chill out. The hotel is just next to the shore and the view from the room was great:

Swimming here was out of the question, the water depth was just a couple of decimeters (less than a foot)

However, there was a pool, and the kids didn’t waste much time before getting in:

Iseline did the daredevil dive. She puts her arms straight down and just lets herself fall forward until she hits the water with a loud splash:

Adrian found gold! A one dollar coin at the bottom of the pool:

I used the opportunity to catch up on some blogging

The occasional rain shower was no match against an inventive Norwegian blogger:

Iseline relaxed in a huge hammock (getting in and out was a big challenge):

The boys kept going in the pool for almost 5 hours. They were completely exhausted afterwards and very easy to get to bed.

There was wifi here, but it was outrageously expensive.They wanted 10 NZ dollars (over 8 USD) per 15 MB! I still had almost 200 MB left of the 500 MB I had purchased for a fraction of that price per MB when we were on Rarotonga a week ago. I knew they had a hotspot of the correct kind at the airport. After Helene had gone to bed at around 11pm I trotted over to the airport with my MacBook and sat down in the waiting area to update and work on the blog.

There was a late night flight and in the beginning I disappeared in the crowd. The flight left around 12:30 and after a while I sat alone among the many seats. The airport is never physically closed as there is only a roof here, there are no walls around the building. There were some people cleaning and someone finishing off the paperwork over at the Air New Zealand Counter. I was clearly being watched, but no one approached me. I was expecting to be thrown out at any minute. After a while everyone left.

A bit after 1am a security guard came over to me and asked if I was allright. I confirmed and told him I was using the internet. He carried on with his inspection routine and then turned off the lights and left.

There was a party somewhere and a lot of distant noise of music and people shouting and/or singing. I reflected that I wouldn’t have dared do this in many other places, but on Rarotonga it felt perfectly safe. At around 3am the party was over and everything got very quiet.

At about 3:30 am a very drunk guy stumbled by and mumbled something unintelligible. I smiled and wished him a continued good night. He stumbled on.

At 4am I was finally finished. I had posted 6 new blog entries. Not bad. I would only get an hour and a half of sleep, but had plenty of time to sleep on the plane to New Zealand in the morning, or so I thought.

Eirik

—–

The British/American family we met the first day on Aitutaki had spoken very highly about a small boat charter company they had used. It was run by a Kiwi called Mike and his wife Mere. They had one boat and the excursion the family had done with them had been outstanding. They told us that they also did deep sea fishing trips and that the yellow fin tuna had just arrived in the area. People were regularly pulling 20 kg tuna out of the water.

Adrian and I really wanted to try deep sea fishing. Previously in the week I had spoken with Mike and we had originally booked a fishing trip two days ago. We had gotten up at 5am. Mike arrived at 5:15, only to tell us that the waves were much too high and that we couldn’t go out with the boat, it was too dangerous. We had rebooked for today, but Mike was very skeptical, the weather forecast did not look promising at all.

I got up at 5am and dragged Adrian out of bed before I stuck my head out of the front door. All the stars were out and there wasn’t even the slightest hint of wind. Perfect! Mere came and picked us up at 5:15 and drove us to the the port in Arutunga, the capital of Aitutaki. She told us we were very lucky, there weren’t many days with this little wind during the year.

Mike’s father was born on Aitutaki and when the couple had been here visiting many years ago they had fallen in love with the place and the rhythm of life here. They decided to stay and start their little business.

Once we arrived it became clear that we were the only customers today. Other potential anglers had probably been scared away by the weather forecast. What a luxury to have the boar to ourselves.

Mike explained to us that the tuna around here can be very picky. They always have a feeding session early in the day, but he never knows when or how long it lasts. Sometimes it can go on for as little as 10 minutes. That is why he always brings clients out before sunrise, so they are sure to be at the feeding grounds when the tuna come to eat.

We sailed out of the lagoon and raced out for about half an hour until we were pretty far from the island. Even though the sea was relatively calm we moved quite a bit about once we slowed down. We were after all in the open Pacific. Adrian quite quickly developed nausea. Unfortunately all the children have inherited Helene’s tendency to easily get sea- and carsick. I had forgotten just how bad it can be with even small wave movements in a boat, when we booked the fishing trip. I am immune to those sorts of things myself and it is so easy to forget, just like Helene forgets how extremely sensitive my skin is to sunburn.

Once, when I was a student, I took this ferry from Oslo to London in order to go Jean-Michel Jarre’s extravagant concert at the Docklands. The ferry got caught in a storm in the North Sea with waves much higher than houses. This enormous ferry with space for about 2000 people was constantly lifted a few tens of meters into the air only to slam down in free fall until it hit the water surface a few seconds later. There were 4 of us traveling together and two of us did not get seasick. While the other two would not/could not move from the cabin we moved about the ship in what was a very alien environment. There were seasick people everywhere and the results of their state everywhere. It was the worst barf-o-rama I have ever seen (The next worst, and also very impressive, was during my student initiation party ( Phaestum Immatricularis) at Samfundet in Trondheim, but that is a different story). We went to the discotheque, on what was a Saturday night, and there were 7 or 8 of us in total there. When the ship slammed down from the top of a wave parts of it was in free fall for an impressive amount of time. We were weightless!

Weightlessness is not, as some people think, lack of gravitation. Weightlessness is being in a constant free fall. When you see astronauts on the international space station they are well within earth’s gravity field, but they are constantly falling towards the earth. The stations large horizontal velocity relative to the earth, and the earth’s curvature, ensures that it does not smash into the ground, but constantly continues to fall. (aka. being in orbit)

What I’m trying to say is that falling together with a ship, or falling as part of a bungy jump for that matter, is genuine weightlessness.

After a while we discovered that we could make the weightlessness last longer by jumping up at the right time. We had lots of time to practice and got pretty good at it. We jumped far up a staircase, half a story at a time, like men on the moon. Of course we had to be really careful with our timing, because on the way up the waves the boat was accelerating upwards and we got much MORE gravity than 1G.

My best moment was when I ran down a hallway at maximum speed and managed to time my jump perfectly. I floated weightlessly at high speed down the hallway, with waving arms, until I crashed into the wall at the T-junction at the end of it. My nose hurt, but I was very happy. Why pay 20 million dollars to go to the international space station, when all you have to do is take a ferry through a storm?

Am I drifting again? Sorry.

We were offered breakfast and Adrian had a little bit, but wasn’t really able to eat much. He didn’t want to go back to the port though, he really wanted to catch some fish.

We must have been trolling for less than 10 minutes, I had just had time to nearly finish my first sandwich, when the line made that wonderful whizzing sound when a fish has taken the lure. We had agreed that Adrian would take the first fish, and he was quick to get in position. Mike helped him get a good grip and placement of the rod:

There was something big at the other end of that line:

The fish would let itself be drawn upwards for a while only to pull all the gained line out again in a raging rush downwards. This was very hard work and after about 15 minutes Adrian’s biceps had had enough. I took over:

After some grueling last runs the fish finally let itself be pulled all the way to the surface, where Mike could get to it. Photo timestamps show that it took us 23 minutes from Adrian grabbed the rod until we had the fish on board. It had been a nice fght:

A 20 kilo (45 pound) yellowfin tuna. New largest fish record for both of us:

Who cares about some slime and blood on the clothes when you have done such a prize catch? (It turned out Helene did, but that’s another story…)

Adrian was not feeling well at all in the waves and really struggled like a hero. He wanted so much to continue, which we did.

I got great tips from Mike and Mere about what we had to see and do in New Zealand while we were waiting for the next tuna to bite.

20 minutes later there was something on the other end again.

I took the rod and was a bit disappointed when the fish willingly let itself be pulled almost all the way up to the boat. Must be a small one.

Wrong. Very wrong.

As soon as the fish understood it had something hooked to it, it rushed downwards at an amazing speed. This was something way bigger than the previous one. I was afraid it would pull out all the line, but luckily it stopped with about 20% of the line left. Whew! Then the hard work started. I pulled it up a few meters, and it pulled down again the same length of line. It did not wiggle or move much. This was just hard pulling, like dragging a piano up the side of a building with a rope, only to have an elephant sit on it until it was back on the ground again.

After about 40 minutes it showed some weakness and let me pull it almost to the boat. It did a another short run until I could pull it up so we could see it. It was massive, maybe around 30 kg (65 pounds). Then, at a crucial moment, I was not concentrated enough, It had been a very long struggle and I was so excited about this fish that i forgot one of the basics just long enough for it to be fatal. When you get a fish this size close to the boat it will be afraid of the boat and do a last couple of runs. The pike, for example, do the same thing. The tuna, wlll do one additional thing in the very end, which Mike had told us about. It will start swimming around in circles at the surface to try to get away, with the rod, and thus the boat, in the center. This is when you need to control the fish and make sure it does not get on the other side of the motor from you.

I had drilled Adrian in this on beforehand, but now I managed to do the mistake myself. As I pulled the fish closer to the boat it made a sudden dive under the boat and started to form the arc of the circle. I could have saved the day by a hard movment in the opposite direction, but wasn’t alert enough. It all happened in a couple of seconds. Mike saw what was happening and dived forward to grab the line and give the pull I hadn’t, but it was too late. Snap! The line was cut by the propeller blades.

I felt really stupid.

Can we reshoot that scene one more time, please?

Oh, the pain of hindsight. If only…

You want so much for that broken Ming vase to unfall and become one piece again, but it is too late.

40 minutes of struggle was over. The tuna had won.

The ocean now seemed dead. Feeding time was most probably over and Adrian was very sea sick. We headed back. Mere tried to console us as much as she could.

Since we now had plenty of time left Mike brought us close to the island and got out some snorkeling equipment for us. We snorkeled in the crystal clear waters just outside the reef for almost an hour and saw lots of beautiful fish.

We had to take a trophy photo with Mike once we were back at the port:

Here is the boat:

Their little operation is called Black Pearl Charters. Highly recommended.

I didn’t know this, but it turns our tuna flesh is like jelly just after you have caught a fish. It needs sevral hours to settle and become the tuna we all know from sushi bars. Mike came over to our bungalow in the evening with tuna steaks and ready cut sashimi. It tasted fantastic:

The others had been spending the day at the beach next to the bungalow.

Tomorrow our adventure on Aitutaki is already over. Time has passed too quickly.

Eirik

—–

And then came the rain. We knew it was rain season, so we couldn’t complain. We were happy we had moved our boat trip, which had been scheduled for February 2.

Actually it is also cyclone season, so we were lucky it wasn’t worse. Aitutaki was struck by Cyclone Pat one year ago. They eye of the cyclone passed straight over the island and people here endured winds of around 190 km/h (120 mph) for over 4 hours. 60% of the houses here were damaged and New Zealand sent an emergency plane with supplies and an engineering team. Calculated risk, each island here gets a visit from a nasty cyclone on the average about every 30 years or so.

The hot water for our bungalow is heated with solar energy, so at the end of the two days it was mostly lukewarm:

Who needs very hot tap water in this climate, anyway?

We didn’t want some sissy tropic drizzle to ruin our plans, so we went ahead with our excursion for the day, a trip to the highest mountain on Aitutaki, Maungapu at 124 meters (407 feet). Although high, Aitutaki’s highest point is left in the dust by Denmark’s highest point, Møllehøj, at a breathtaking 171 meters (561 feet).

A group of happy trekkers on their way:

The vegetation was lush as we climbed the hill. A battle was going on between a climbing plant and the palm trees here and the palm trees seemed to be loosing:

Iseline found a flower on the way up:

We defied the weather gods and fought our way up:

At the top we got a great view of the lagoon, which is probably more impressive on a sunny day:

Nah, better to go shopping for groceries. I stumbled upon a very tempting ice cream in the local shop: “Goody goody gum drops” ice cream, made in New Zealand. It had a strange bubble gum type artificial flavor and was filled with jelly candy. Totally calorie free. After the long and tiring trek we deserved it:

The next day the bad weather contiued. It rained on and off and the sky was gray, gray and more gray. The weather forecast didn’t look good for the coming day either, the new day for our boat trip.

We took a morning bath at the beach. To our surprise the water was pretty cold, probably around 18 C (65 F). Lots of rain water from the very heavy rain during the night had filled the small lagoon on the west side of the island and made it colder than the ocean. The boys didn’t last very long in the water:

You can see the day’s cruise ship in the background. There was a different one there yesterday. Two large groups of tourists who did not get to see Aitutaki in sunshine.

Just to show off the zoom of my compact camera again, here comes a zoomed photo of the ship taken at the same spot as the photo above:

And zooming that photo on the computer reveals the name of the ship:

Achtung Kartoffel! I think I can guess the nationality of the tourists on board.

The air was much warmer than the water and more than warm enough for breakfast on the porch:

The water in the bottle in the middle has been purified by yours truly using a gadget I haven’t had the opportunity to tell you about yet. We are carrying with us an ingenious device called the LifeSaver bottle:

This handy little bottle with a capacity of 750 ml (1.6 US pints) in one filling hides a complex filtering system driven by air pressure. It has an ultrafine ceramic filter with pore openings of only 15 nanometers. That’s 15 billionth of a meter, folks. 15 nanometers is small enough to filter out not only bacteria, but also virus, the smallest living things. From all my research on filtering technologies on the net, this is the only portable system I could find that is capable of removing virus.

In addition to the nanofilter there is also a carbon filter which removes many chemical pollutants.

The water in the tap on Aitutaki is untreated ground water, full of potential illness makers. A perfect water source for the LifeSaver bottle. We filtered all the water we needed from tap water while staying on the island.

Just fill her up:

Put the pumping mechanism back on:

and pump:

Crystal clear sterile water comes out the other end. This bottle is nothing short of a revolution in water purification. Think about the impact if these are distributed after natural flooding disasters, where water is abundant, but clean water is impossible to find. Actually the inventor of the bottle invented it after he saw TV reports about the lack of drinking water in New Orelans after hurricane Katrina. This technology could also bring water to the many people on earth who do not have access to clean drinking water.

Here you can see the inventor of the bottle talk about its potential impact during a TED talk in 2009:

It beats me why this technology has not gotten more attention.

Helene relaxed with a book she found in the bungalow. She managed to get through it during our stay here:

In the evening we went to a so-called island night. An island night is basically a great meal followed by a Polynesian music and dance show. Several restaurants on Aitutaki take turns so that only one of them has island night on any given day of the week.

The restautant was of the almost outdoors kind:

The buffet was a fantastic mix of genuine Aitutaki Polynesian food. Oh, that waistline…

The owner of the restaurant held a small speech and told everyone that his greater family prepares the meals. He pointed out dishes made by this and that relative. His speech gave our meal a very nice extra touch. Then he kept going on for too long about the history of his and his brothers restaurant business and how glad he was to be able to share Aitutaki with us (repeat 7 times). I recalled some of my own speeches from my time as a leader and seeing it from the other side made me realize I probably bored a lot of people on several occasions. I do believe I entertained on several other occasions also, so I’m not too worried about my legacy

Then he held a prayer blessing the food. Christianity seems to be ever present here.

After dinner plastic chairs were placed in the garden for the tourists, and then the dancers and drummers arrived. Aitutaki has been known for a long time throughout Polynesia to have some of the best drummers around. The beat was hypnotizing and impressive.

The dancers were really good. It’s impressive what this little society of 2000 people has of talent.

Fire dancing gives a great visual effect in the pitch dark Pacific night.

The rain had stopped well before our dinner and when we went home the sky was full of stars. This looked promising for our boat trip tomorrow. The night sky here is very impressive, since light pollution is minimal. The moon was not out and we had a look up for a long time before going into the bungalow. We spoke about the Polynesian navigators and how you must feel really small when you are out in the middle of the ocean at night and the only thing you can see is the massive dome of stars over you, which you study  to figure out which direction you need to go.

Eirik

—–

After a calm morning we drove out to talk to a boat charter company. A boat tour of the lagoon was part of our package form the travel agency and given our experiences with Aitutaki we thought it would be prudent to have a talk with them. Here are their headquarters:

They had us in their books, but were really in a pinch since 2 cruise ships were going to come in during the next 2 days and they had capacity problems. Since we had no special plans for the week, except for the boat trip, we offered to postpone our trip until Friday. They were very grateful.

Aitutaki was named “Most beatiful island in the world” by the founder of Lonely Planet in 2010 and is a standard destination for cruise ships in the Pacific. This little island with roughly 2000 inhabitants gets swamped with several hundred cruise ship tourists when they arrive. Most of them only stay for one day.

Aitutaki is an “almost atoll.” An atoll forms when a volcano slowly sinks into the ocean. Corals grow on the old crater and grow upwards. The conditions for corals are more favorable at the fringes, where there is a good supply of oxygen and nutrients from the open sea. Thus the corals further in fall behind in growth and form the bottom of a lagoon. When the volcano is fully submerged, only the coral ring and the lagoon are left and a true atoll has formed. If parts of the volcano still remains over water then you have an almost atoll, like Aitutaki. The main island on Aitutaki is what remains of the volcano. You can see it clearly on this satellite photo:

The main island at the top of the triangle is 8 km (5 miles) long and completely dwarfs the motus, which are the small islands made by the corals along the rim of the lagoon. Interestingly enough two of the small islands in the lagoon, Moturakau and Rapota (marked with red arrows above), are also volcanic. Both were used as filming locations for both the US television reality show “Survivor” and the UK television show “Shipwrecked” in 2006. There were only a few weeks between the end of one series and the filming of the next on these “deserted and untouched” islands.

Aitutaki was used as an allied base during the second world war. It was meant to be the last stance against the Japanese expansion in the Pacific. The Japanese never got this far and there was never any fighting on Aitutaki. The Americans built the large airport here with 2 runways. Only one is still in use but it is completely oversized compared to the turboprop planes that now land there. At 1.8 kilometers (1.1 miles) it is more than long enough to land a 737, for example. You can see the runway which is not in use as a line crossing the very top of the main island. The one in use is just to the right of the first one, it follows the entire very thin peninsula, The two endpoints are marked with green arrows above.

The US soldiers stationed on Aitutaki outnumbered the local inhabitants during the second world war. One can only imagine the impact it must have had on the small Polynesian society here.

The soldiers blasted a hole in the reef on Aitutaki, making it possible to sail boats into the lagoon and to the main island for the first time.

In the 1950s Aitutaki was a refueling stop on the “coral route.” a flight route from Auckland to Tahiti. The planes landed on water, took 45 passengers, and used three days from Auckland to Tahiti. There was only one class, first class, and passengers slept over in luxury hotels in Fiji and Samoa on their way to Tahiti or back again. Back then Tahiti was the dream destination and many passengers would sit and wait for refueling with a view of Aitutaki’s beautiful lagoon so they could continue flying for another 4 hours to reach their holiday destination in Tahiti.

Tourism is the main source of income today, but visitor numbers are still low compared to other similar destinations. About 100 000 tourists come here every year,

In other trivia, rugby is the main sport on the island, and there are 4 clubs and 8 teams, not bad for a population of 2000.

After rebooking our boat trip I dropped the rest of the family off at a beach facing the lagoon and then did an email session at the same restaurant as yesterday. I needed to follow up on some requests I had done for the New Zealand part of our trip. The view from my table was terrible (notice the diet coke, a pathetic attempt of reducing my waistline):

We spent our day at the beach.

The boys joined a Jesus course organized by the local church. We were very impressed by the results at the end of the day. Here they are during training:

And here is Adrian, doing his Galilee-dash in 17.4 seconds.

It reminded me of the old joke: Heard on the shore of Galilee lake: “I don’t care who your father is. You are scaring away the fish!”

Happy boys at the end of a long day at the beach:

See you around, folks.

Eirik

—–

Our first full day on Aitutaki was spent in the local island pace. We got to know our bungalow and its surroundings, and the kids spent time on the beach.

After another night of blogging I slept long and missed the opportunity to say good-bye to our British/American friends in the bungalow next door. Helene took this great photo of the girls just before they left:

Iseline was very sad that they had to leave.

The bungalow was spacious and well equipped. We were just next to the beach. Rarotonga had been great, but this was definitely an upgrade. Here is our bungalow:

The patio was great:

And here is the view from it:

Yup, that’s the beach in the background. Let’s move a little closer:

Nice, eh? View to the left:

View to the right:

We had lunch down at the beach. It is now impossible to hide that I have gained too much weight after Argentina. WARNING! Fat belly alert! You have to be over 21 in some states to be allowed to watch this photo:

We did some shopping. I grabbed some shaving foam and was sure I had bought some Gilette foam. Only when we got back did I realize that the brand was a different one:

Made in China. But it worked, and it worked well.

Even though the currency here is the New Zealand dollar, there are specific Cook Island coins that are used interchangeably with the New Zealand ones. Most coins have the same size and color as the NZ ones, just like the different coins you can find from different countries in the Euro zone. However, for some reason, they have decided to make the 2 dollar coin completely and utterly different. Triangular money! Coooool. I have never seen that before. This coin must be a real challenge for vending machine designers:

In the afternoon I went over to a restaurant, after a recommendation from our friends who stayed next door, to get online. I was pleasantly surprised by the speed, it was about the same as on Rarotonga, and about 10 times faster than the line I had used at the airport yesterday. Probably not good enough for remote cardiac surgery, but it would probably do for an appendicitis operation.

I spent almost 5 hours online booking and checking stuff for our stay on the North Island on New Zealand. Helene had already traced out the route and decided number of days in each location using the Lonely Planet guide (eBook version, of course). Now it was my turn to use the net to find good accomodation options and more location info using Tripadvisor and other sources, Being your own travel agency sure takes time, but is definitely worth it. I managed to rent us some very nice spacious private homes in great locations for less than the cost of a cramped hotel room.

We have decided to completely change our itinerary for the rest of the voyage given our experience so far. We will spend 5 weeks on New Zealand, 2 in the north and 3 in the south. Adding an extra week will give us the possibility to stay longer at each place and reduce some of the moving around stress on the kids.

Australia will be cut down from 6 weeks to 4, and we will obviously see fewer places. We will cut Kangaroo island and Adelaide and also spend less time in Sydney and Melbourne. Don’t worry, we will keep our 10 days in Brisbane.

Eirik

—–

We all got up early to finish packing, and… go to church.

Polynesian church services are, it seems, renowned for the beautiful singing. We wanted to go when we were in the Marquesas but didn´t have the energy to get up early enough.

It was raining heavy in the morning, but just as we were getting ready to go it stopped. The lull lasted until we were inside the church. Maybe someone was trying to send us a message.

Rarotonga is riddled with churches and we only had to walk about 150 meters to get to the closest one:

The service was held in Rarotongan Maori (the Polynesian languages here and on New Zealand are called Maori). It was, naturally, difficult to motivate the kids to sit still. I had told them about the great singing and was relieved when everyone finally got up to sing. Background music came out of the speakers mounted high up all over the church. The volume was way too loud and the sound quality was awful, like a worn out car stereo on full volume. What a disappointment.

Everyone was singing loudly and I could make out that some of the sound that filled the room had to be human, but the resulting cacophony was not very pleasant. After a long and painful song we could sit down again. Ouch.

We held out through a long monolog by the priest, before the congregation again sang with accompanying background music of the loud kind, followed by more preaching. I was starting to get very disappointed and embarrassed that I had dragged the whole family here for this.

Then, just as I was giving up all hope, everyone rose to sing again. This time they left the stereo off. Wow! The room filled with loud fantastic a capella music. It was magic and I immediately understood what all the fuss was about. Everyone in the congregation chimed in and no energy was spared. The church vibrated with positive energy. The kids were petrified and sat still like candles.

We had to sneak out before the service was over to get back and on our transport to the airport. Tim gave us the traditional Polynesian farewell shellfish necklaces.

On the road again!

We had had really nice and relaxed days on Rarotonga and gotten used to the slow pace of life. Tim warned us about the pace on Aitutaki, though. He said that after a week on Aitutaki we would think Rarotinga was very stressful.

We arrived at the airport one hour before the flight only to discover that there was no one there.

Around 40 minutes before the scheduled flight time a couple of people came strolling by at the inside of the counter and entered an office without looking at us. Half an hour before departure check-in opened. We still took off on time! This sure wasn’t Heathrow!

Our plane was a Saab 340:

We had learned our lesson and packed very light hand-luggage. The saxophone did not pass this time. The woman in blue below insisted on putting it with the gorilla and all the suitcases. After a couple of protests we gave in. She assured us they would take good care of it. She claimed they had even successfully transported a wedding cake back there.

The flight lasted less than an hour. On approach we could see some of the colors in Aitutaki’s famous lagoon:

and some of the motus (small islands)

Aitutaki, like Tikehau, does not offer much resistance to the wind and weather systems. Rain comes and goes in a matter of minutes. As we taxied to the airport building a very strong rain shower suddenly dumped its contents on the airport. As we got out we could feel that the wind was very strong. Viktor was the only one who complied with my request for taking an arrival picture:

One on the inside there was no one with the expected sign with our name on it. We got our luggage, looked a bit around and finally asked someone. He knew the travel agency we were using and said they were probably on their way. This happens all the time here. People aren’t very focused on time here. They will come.

We waited:

and waited. Once everyone else had left and there were only a few people left, working at the airport, we were starting to get just a little bit worried. Since we were using a travel agency for only the second time during the voyage (Peru was the first time) I had been very relaxed and happy that I could let go a bit of that constant slightly uncomfortable feeling of being responsible and accountable for all our logistics. I had no idea what the place we were going to stay was called, much less did I have an address or a phone number. In addition our phones did of course not work out here. Amateur!

I fished my MacBook out of the luggage and found the document I had received on email from the agency. OK. The place was called Are-a-Matatui. I remembered now that I had even had a look at their web site back when I booked. Unfortunately there was no address or phone number in the document. It was also Sunday and impossible to reach the travel agency

We grabbed the same guy again and he had to admit they should have arrived by now, even by Aitutaki standards. He lead us over to a counter where he said we could get help. After having presented our problem the guy there told us that we were on the wrong island! Are-a-Matatui was on another island. The travel agency must have mixed up the reservation.

Helene freaked out.

I was not convinced and told him I had seen their web site and was sure they were here. He countered that the islands was very small and that he knew it and every single accommodation option like his own back pocket. There was no place called that here. Period.

Our only hope now was connectivity. I asked him if he had access to the internet. The response was affirmative! He had a very small and very old notebook computer hidden under the counter. He let me come around and with a certain suspense I typed in the name of the place in Google. It took about 3 minutes to get the results page back. I was taken aback. This was not some cheapo internet line, this was the connection used by the guy who seemed to be running the airport here.

I remembered reading an article some time ago about the new technological divide in the world. Many developing countries suffer with very slow network connections and are less competitive because of it. Internet infrastructure has become just as important as having a good transport and road infrastructure. This is going to become more and more important in the future. Many investment decisions are taken and will be taken based on the quality of the internet infrastructure of a country. Countries will fail or succeed based on this factor. Given services that will become available in the future lives will also depend on it. If you willingly put yourself inside a Surge-o-matic long distance surgery machine where you are getting remote control heart surgery from an expert surgeon sitting in New Dehli, you wouldn’t like the line to go down or halt for 5 minutes just after your artery has been cut.

Ooops, sorry.

I cliked on the link to Are-a-Matatui and managed to convince the guy that it existed and was on the island. There was a phone number and a crude map! Here we are during the investigation:

The guy who had lead us over to the counter was paying close attention. He helped us with the map location. He correctly guessed that we were actually at Are-a-tai. The next day we discovered that a sister and a brother owned the place and that the two bungalows owned by the sister was called Are-a-Matatui and the others Are-a-tai. However, all signs said Are-a-tai and that  was the only name the locals knew.

The guy with the computer called and the other end said that they did not have any register of any new guests today, but would come over immediately. The guy in red said “I can bring them, I’m going home anyway and I live just next door.” He drove us slowly down to the place in his pickup.

Whew! We had a place to sleep for the night.

Later Helene got our rental car. They had a strange system where they will not let you have the car at the airport, but drive to pick you up where you are staying and then drive you to the rental agency, which happens to be very close to the airport.

We took a drive around the island, which is about 8 km long (5 miles) and 3 km (2 miles) wide at its widest:

The main road on the east side goes through a banyan tree!

There were many signs protesting Air Rarotonga’s introduction of Sunday flights:

This is a very Christian place indeed. Since we arrived on Sunday (may our flight sins be forgiven) everything was closed, except one little shop and its corresponding fast food place. We could only imagine how the local Christians must talk about the place. Our late lunch consisted of deep fried chicken and fries. We were very hungry at this stage, after having searched for something to eat for a while:

When I asked for ketchup I was given a long stare. Of course not, what kind of fancy place did I think this was? When I asked for paper napkins they grudgingly went into the kitchen and tore off three paper towels. The logic was probably that since we had bought three plates of chicken and fries I could have three paper towels. We bought a large bottle of ketchup in the store, as you can see.

When we got back we started chatting with the people staying in the bungalow next to us, the only other people staying at the property. They were a British/American couple (living in California), Dave and Kate. Dave’s father, Ron and their two daughters, Juliette and Carolyne were also with them. They invited us over to a late parrot fish dinner. End result:

Ron was over 80, in excellent shape, full of wit and humor and very British. During their stay here he had been snorkeling in the lagoon and really enjoyed it.

They had only good things to tell us about the island. Unfortunately they were leaving early the next morning. What a shame.

Sometimes you just click with people, and at the end of the evening it felt like we had known them for a very long time. Helene and I noticed how much we miss having friends around that we can have good discussions with. Be warned, there will be dinners organized when we get back.

Eirik

—–

Our last full day on Rarotonga we took a tour of the island by car.

There is one main road here, which follows the coastline. There are two bus lines on the island, the clockwise bus line and the anti clockwise bus line

In addition to the main road there is also a small road which circulates the island a few hundred meters inland from the main road. It is called the Are Metua, and was built by the Polynesians about a thousand years ago. It used to be a showcase of Polynesian engineering. 29 km (18 miles) long and 5 meters (16 feet) wide it was paved with basalt and coral stones until the Americans covered the road during the second world war. It now looks like any small rural road.

Unfortunately it was raining vey hard, so we got to see the interior of the island in its wet look.

A typical Rarotongan house:

There is virtually no poverty to be seen on the island, people are enjoying a rather high standard of living and it seems to be fairly evenly distributed. The financial support from New Zealand must have had the intended effect.

Earlier we had bought our snorkeling equipment in a shop in Avarua. I love trying to guess people’s nationalities from their English accent, and the guy serving us had a very Scandinavian type of accent. I was pretty sure he was Swedish, but he could also have been from Norway’s border area with Sweden. Swedish and Norwegian are so close they would have been considered two dialects of the same language in other parts of the world. German spoken in southern and northern Germany are further apart, in my opinion, then Norwegian and Swedish.

Before I could ask the question Adrian made a comment about something in Norwegian and the guy switched over to Swedish. He was in fact the owner of the shop and had lived on Rarotonga for almost all his life. His father had come here in the early seventies and fell in love with the place. He obviously loved being able to speak Swedish and we got royal treatment and a good discount on our purchase.

When we asked him if he liked life on the island we got a different answer than I expected. He used some time to think then said that he was starting to get used to it and enjoyed it more now as an adult. Again we were surprised when he said it had nothing to do with the “paradise island” flora and climate. No, what he was starting to enjoy more and more was the relaxed atmosphere and the slow pace of life here.

As a child it was rather boring to grow up on Rarotonga, he said. The island is small and there is not much more than beach, swimming and snorkeling going on.

There were many flame trees:

We passed lots of churches. The ratio of churches to people on Rarotonga must be one of the highest in the world. It is interesting to see how many Polynesians on all the islands we have visited so far are more catholic than the pope. The missionaries who have worked in the Pacific during the centuries have been successful beyond their wildest dreams. It is especially ironic on the Cook Islands, which used to be a part of New Zealand.

I found numbers on the net from the 2001 census:

On the Cook Islands 55.9% are members of the Cook Islands Christian Church (spinoff from the London Missionary Society) , 16.8% are Roman Catholic, 7.9% Seventh Day Adventists, 3.8% Church of Latter Day Saints, 5.8% other Protestant.

As you can see, many different missionaries have had a field day here.

4.2% have other religions, 2.6% unspecified and 3% none (2001 census).

In New Zealand, on the other hand, the old mother country, more and more people are starting to realize that there probably isn’t a great spirit in the sky after all.

In the 2001 census 58.9% reported that they were Christians. Next on the list was 29.6% with no religion, then 6.9% objected to answering(!) Next, and this is quite amusing for an old Star Wars fan like myself, is Jedi with 1.5%. the Jedi beat the Buddhists and the Hindi, which both came in at 1.2%!

It turns out there was a semi-organized campaign ahead of the census in the old British Empire where people were asked to fill out “Jedi” as religion to protest against the question being asked. Jedi populations popped up all over the Commonwealth, but only in New Zealand did they make up as much as 1.5%. Gotta love the Kiwis. Incidentally 26 people in New Zealand actually took the joke to the next level and stated “The Dark Side” as their religion.

This pattern of de-Christianization of the western world, whereas the old colonies cling to their religion, seems to be a common one in mane places (with the exception of the US). Isn’t it interesting that the original Christian countries are moving away from Christianity while the converted countries, those who have had their religion replaced by Christianity in relatively modern times, seem more religious than ever?

It reminds me (OK, OK, far fetched, I agree, but hey, I get to decide the subject, you only get to read) of the interesting phenomenon of hypercorrection. When someone learns a language they tend to emphasize the parts of the language that are different from other languages they know. These become overlearned and used in places where they shouldn’t. This is why so many French, who finally manage to pronounce the English “H,” tend to pronounce it all the time and also add an extra one whenever a word starts with a vowel. Whenever you hear someone saying “The bell chimes HHHevery HHHour,” you know there is a French around. This is also why so many Norwegians put in a “Z” sound in English where there should be an “S”

Aaaaanyway, we saw this sign next to the Are Metua (the old road):

advertizing for one of the many fringe Christian groups on Rarotonga. Here you can have your feet washed, you can, presumably, also get them to come pray at your home. They even have ther own dial-a-prayer service!

Interestingly enough there are many graves in the gardens on Rarotonga. My guess is that this is a continuation of the Polynesian tradition of keeping ancestor bones close to the village, so the mana of the dead can protect the living.

The island is lush and wild as soon as you get a few hundred meters from the oceanfront

There are fruit trees everywhere. Especially abundant is the papaya, which you can see rows of in the background here:

There are lots of pigs and chickens on the island. These guys were strolling along the road and didn’t seem to care much that we were around:

Finally, here is a photo of Rarotonga stitched together from photos we took when we were out snorkeling close to the edge of the reef:

Eirik

—–

Punanga Nui Market

Ce matin, je me suis levée tôt avec Iseline pour aller au marché qui a lieu tous les samedis matins. Nous avions lu dans les guides touristiques que c’est un marché typique, où les locaux vendent leurs produits: fruits et légumes, poisson, vêtements et paréos, etc.

Le marché alimentaire se trouve au même endroit que le marché artisanal, avec des cabanes qui restent en permanence.

Nous avons pu nous ballader entre les stands qui proposent aussi des plats chauds et froids et des boissons fraiches. Le marché est visiblement très fréquenté par les habitants de l’île.

Nous avons trouvé une belle robe pour Iseline, et apprecié toutes les belles couleurs des textiles sur les portiques.

Nous sommes rentrées avec des bons fruits et legumes et du poisson pêché le matin même. Nous avons préparé une partie du thon en un plat typique en Polynésie et aux iles Cook. Ici il s’appelle “ika mata”.

La recette est très simple: On coupe le thon (ultrafrais!) en dés, ainsi que des tomates et du concombre. On ajoute selon son goût un peu d’oignon cru. On recouvre de crème de coco et de jus de citron vert. Un peu de sel et de poivre, de la coriandre fraiche si on aime, et voilà!

Le reste du thon passera un court instant au barbecue. Mmmmmm!

I swam out towards the limit of the reef at Muri beach with Viktor one day, where snorkeling is really good. We made sure not to get too close to the edge, we had learned our wave lesson from Tikehau. The water was shallow in places and we had to take care not to cut our feet on the corals, but this wasn’t a big problem. It was easy to just stay afloat and swim until we could see a safe place to put our feet.

During my research on Rarotonga I found that one of the things they use heavily in their tourist marketing is the fact that there are no poisonous animals or insects on the island. It gave me a good feeling and made it easier to select to go to Rarotonga with the kids. Marketing works.

As we were out there on the reef a kayak came out with a local father and his two boys. They were obviously going to do snorkeling. They came over to us and the guy asked us, with a horrified tone in his voice: “Don’t you have any shoes?” I had to admit that we didn’t. He said it was dangerous.  Thinking I knew what he was talking about I confirmed that we knew corals can cut you and that we took care. He explained that it wasn’t corals that were the problem. “Don’t you know that there are lots of stonefish here? They have poisonous spikes. If you step on one you have half an hour to get treatment, otherwise you will die. I would never bring my child out here without shoes.”

Brilliant.

No poisonous animals or insects, huh? “I did not have sex with that woman.” Sometimes it’s all in the choice of words. Thank you Rarotonga tourist office, we just lost all confidence in everything else you claim in your glossy brochures.

We hurried back to shore. Yet again I felt like a responsible father.

I looked up these fish we had never hear about before on the web. Wow. In the Amazon we had seen bullet ants, they can pump a neurotoxin into your flesh and their sting is considered the most painful insect sting in the world. The stonefish does one better. A stonefish sting is considered “the worst pain known to humanity.” Giving birth to a child is like a mosquito bite compared to this thing.

The stonefish is the most poisonous fish in the world and like the bullet ant it pumps neurotoxins into you. It has 13 long spikes on its back. If you touch the fish it will start thrusting these spines quickly and forcefully upwards in an undulating motion, much like a lethal sewing machine. Its interesting little poison mix will start to kill your flesh and if you are lucky you only have to amputate.

They are called stonefish because of their extremely good camouflage. They look exactly like nice little stones where you want to put your feet to avoid being cut by the corals.

There is an antidote, which incidentally is the second most administered antivenom in Australia. You do have more than half an hour to get it though and most people survive  stonefish stings.

A good thing to know is that the venom is destroyed by heat. If you put your foot in a bucket of water at 50 C (122 F) you will scream in pain from the hot water (it probably will not add much pain compared to the sting, anyway) but all the stonefish poison will be broken down.

The next day we bought reef shoes (and also snorkeling equipment) for the whole family.

Inspired by the locals we rented 3 kayaks one day and went out to the limits of the reef, so everyone could enjoy the good snorkeling and the stonefish (notice the shoes).

Me strong. Me tug whole family

The snorkeling on Rarotonga was fantastic. Lots of coral formations and plenty of fish around all the time. The underwater casing for the camera was heavily used. Here Iseline is getting ready:

Going in:

Darth Vader getting ready to snorkel:

<Heavy life-support-machine breathing> Iseline, Adrian and Viktor, I am your father… </Heavy life-support-machine breathing>

The underwater world was fascinating. Corals form stunning structures in different colors and look like they have been designed by some artist at Pixar. It’s difficult taking photos underwater, since you can seldom see anything on the camera screen. We just snapped photos in all directions and took several hundred of them. Here are some of the ones that turned out OK:

There were spiky things in addition to the stonefish we never saw:

I stepped on one of those in the Mediterranean when I was a kid. The reflex to stay far away from them is still there.

There were schools of small fish living in some of the coral “trees.” They would swim about close to it, and as soon as we came closer, everyone disappeared really fast into the coral structure all at once. After a while they would peek out and then slowly come out again:

This is the same one seen from above, while they are slowly coming out from hiding:

There were plenty of cool fish:

The starfish were blue:

The kids really got addicted to snorkeling:

The day we rented kayaks we had to go back after a couple of hours of snorkeling to give back the kayaks. When I told Viktor we had to go he said “Ahhh, we just got here. Can’t we stay here forever.” He caught the sentiments of all of us exactly in that statement.

Eirik

—–

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