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

—–

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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For our 12 day stay on Rarotonga we had found a small self-catering place called Te Moana Muri (if my research on Rarotongan Maori is correct it means “The Ocean, Muri”). They have 3 units which each has 3 bedrooms and can sleep 6 persons. Again TripAdvisor was our friend and we were not let down. The “bungalows” were actually very spacious houses, placed on the hillside just above Muri beach. Muri beach has a lagoon and is the best place for both swimming and snorkeling on Rarotonga. Just down from us there was no real beach, just rocks, so we had about 500 meters (1/3 mile) to cover before we were at the closest sand beach.

For us, it was the perfect place to be. Calm and quiet, great view, lots of space.

As you can see, each unit has two floors. This is upstairs:

And this is downstairs:

In the kitchen we made Kool Aid, specially privately hand-imported from the US of A. Kool Aid is an American soft drink that brings back sweet memories from my childhood days in Chattanooga in the US. It is bought in the form of small sachets of a strong chemical powder. Mix in water and lots of refined unhealthy white sugar and you have a yummy all natural drink. When I used to go to the San Francisco Bay area for my work I would bring some back for the kids and myself. I couldn’t find it in the many upscale modern eco-friendly organic food supermarkets in the valley. After extensive search I finally found Kool Aid, this well-known beacon of American culinary culture, in one of the low-end stores in East Palo Alto.

The first time I brought some back i mixed a batch, tasted it and said to Helene: “Ah, just like I remember it from my childhood. You should try some, it tastes just like fruit juice.” She believed me and has never forgiven me, nor tried Kool Aid again.

No artificial coloring at all, almost:

There was a large balcony on the ground floor with a great view of Muri beach,

an outdoor table

and a barbecue, which we used frequently:

The place was run by an Australian couple, Tim and Janelle. Tim had come here some years ago to coach the Cook Islands national team in soccer! When his contract was over, after 2 years, the couple didn’t want to go back and decided to settle on Rarotonga. We only found out the last day that Tim had been a professional soccer coach for a national team. Adrian was really sorry he hadn’t known before, so he could have played with Tim.

Tim and Janelle were the perfect hosts. Tim dropped by every day to check if we were having a good time and that everything was in order. He supplied us with a steady supply of coconut and papaya from the garden. He also taught us how to open coconuts with a machete.

Editors note (hey, I am both editor and writer): Normally I am very much against animations on web pages, especially on pages with lots of text . They are a big nuissance since they distract you from the reading. However, there is a time for everything There is a time for work, there is a time for rest. There is a time to stand up for your rights, there is a time to chill out and party, there is a time for asking the big questions in life, and there is, finally, a first time for me to include an animation on a web page. May Odin forgive, I could not resist when I saw these two photos in succession. Tim is really going for the kill:

Me strong, me prepare food:

Tim gave us the traditional Polynesian good-bye shellfish necklaces when we left:

It was almost sad leaving the house. It was probably the best self-catering accommodation we have had so far during the voyage.

Eirik

—–

We finally got the DVDs we had ordered from France when we were in Tahiti and were anxiously following the tracking information of the two other packages we were waiting for.

In the year of our lord 2011, on the 20th day of the first month, when there is winter in the northern hemisphere, and many Norwegians catch fish while standing on the ice, a miracle took place on a small Pacific island called Rarotonga. A package arrived with new glasses for the Chocolate Mousse Prophet. Trumpets were heard from beyond the clouds and a great ball of fire, fueled by an intense nuclear fusion reaction, was hanging heavily in the sky, blinding anyone who dared to look straight at it for 5 minutes.

It had been 126 days since I ordered my new glasses in the store in Norway. After we had relieved the incompetent people at Bring Express (not necessarily recommended by this publication) of their duties and left the glasses in the hands of FedEx in Brasil, things started taking a more normal course.

The people at the store in Norway have been fantastic and have been just as frustrated as I have during this kafkaesque experience with Bring Express (better not use them, I tell ya). It was a big relief to get the glasses. The old ones I have been wearing are full of scratches and have been giving me headaches from time to time.

Many, many thanks to Dauro and Laura for resending them from Brasil and handling all the communications and paperwork with FedEx there.

There was a bulky thingy:

Inside there was a cardboard box:

Inside that there was a case (is it empty?):

And inside that there were the most beautiful, shiny and crystal clear pair of glasses you have ever seen:

We went out on the balcony to celebrate and we took this picture which I sent to the store in Norway in an email:

The next day they wrote back that they had put a printout of the picture on the wall in their lunch room as an inspiration to all the employees!

A week later, on the 27th, Adrian finally got his glasses which had been sent from Villa La Angostura in Argentina. On time and at half the price UPS wanted us to pay. FedEx rules.

Many, many thanks to Jorge and Carmen for sending them from Argentina and handling all the communications and paperwork with FedEx there.

Yay!

Houston, we have glasses!

All systems go!

So, with 40% of the family having their eye-sight restored we were ready for new and dangerous adventures,

Eirik

—–

For over a week we had some very calm days on Rarotonga. The whole family had a counter reaction to all the great experiences we have had so far. We have met so many nice people and seen so many great sites our brains were saturated with all the impressions. Here we were, on a tropical island, with a fantastic beach and snorkeling opportunities, yet all we wanted to do was to stay in the house and just be together.

Once I had got the prepaid internet thing working the next challenge was to find a good way to use it. I didn’t want to purchase a separate prepaid card for each of the three laptops, the iPads and the iPods.

I purchased an Apple AirPort Express when we were in the states. It’s an ingenious little device that does one thing very well. It looks like a charger and all the electronics is in one unit that you plug in directly. Then it has a single RJ45 standard ethernet plug. Plug it to the mains, plug in an internet connection and you have a WiFi zone. Couldn’t be simpler, and it really works.

I figured that depending on how the net provider checks how you are logged in, it might be possible to share the connection from one MacBook if I connected it to the AirPort device. I plugged it all together and turned on internet sharing on the MacBook. It actually worked! Presto, a new Wifi zone we all could connect to. Me happy. Here it is, plugged in to the right, it’s the thingy with the green light. Never mind the mess, I’m so sorry, I wasn’t expecting any guests right now.

For the first few days we stayed a lot indoors. The weather was completely unpredictable. The sky would go from clear to covered in a few minutes, rain could show up without warning, and then disappear again in a Houdini-like fashion. View from the balcony during heavy rain:

We established a home schooling routine and did schooling every day. Teacher at work:

I found a good implementation of the board game “Risk” (Lux Deluxe is the name) on the net and the kids and I played many games. Isline became a very sharp player during the week and beat us all several times:

We also got out a few hours every day, mostly in the afternoon when the heat was less intense, and tried out the different parts of Muri beach. Here is the eastern part where there is mostly sand:

Further to the west the beach is more rocky, but snorkeling is much better:

We all enjoyed swimming. Getting used to the temperature of the water was not an issue!

My beautiful and happy wife:

We were occasionally surprised by rain while on the beach, but who cares in this temperature? Hey, Warwick, I’m actually starting to enjoy getting wet instead of freaking out and fearing for my life. It is essential to have an umbrella when it rains, so you do not get wet. Oops, too late:

Most of the time we cooked our own food. Supermarkets were reasonably well stocked and we could get most basic things. Almost everything on Rarotonga is imported, mostly from New Zealand, and pretty expensive.

Iseline learned to make an omelet and scrambled eggs all by herself during these days. Proud chef:

Ready to taste her self-made scrambled eggs:

We also went out to a few restaurants. There’s lots of good fish to be had on Rarotonga. Sails restaurant on Muri beach was very good, as well as Trader Jack’s in Avarua.

Both are beach front restaurants. Here we are at Trader Jack’s, waiting for the food to cook:

Life has been far too good here and my waist diameter is steadily increasing.

We had lunch one day at Sails and saw these model sailboats in the water:

A bunch of people older than us were remote controlling them. They seemed very serious about it and kept going the entire time we were there. It was difficult to understand the attractiveness of this activity. They did not seem to fight or race each other  in any way, but were just extremely concentrated while they mindlessly sailed these model boats around:

I hope I find more meaningful things to do when I get older.

We went over to a playground in Avarua one day and the kids burned some calories:

There were gekkos everywhere, they would come crawling on the outside of the mosquito nets of the windows in the evening. Once in a while the kids reported that they had seen one catch an insect with its tongue:

They are amazing climbers and can effortlessly stay upside down attached to the ceiling. They have very large numbers of microscopic fibers on their feet that attract to the surface they are on, probably using the molecular scale Van der Waals force.

They are unique among lizards in making chirping sounds to communicate with each other. They sound like birds.

Geckos also have a quite special defense mechanism. When cornered it will drop its tail! The tail wiggles vigorously and attracts the attention of the attacker while the gecko runs for it. A new tail will eventually grow back. We caught one with a bowl one evening, and when we lifted the bowl its tail was detached and wiggling like crazy.

We even caught a baby one and put it in a wine glass for a while. No tails were hurt in the making of this photo:

Helene went to the movies with the boys one evening to see the latest Harry Potter movie:

All in all we’ve had a great relaxing week on Rarotonga. We all needed to recharge our batteries a bit.

Eirik

—–

Ah, Rarotonga, the island paradise we had read so much about. We had set aside almost 2 weeks here with the goal of relaxing at the beach, snorkeling and enjoying the favorable climate.

Helene was an early bird, and went in to Avarua in the morning to get our driving licenses while I slept in with the kids.  She came back with only one license. Even though they just make you a new license when they see your old one, you have to be there in person, presumably because they want your picture on the license.

Helene drove us down to Muri beach where we enjoyed the lagoon:

At the entrance to the beach a tour organizer had set up these signs:

2851 km (1772 miles) to the closest McDonald´s, 10 meters if you want to book a tour

We got a couple of hours of beach life before it started raining. This is the rainy season here and we knew it was a risk coming in January.

We went back to our bungalow before I ventured out to get my driving license and find out why I had been sold non-functioning expensive internet access cards yesterday.

The only way to do that, without bringing the whole family, was for me to drive illegally without a driving license into town. We figured the risk was minimal and off I merrily went. We had passed the police station yesterday, so I knew roughly where it was, but I didn’t have a map with the station marked on it.

I kept looking nervously to the side of the road as I slowly drove forward. Driving in Rarotonga is not like driving in other places. With the one main road being circular and 32 km (20 miles) in circumference, no matter where you are going, your maximum distance covered is 16 km (10 miles), if you go in the right direction. With a normal speed limit of 40 km per hour (25 mph) you would think you would never be in your car more than half an hour. Not so. Life is very laid back and people drive slowly here. No one seems to mind if someone bumps along at half the speed limit and overtaking is done gently and with minimum acceleration.

Half way to Avarua I passed a policeman measuring the speed of cars with a laser measuring device! Wow, I hadn’t expected that. Luckily I drove like the locals and also did not take any risks, illegally driving as I was. Most stupid bank robbers get caught because they overreact when they are stopped in a routine police control. The really smart ones, the survivors and multiple bank robbers, know how to stay calm when the police are around.

I knew I was getting very close when I suddenly saw several cars in front of me had come to a complete stop. The place was swarming with police and it looked like they were stopping each and every car and checking the papers. Caramba! I was in trouble. As the line of cars slowly moved forward i could see that yes, they were actually checking everyone’s papers. OK. Stay calm now, think. This is not over yet. There was no place to turn around (if so I could just have driven around the island in the other direction to reach the police station) naturally and pulling over in a parking spot to turn the car around now would just draw unwanted attention from the long reach of the law.

Then it seemed like Odin was with me. A long line had been building up an the officers of the law suddenly decided to let several cars through, without checking papers, presumably to avoid too much of a congestion. The three cars ahead of me were waved through. As I approached I got no signal from the police officer who had waved through the others. Having learnt my lesson from bank robber movies I slowed down, let myself a bit down in the seat and smiled a question mark to the guy. We stared at each other for a few infinite seconds while i kept thinking “These are not the droids you are looking for.” before he decided to wave me through also.

Phew! I was born again. I could now concentrate on finding the police station which seemed to have sunk down into the earth. I passed the airport, which I knew was too far. As I looked for a place to turn I saw a sign with “Island Hopper Vacations.” Ah, the travel agency we are using for the trip to Aitutaki in 10 days. I needed to answer an email from them regarding our overnight stay on Rarotonga on our way back from Aitutaki, so I parked and entered the small building.

There, on one of two desks, sat Ronnie, the guy I had been emailing with multiple times since September. Cool. It’s strange to meet someone in person who you have emailed quite a bit with. You make pictures of the other person in your head. Ronnie was not at all as I had expected. He was older and less energetic, but came over as a very nice guy. We fixed the remaining hotel detail. i asked Ronnie where the police station was. He smiled and said it was just after the airport. There is a large sign. You cannot miss it. OK.

I now made my way back to Avarua, looking for the police station, which was still nowhere to be found. Damn’, I was getting dangerously close to the police control. I had not paid much attention to traffic in the other direction when I passed the control and had no idea if they checked cars in both directions or not. Closing in, closing in. Where is that station?

My heart missed a beat when I suddenly realized I was just where the control had been. They were all gone. No control anymore. And the police station was there. The control had been done just next to the entrance to the police station! Why bother moving when you don’t have to? I hadn’t noticed because I had been too focused on the bank robber thing.

Relieved I continued until I could turn, which happened to be just where the the telecom shop was, where we had bought the fraudulent non-working internet access cards yesterday. I parked there since the police station was within walking distance.

I entered the shop and loaded my brain with fighting spirit while I was waiting in line. I hadn´t gotten a receipt yesterday and was dependent on reasonable people on the other side of the counter. I knew that was not necessarily a given.

When I explained my case and was ready to release my anger the woman behind the counter smiled, turned to her colleague next to her, and said “We really need to talk to the printers about this.” Then she turned to me and explained that the letter “p” is printed in the same way regardless of its case. Did my card have a “p” in the password? It sure did. In fact both the ones I had tried had a lowe case “p” in the password by pure coincidence. If I had tried the third card yesterday it would have worked!

I had brought my MacBook and I tested then and there, and sure thing, with a lower case “p” it worked like a charm. Maybe they should consider warning people about these “p”-s instead of having almost every 11th (closer to 10.7579 actually) card not working (assuming equal distribution of all upper and lower case letters and the digits)

Getting two cards in a row with a lower case “p” should then happen in only one of 115 cases. I had won in the inverse lottery!

Check out these lovely lower case “p”-s:

Afterwards, getting a license at the police station was as easy as waiting in line for a good while, smiling to the photographer, and paying the 20 NZD. I had the same feeling I had when they handed me my shiny new driving license in Legoland when I was about 7 years old:

The waiting in line was a relaxed experience where nothing seemed to hurry for anyone. Well, I wasn´t in a hurry either, so I just went with the flow. Thor Heyerdahl thought that Polynesians and South Americans had many things in common. Their view of time is one of them. On second thought, maybe it is modern Western society which is the odd man out here?

Notice that the license says “Government of the Cook Islands Transport Act 1966.” The Cook Islands is a former colony of New Zealand, but is now independent for all practical purposes. More than 80% of the population is ethnic Polynesian, or Maori as they prefer to say here. This is the first place we have been in the Polynesian triangle where the Polynesians rule and decide their own future and current politics.

I had a conversation with an ethnic French inhabitant in French Polynesia and that conversation bugged me for several days afterwards. We spoke about possible independence for French Polynesia. There is an independence movement on some of the islands, but it does not seem very strong. The argument this person had for continued French colonial rule went somewhere along these lines: French Polynesia is completely dependent on the French state for subsidies. If it became independent there would be too few people and too few resources to sustain a decent standard of living. Thus France is being kind and the people here are better off with the status quo. It was all summed up in the statement: “I bet they would miss their nice cars.”

I suppose this is also a good summary of why the independence movement is not very strong. What do you want, freedom and poverty or a continued good life? The argument seemed valid, and then and there I nodded my head and agreed.

The conversation wouldn’t let go from the back of my head afterwards and it was later that i realized that it was the French and other westerners before them that had taken away the possibility of living a good life without financial support from France. People in French Polynesia have been massacred, taken as slaves, stripped of their religion and culture and made dependent on western imported goods for several generations. Maybe France has a historical debt to the Polynesian inhabitants?

Reading up on Cook Islands history and politics has given me a wonderful surprise. What the French have failed to do with French Polynesia, and the Chileans with Easter Island, the New Zealanders managed to execute on way back in 1965. The more I have read about it, the more impressed I have been. In 1965 New Zealand and the Maori of the Cook Islands struck a unique deal. The Cook Islands became a state “in free association with New Zealand”. The terms are quite extraordinary:

New Zealand continued to support the Cook Islands financially with the expressed goal of keeping the general living standard on the Cook Islands on par with the general living standard in New Zealand for as long as it was necessary. This is still continuing today, with considerable sums being transferred every year. Imagine the commitment from New Zealand and the implications.

The Cook Islamds became a democracy with its own government with full control over politics and internal affairs.

All Cook Islands nationals are also New Zealand nationals (dual passport).

Foreign policy and defense remained the responsibility of New Zealand, and the currency is the New Zealand dollar. However, the Cook Islands government can, at any time, declare that it will from now on take over these responsibilities. In addition, and this a cool part of the deal, New Zealand cannot relinquish these responsibilities as long as it is wanted by the Cook Islands.

What a deal, huh? And in 1965!  The world was very different in 1965. Six years later the supreme court of the Northern Territory in Australia would rule that the aboriginals had no right to any land in Australia.

My hat is off for New Zealand on this one. If you are a nerd like me, you might want to read more about it. I found this very interesting paper on the implications of the deal.

It is only my speculation, but maybe history had taught the New Zealanders a lesson after they had themselves been part of the British Empire? And maybe they also had a bad conscience from the treatment of the Maori in New Zealand? New Zealanders of western descent are after all living on land taken from the Polynesians.

The rain continued, it was typical tropical on and off rain and it was very heavy at times:

We used the opportunity to do some home schooling. We haven’t done as much as we should after Christmas, so it was time to get the daily routine started again.

Eirik

—–