The Bears Down Under: Rarotonga

Our final destination was Rarotonga. After all our touring, this was our lay-on-the-beach-for-10-days stop where we had booked beachfront accomodation. We found that we were on a lagoon sheltered from the big waves by a reef. How lovely!

We had an island tour on our second day here. We learned all sorts of interesting things from our guide, George. For instance, he showed us that after you take a coconut out of it's cover, it has a face.

If you use the face to hold it the right way up and you know exactly where to give it a tap, it opens up perfectly.

Voila!

George set up a lunch for us featuring fresh grated coconut, papaya and banana bread from locally grown bananas.

We went down to the harbour to see a fisherman cleaning a catch of yellow-finned tuna. Everyone tried some of it -- raw! Actually quite tasty.

This young lady showed us a flying fish, which she prepares for lunch in her food stand.

The Cook island inhabitants set off from Departure Bay in 1350 with seven canoes to colonize a place they called Aotearoa, which means The Land of the Long White Cloud. Today we call it New Zealand. We stopped at the monument set up to commemorate this site and saw the seven stones representing the seven canoes.

We went to the Saturday market. They had all sorts of stuff including clothing . . .

. . . produce . . .

. . . fish . . .

. . . and even entertainment.

Then we ran into Sally on the bus along with her mother, Rosemary, and her daughter, Sarah. Who would have believed we'd see anyone from home here in Rarotonga?

We went to church on Sunday. They had great music, but we couldn't understand the parts of the service done in Cook Island Maori. Thank goodness the sermon was in English!