Cook Islands Time

The Cook Islands were great! Pretty much what you'd expect a South Pacific island paradise to be like, only a bit wetter and windier.


We arrived in Rarotonga airport, and were greeted by a guy playing a ukulele. Everyone staying in the fancy resorts were given a flower ei (necklace) - we didn't, but got some cheap rum in the duty free shop instead. The first guesthouse we stayed in was completely empty except for us, and was a little run down. The family who owned it was very friendly: invited us to church and to join them for Sunday dinner. We declined, as we'd only just arrived and were shattered, but they left us some food in the fridge.

We moved on to another guesthouse after a couple of days, which was great. Much busier - although we did have to share our rum! Our first week in Rarotonga was pretty dull and rainy, but we managed to do loads of snorkeling, which was great. We saw trigger fish, butterfly fish, puffer fish and big blue star fish. We managed to get to an Island Night too, where there was drum music and ladies wearing grass skirts and coconuts and wiggling their hips! Most importantly I spent a good few hours reading on a hammock.

We hired a kayak for a day, figured that since the lagoon was so sheltered from the waves it'd be easy... well, it was easy one way - but the current was so strong coming back that we couldn't move forward! The water was only knee deep, so had to get out and drag the kayak (with Kate in it) back to calmer water. Oh, and we got stuck in the middle of a sailing race too... oops!

After a week in there, we took a flight to Aitutaki (another island within the Cooks). Aitutaki is really beautiful and is surrounded by a huge lagoon dotted with tiny uninhabited islands. We managed to get a beachfront bungalow here, which had stunning views of the lagoon. It was so stunning that we barely left the beach and balcony and chilled out for most of the week eating coconuts and paw paws.

I did a couple of cool dives and saw some huge white tipped reef sharks and a massive moray eel. I didn't see any turtles though, but we did spot them on a lagoon cruise that took us to some amazing sand banks in the lagoon.

We'd planned to do the cross island walk when we got back to Rarotonga before flying to LA, but the hammock was much more inviting than a 4 hour hike. Then it was back to the airport, to see the guy playing the ukulele while we waited for our flight to LA.

We've been so chilled, we're getting behind in our blogs. We're in San Francisco now, having a great time sightseeing, shopping, eating and celebrity spotting... more on that later!