some of the ies girls had a party at their flat friday night before we were leaving (at 6 am on saturday), so a lot of us from ih went, but security came and said we had to leave after a little while so i was back by midnight. getting up at 5 was still not fun, and all 5 of us ih girls had to wait for the bus which was half an hour late because all the other ies people were late (and many of them still drunk from the night before). one of the girls forgot her passport, and was actually mad when gael said the whole bus was not going to wait for her and she'd have to take a cab to the airport, and another one threw up both before the bus got to us and while at the airport.
we arrived with plenty of time to spare anyway, and stood in lots of lines. our flight left at 9 something, and on the flight we got breakfast which was ok, i just got cereal because the hot breakfast looked iffy. people said it was really good though. i slept most of the 4 hour flight, and when we landed it was friday afternoon in rarotonga (we crossed the international date line). the jetway was literally a set of stairs on wheels that some guys pushed up to the plane, and when we walked into the airport it was all open and very tropical feeling. there was a man playing the guitar and singing in cook islands maori and people who were doing tourist packages got leis (they are actually called eis there) and stuff. it was also quite warm (but all the temps are in celsius so i'm not entirely sure how warm. i would guess in the 80's).
we got our bags and met our guide, taina, and we put all our luggage in the 3 vans and then walked to our hotel, the aquarius, which is literally across the street from the airport, on the beach on the north side of the island. the hotel was quite nice, with a big dining area/bar/lounge with a big deck and pool, and hammocks and lounge chairs on the beach. the coral reef is really painful to walk on though so no one goes swimming from the beach there.
we found out that all the girls (24 of us) were all sharing the dorm-style room with bunk beds, and the 5 boys had 2 hotel rooms between them. the dorm room wasn't as bad as we were imagining there were sort of dividers around the beds, and we each got a locker/cubby type place to put our stuff in. however, my big suitcase didn't fit in the cubby, so i heaved it up on top of the stack of 3 lockers, so i could reach it from my bed (i had a top bunk). now there were walls extending from behind the stack of 3 lockers, making it look as if there was a solid surface extending from the top as well where i could have put my suitcase. in fact, it was just open behind the lockers, so had i pushed my suitcase a little further it would have fallen in and been impossible to get out. actually, the girl on the other side of the little wall space dropped her toiletry bag in there, but someone from the hotel climbed in and somehow scaled the walls to get back out.
after leaving our stuff at the hotel we had a drive around the island (it's 32 km all the way around on the main road. there's a "back road" a bit further inland most of the way as well. and that's basically all the roads.) i was in the van with Taina, our tour guide. she is a cook islander but lived in auckland for at least part of her life. she looked about 30 but one of her daughters who hung around with us sometimes was definitely high school age so i'm not really sure how old taina is. adults there all look a lot younger than they are. it seems like rarotonga would be an awesome place to grow up. in school the kids learn lots of practical stuff as well as academics, like climbing coconut trees and traditional dancing and crafts, and taina said they can pretty much do whatever they want as long as they're home by dark, and "it's not unusual to leave your 5 year old babysitting your two year old" which she said took some getting used to when she moved there from auckland.
anyway, we drove around and she told us lots of stuff. avarua is the main town on rarotonga, but there are i think 8 other little towns around the island. all the chiefs of rarotonga got together and decided to give land to all the other cook islands (there are 15 total, i think 12 or 13 are inhabited) where they have hostels to stay at, because everyone has to come to rarotonga for national business, or to fly anywhere internationally. also, you cannot buy land in the cook islands. people of cook islands descent must find out their ancestry, and then go to their relatives and they will give them some land. non-islanders can lease land, and we saw a little house that was leased for $10 million (i think they said the longest possible lease is for 60 years).
most of the resorts are on the south side of the island where the lagoon between the coral reef and the island is big and there's some islands, and the water is the most amazing turquoise color. we stopped and took lots of pictures. it's really weird watching all the huge waves breaking on the reef because it's so far off shore and you can't see anything sticking up that the waves should be breaking on. when we went by where the airport is only separated from the water by the road and a cement wall, taina said it's a fun game to play chicken and stand on the wall as a plane is coming in and try to stay there as long as possible. i kept suggesting we go play that game all week.
when we got back to the hotel we had a bbq out on the deck which was really good and we were starving by that point so we ate a lot. after that we went to the national auditorium to see a junior dancing competition. they were absolutely amazing! their dance here is really cool. the girls do this circular movement with their hips (not exactly like hawaiian hula - they describe it as "the washing machine"), and the guys bat their knees in and out really fast. and everything is to live drumming. when that was over we just went back and went to bed.
saturday (the second one) we were supposed to be at breakfast at 8, so most of us got up at 7 and took showers in the 3 bathrooms attached to our dorm room. i actually got up at 6:45 so i wouldn't have to wait. i was using my phone as an alarm, and even though i had no service there and i turned it off during the days the battery was almost dead by the end of the week. i think while it was on it was constantly searching for a tower which drained it really fast.
all week we had breakfast in the hotel which consisted of a buffet with little individual boxes of cereal and milk, bread for toast with jam and peanutbutter, yogurt, and fruit salad. after the first few days i started making pb sandwiches for lunch, since that was the meal we were supposed to pay for on our own with the $100 gael gave us at the beginning.
after breakfast we walked down the street to the punanga nui public market which is only on saturday mornings. there were lots of stands with local fruits, jewelry (especially black pearls, which are one of the main cook islands exports, but are too pricey for me), sarongs (called pareaus there), and some food venders. i bought a blousey shirt, a necklace with a purple sea urchin spine (for only $3!), and a starfruit to try, which turned out to be my new favorite fruit. lee got a ton of arrow root which he was giving away to everyone. it kind of looks like the texture of banana but tastes like potato. back at the hotel i tried it with ketchup (well, tomato sauce, ketchup does not exist here) and it was pretty yummy.
after that we went to the national auditorium to do traditional crafts. first we tie dyed pareaus and laid them out in the sun to dry. we put leaves and flowers on top which were supposed to make faded patterns but only a couple people got that to work. a lot of people's pareaus turned out really well. i am not a big fan of mine, it's yellow and purple and not very exciting.
while those were drying we made eis (aka leis in hawaii). the girls made head eis, which you basically make by braiding strips of these big leaves, and to add a flower you just braid it in. some people were having a lot of trouble and ej just made hers big enough to go around her pony tail. my ei was kind of simple and plain but it stayed together in one piece so that was good. the boys made neck eis which were just bunches of leaves shredded most of the way up like fringe that they wore over their shoulders. we also wove plates out of palm fronds for our dinner that night, which was pretty crazy. most of us had some substantial holes, and there was a lot of variation in size.
next some of the men ("warriors") demonstrated how to husk a coconut. i think there were 5 stages of the coconut: flower, green, ready to drink (called "nu"), ripe (when they are brown and fall from the trees), and old and sprouted. they are husked when they are brown and ripe. they stuck sharp sticks in the ground (i think they are called "ko") and showed how you impale the "face" (end where it was attached to the tree) half of the nut on the stick, because that's the soft side. then they just kind of twist and pry off pieces of husk and continue until it's all off. then to open the nut from the inside they use a sharp rock and hit it in the middle of the lines running from the "face" (3 circles, which are 2 eyes and a mouth) to the back all the way around until you can open it in half. then you can drink the water inside and eat the meat. they said the record for husking a coconut is something like 3 seconds. it took most of the people who tried several minutes. then they were like, but real warriors just use their teeth, and proceeded to show us. it was pretty intense.
after that we learned to dance. the boys started before us and we were dying laughing at them trying to bend their knees in and out. then these 2 girls who had been helping us weave and were 14 and 15 lead all the girls in this dance. the feet part was just two steps to the right, and then two to the left and so on. that's about all i mastered. we were pretty awful with the hip movements, i was lucky if i happened to be swaying to the correct side at the right time, and the arms was just sort of random waving since it was hard to see and i was just trying to move in the right direction.
after that we went back to the hotel to change, and then went to muri beach to do vaka ama (outrigger canoe) paddling in the lagoon. by the time we got there we were only going to have like 45 min to paddle, and there were 2 canoes that took 5 people at a time, so we had to take turns. eventually the guides decided to cancel the lecture we were supposed to go to after, so then we just hung out on the beach for awhile. the outrigger really does make the canoe much more stable, although it looks funny, like it's a second mini canoe attached to the side. we paddled out to one of the islands across the lagoon that had all these random windsurfing sails and huts on it and then came back. we found some ripe coconuts on the ground and marc proceeded to husk them with his teeth for sophie and ej and me. however once you eat all the meat from around the edge of the coconut halves, it's a lot of work to get to the rest of it. we were trying to smash them on rocks semi-successfully, although sophie and i both made ourselves bleed (not from the rocks, but from the sharp coconut shells).
we then went back to the hotel to change for our dinner at the mangaian hostel with all the group that had been teaching us all day. they told us to bring our woven plates and wear our pareaus and eis, and most of the girls ended up wearing either black or white tank tops to go with our colorful pareaus. it looked like we were going to a dance recital. we were ready early so they took us to trader jack's, a bar and restaurant on the harbour that has been destroyed by cyclones 5 times and rebuilt. we looked silly wearing our outfits but there were 30 of us so we kind of took over anyway.
then we went to the mangaian hostel and after a welcome speech and prayer (most of our dinners involved a prayer) we put our plates to work. there was a lot of traditional food with no labels, and a lot of exotic fruits and veggies, including kumara (sweet potato), arrow root, taro, paw paw (papaya), coconut, and watermelon. some were really good, some were not so much. for desert there was this weird starchy gelatinous stuff and i'm still not sure what it was. my plate leaked a little, but overall it worked pretty well.
after dinner they performed a bunch of dances for us, and then at the end were like "ok your turn." first the guys did their dance which was hilarious, and then they made all the girls stand up and we were terrified that the 2 girls who lead us in the afternoon weren't going to, in which case all we would know how to do is stand there and sway side to side. luckily they did come out to give us some idea of where to wave our arms. after the group dance they made us get up in small groups and "free style" dance which turned out to be a competition and they kept having smaller and smaller groups go until finally stacy and marc finally won. they got cds of the traditional music, as did the winners of the coconut husking races.
after gael made a little thank you speech we went back to the hotel and most people went out. a group of us went to the nu bar, which is directly across the street from our hotel, and when spoken quickly sounds a lot like "nude bar". we just sat at a picnic table talking and being silly for a while, and then went back to the hotel where molly and i played cards by the pool for awhile (we couldn't get anyone else to play so we played spit and rummy). it was fun because i never play cards here and i miss it from the school with the sfu, and molly was venting about boy drama which reminded me of karen.
sunday we had to get up early again for church. the girls had to wear skirts below the knee (no pants or short skirts) and we all looked pretty spiffy. we had breakfast at the banana court on the way, since our hotel restaurant (and most other things) was not open on sunday. then we walked the rest of the way to the cook islands christian church where we sat on the balcony upstairs. it was actually more traditional than i expected. most of the speaking was in cook islands maori, although there was some english as well. i think that was a special sunday because all the boy scouts and girl guides (like girl scouts) were wearing their uniforms and tehy sat in front and they did the majority of the speaking and readings instead of the minister. everyone stood up for all the songs, and there were no hymn books or anything, everyone just seemed to know the songs (which were in the maori language). everyone was dressed up nicely, and there was actually a sign saying women and girls should be wearing skirts and no flower eis were allowed.
after that we had morning tea in the sunday school building next door, which consisted of lots of fruits and baked deserts, and basically served as our lunch. i had pineapple meringue and chocolate cake which were both amazing, and lots of watermelon and coconut. a lady spoke to us about the history of the church, which was the first, and is still the main one in the cook islands.
we then walked back to the church, and changed into our swimsuits to go to the beach. we just walked down the road from the hotel until we saw the beach and cut through some trees, possibly on someone's property. we just stayed there and laid in the sun/played in the water all afternoon. we had a lecture at the hotel at 4, which was not the most exciting thing ever. the man was half c.i. maori and half european, and he talked to us about their chief (ariki) system and how the tribes conduct politics and stuff. he went through a LOT of powerpoints with family trees and genealogy and stuff which put a lot of us to sleep.
after that we went to the paw paw patch for dinner. taina said we were guinea pigs because it's one of the only places open on sunday. it was a nice restaurant/bar which i think was attached to a hotel, so pretty similar to where we were staying. we all sat at 2 long tables, and there were some other touristy people there as well. a lot of people got drinks at the bar, and i got "iced chocolate" which was chocolate milk and ice cream, and very delicious. after waiting for ages, there was a big bbq buffet, and the food was AMAZING. seriously, my favorite meal of the trip. there was this rice stuff, and this creamed spinach with coconut dish called rukau, and potato salad (they have that everywhere there). all amazing. after eating a TON we found out there was desert too, with all kinds of good stuff: chocolate cake, starfruit cheesecake (SO good), watermelon, ice cream etc. i ate to the point of feeling pretty sick but it was all SO good.
that night since nothing was open some of the guys decided to build a bonfire on the beach and basically all of us ended up going, although i left pretty early because i was tired and feeling anti social so i read my book for awhile and went to sleep.
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