monday it was pouring rain so we couldn't do the lagoon cruise as planned. so they swapped with the plans for wednesday.
in the morning we went to the university of the south pacific campus for a lecture on the environment. as far as i can tell it's just one building, and they mainly have classes via satellite. this lecture was actually really interesting. the guy was about grad student age i think, i'm not entirely sure, but he said he studies marine ecology. the majority of the talk was about ciguatera. certain algae in the reef produce this toxin, which accumulates in fish up the food chain, and causes both gastrointestinal and neurological sickness in people who eat fish, especially larger ones. it seems to happen in cycles, and he's studying what causes it, possibly the el nino/la nina environmental fluctuations. the locals have stopped eating fish because of this, which then causes other changes in the reef when the number of fish is not kept down by fishing.
in the afternoon we did the cross-island hike. our guide was a 68 year old man named pa, who did it in bare feet and described himself as "the most famous guide in the pacific" and "son of polynesia". he said that day was his 3102 time doing the hike. at the trailhead he asked if we wanted him to say an english, maori, or buddhist blessing. everyone said buddhist, although he did all 3. we hiked up to "the needle" this tall pointy rock formation, and the rain was really nice until we emerged at the top where the wind made it very cold. pa said only 15 people (himself being one of them) has scaled the rock all the way to the top. it looked pretty intense. he also said it was a sacred rock for the natives when they worshiped idols, before the arrival of christianity. someone asked "what kind of idols? like sun and water?" and he said "no, of war! it's very good that the missionaries came and brought christianity. you would not be here if they hadn't, because when you got off the airplane we would have eaten you!" while we were stopped pa gave us papaya, which normally i'm not crazy about, but up at the top of that mountain it was the most delicious thing ever. he showed us this rare flower that only grows on rarotonga and is supposed to have some special properties.
the way down was longer and more difficult than going up, especially with the rain making everything slippery. it was kind of fun because by that point we were just going directly through mud puddles. at one point someone from the back yelled for pa (as he had told us to do in any medical emergency) and we waited for a while as he went back to see what happened. we didn't find out until later that night but i guess gael had slipped and fallen on her back. she finished the hike though and seemed ok. we crossed 4 or 5 rivers which were rushing and very muddy from the rainfall, but that was really cool. at the end there was a waterfall that people went swimming under but i was cold and wet so i didn't stay long.
back at the hotel everyone obviously wanted to shower so we just wore our suits and 2 or 3 people went at once. we left all our wet muddy shoes by the door which was a terrible idea, as for the rest of the week the room smelled absolutely awful from them.
that night we had dinner at the nu bar across the street. gael said we could all get an appetizer, a main dish, and desert off the menu. i got potato wedges and spring rolls, which was way more food than i needed to eat. then i had a very difficult decision between chocolate cake with ice cream or an ice cream sundae. i went with the cake and shared with kendall who is lactose intolerant so couldn't have ice cream. again, most of us went home completely stuffed, and my tummy hurt a lot so i just read my book in my bed and went to sleep, although some people went out.
tuesday it was pouring rain again. in the morning we went to the avarua school. we first watched 2 schools practicing for the big dance competition on wednesday. apparently it's very competitive, although it's supposed to be more of a showcase than a competition. the kids were amazing! after that we went to another school building and had morning tea (lunch for us) and a lady talked to us about the education system there. it's basically like nz, they have to go to school from age 6-16, with optional preschool before and high school up to age 18. they use both cook islands maori and english, and kids come to school speaking either or both of those. in general it seemed like most everyone is fully fluent in both languages which is really cool. hopefully english won't take over like it has in nz.
after that we had our volunteer activity. originally we were going to be helping the esther honey foundation doing some sort of survey of stray dogs on the island (there are dogs everywhere, although they all have collars. someone told us the government puts collars on all of the strays). however there was some sort of miscommunication with ies and they thought we were coming just to volunteer for the whole week. so then it was decided that some of us would go play with and walk the dogs anyway, and others would be working at the rarotonga library. however due to the rain all day on tuesday, we all ended up at the library, which is about the size of the allens hill library. they said they had asked for 7 people, and when 30 of us showed up it was a little chaotic.
gael said there was a dress rehearsal for the dance competition at the mangaian hostel (where we had had our dinner saturday) so some of us decided to go watch that, and one of the bus drivers took us so we didn't have to walk in the rain. however when we went in the said it had just ended, and by that time the bus had left. so we just hung out there for a little while, and when the rain lightened up slightly we walked back to the library, where i joined everyone who were stamping and putting new sign out cards in books, which was actually kind of fun. we were constantly running out of supplies and the librarian said "we've never had this many volunteers before!"
after that they took us to the cook islands trading center (citc), the main shopping area in town, where we just wandered around. ej and i went to the bank to get their famous $3 notes (they use nz money, although they have their own 1, 2, and 5 dollar coins and $3 notes which are apparently worth something to money collectors. the coins are really cool too. the $2 is a triangle). they were nice at the bank and we didn't have to pay any extra to exchange. there are actually 2 different $3 notes, one pink and one green, so i got both of them. i also bought a post card and stamp (postage is cheaper there than in nz! - so it will probably take ages to make it home). we also went in some fancy jewelry stores and looked at black pearls, but that was way out of our price range.
after that we had 2 back to back lectures at some other hotel's conference center. the first was a guy talking about economics of small island nations which was pretty boring. unfortunately i was in the front row, so hopefully my occasional nodding off was not too obvious. basically, it's very expensive to import things, and fuel is ridiculously expensive. their main industry is tourism, although they do export black pearls from the outer islands as well as fruit and fish.
after that we had a bathroom break and then came back to hear bout traditional pacific voyaging from te aturangi, the vice president of the voyaging society. it was actually really interesting, my favorite lecture. he told us how he and a group of others including one of our bus drivers built a traditional canoe in nz and sailed it up to rarotonga, a trip that should have taken 14 days but took them 24. they also sailed over to tahiti and up to hawaii and then back down to rarotonga.
the voyaging society has built rarotonga's own canoe too, called "te au o tonga" which means "the mist of the south." traditionally to move the giant canoes from the forest where they were carved to the water, they would kill a bunch of slaves and use their bodies to roll the canoes on. to move the modern one they just had everyone in the community help carry it. anyway, the day they were moving the giant hulls to the water it was extremely misty, as it never has before or since, which was seen as a sign that the canoe was favored and blessed by the ancestors. on their voyages they use traditional navigation and steering techniques (although they do have gps and a motor on board for emergencies as required by law). it takes 6 people at a time to sail the boat, so they need at least 12 on board. they do 6 hour shifts where half are sleeping and half are sailing, then have a meal together, and swap.
te aturangi was also part of a group that sailed te au o tonga to french polynesia and performed a haka in protest french nuclear weapon testing in 1995. he also organized the sailing of a whole bunch of canoes to gisborne, nz (the easternmost point) for the dawn of the new millenium, which made for a very famous photo in newspapers worldwide. the rarotonga canoe, te au o tonga, was damaged by a cyclone and is currently being repaired so that they can resume teaching the old sailing techniques to the new generation.
after that talk we went to another bbq at teh aro'a beachside inn which was a lot of fun. the owner was this guy from hawaii who was quite a character. when he wasn't at the grill he was mingling with all of us and telling stories and making jokes. they were selling tshirts saying "rarotonga: wear the fox hat" (say it out loud a few times and use your imagination). he told us a story to go with the shirt as follows:
a few years ago prince charles came to visit rarotonga, and the whole time he was there he was wearing a davey crocket hat. as he was leaving someone asked him why he was wearing that hat when it was so hot out, and he said that when he had told the queen he was coming here, her response was "rarotonga, wear the fox hat". tee hee
wednesday the weather was back to being beautiful, which gael said was good because she had no more rainy day activities for us. we we did captain tama's lagoon cruise. instead of our usual mini-van buses this fun colored wooden bus came and picked us up and took us to muri beach. we took 2 glass bottom boats that did not look like they could hold 20 people, but somehow we fit about 25 of us on one and a few people went with all the other tourists on the other. our captains were 2 native guys a little older than us, and they brought a ukulele and a guitar which they played and sang to most of the time which was really cool. they also let the musical people in the group play and sing if they wanted. first we went out to the reef and snorkeled/sat in the sun.
then we went over to the island we had explored when we were paddling the vaka ama on saturday, which they said is called "no touching island" and a lot of people get married there. each newlywed couple plants a coconut tree, and they said thats how they keep track of the marriage: if the tree is sick someone's cheating, and if it dies they got a divorce. they said "one guy's planted 13 and they've all died". there was a lot of that sort of humor, clearly rehearsed and corny but still entertaining. we laid on the beach for quite awhile and got tan, and cooled off in the water, which was amazingly turquoise and very warm (and also quite salty). it turns out all the random huts and decorations there were from this group, although there is also a little pavilion place where they have weddings, and they were decorating it for one that afternoon while we were there. as we were leaving we saw the bride coming out on a boat all decorated in flowers and palm fronds.
anyway they made us lunch (and said "no women in the kitchen here we do all the cooking. that's why no one lives on this island. over there where we live (on rarotonga) the women cook"), of which the main courses were fish and fried banana. probably my two least favorite foods in the world. i am really not a picky eater, but everyone from this trip thinks i am because on a tropical island there is a lot of fish and a lot of bananas, the two things i hate. it was ok though because they had coconut too which i ate tons of.
after lunch they had a "show." first they showed us coconut husking, which was a little anticlimactic since we had already seen that on saturday. in addition to husking and opening the coconut they showed us how to get coconut milk (not to be confused with the coconut water in it when you open the nut). you grate off some of the white coconut meat into some mesh (like cheesecloth) and then squeeze it and the liquid that comes out is the coconut milk. he went around and squirted it on all the girls arms, as it is great moisturizer and smells fabulous.
then they did a pareau tying show (there are 375 ways to tie them). they had laura and shaymali be models, and gave each of them 3 different outfits (with plenty of mildly crude humor). then they made tj and tom demonstrate some guy's pareau outfits which were silly and taught them a pretend haka that ended in them chanting "i am stupid." after a little more beach time we sailed back to shore, and went to the hotel to shower.
then we had dinner at portafino, an italian restaurant. we had chosen our orders the night before (soup or salad and fish or fettucine alfredo) so that it would be faster because the dancing competition was at 7 that night. before dinner we had one last lecture, from an old man from nz who was basically the cook islands' only trader for most of his life. unfortunately he spoke very softly and very slowly, so although i have a feeling his stories were pretty interesting, it was very hard to follow, and many people fell asleep. gael said after that he had a stroke last year, so that explains part of the difficulty. after the talk the scary american lady who i think was the owner of the restaurant kind of flipped out at people for moving chairs and tables around, it was a little bizarre. we eventually got our dinners which were delicious, although not the enormous portion sizes we were getting used to there.
we then walked over to the auditorium, which was completely packed, and sat on the steps up the bleachers to watch the end of the dancing competition. the costumes were very intricate (taina said some of the parents had been working on them for 6 weeks) and the dancing was again, amazing.
after that ended, we made our way to the banana court, the bar where we had heard from multiple people that's the place to go on wednesday nights. when we got there it was only a little after 10 and kinda empty except for all the ies kids, but it filled up and there was lots of very sweaty dancing. i sat and people watched for a good majority of the time.
ej had met this guy, john, another night out somewhere, and we were talking to him and his friend for awhile. he's in a traditional dancing group and spent 8 months in china performing. they had a show in rarotonga on friday, but we would be gone. i told him i'd tell riley to go though, since the ies christchurch group was arriving the day we left. the bars all close at midnight except on friday night, so we all were leaving. john and his friend (ken) offered to give me and ej rides home on their motorbikes (most of the other ies kids got a ride in the back of a pickup truck) and we were super excited. then they were like, do you want to go the long way (around the island) and we said sure. they took us to muri beach, and to see the giant canoe (te au o tonga, the one the voyaging guy had talked about) which was really cool. we climbed up on it and took pictures and stuff. when we got back to the hotel sophie and some others were sitting outside playing with a stray dog that they had named rufus (and several other names i think) and we hung out with them for a bit and then went to bed.
thursday morning was our free time for the week, and we were going to go to the beach but a lot of us were rather burnt from the day before, so we decided to just walk into town and do some souvenir shopping. however, that walked turned out to be extremely hot and pretty long. i bought a beach towel that says cook islands, and other people got jewelry and shirts. then we had to power walk back, and we were trying to hitch a ride in the back of a pickup, but apparently people only do that at night because we were unsuccessful. some of the other kids had rented motorbikes which looked like a much better means of transport.
sean had wanted to buy a ukulele all week, and people had told him to go to the prison for a cheap one (when we went by the prison on our first day tour taina had said that it's probably the only prison where they let the prisoners out during the day and they come back at night). one of the bus drivers took him and a few others to his house and they made drums out of logs with chainsaws and they sold sean his ukulele. i'm not sure how they got chosen to go but that sounded really cool.
anyway, we loaded our bags into the vans and then walked across the street to the airport. the "gate" area was this grassy courtyard that was really pretty, although we were all sweaty from our walk. the flight back was uneventful, i slept a lot and read my book (but i did not finish it). when we arrived in auckland most of us had to go thru the biosecurity check at customs because of our muddy shoes. some of the security people washed peoples shoes off for them, but mine did not.
rachel had lost her purse on wednesday night, including her passport, and at first they thought she was going to have to stay on with the christchurch group for a while, but she and gael wen to the government on thursday and they said she could leave, but she was not through auckland airport immigration by the time we left, so gael stayed with her. i assume she made it eventually. our bus driver back from the airport was making all these dry jokes, with no change in tone from serious things, and he said the weather changed while we were gone and got cold and rained a lot and 6 people drowned, and we thought he was kidding but he was like no i'm serious. and i looked online when we got back and i guess a school group was canyoning somewhere and there was a flash flood and they died. crazyness.
anyway, auckland does feel really cold now, it's only in the low 60's (i hear it's a lot warmer at home now) which feels especially cold after a week in the tropics.
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