The Cook Islands tl;dr (Pt 1)
In 2007 I took part in a six-week field school in the Cook Islands. Recently I found the journal I kept while abroad. I have put the entire journal here. I will break it down into relevant posts as I edit through this.
April 29th to April 30th transition days.
These two days were transit days. Alex, Hanako, and I woke up at 4:30 am. I dressed for the day before going to wake up Alex and Hanako. We got up and did a last-minute baggage check before we hit the road.
The drive to Nanaimo was quiet. We dropped Hanako off at Alex’s house, where her car was. It was too early to pick up Jessica, so we drove to her place the long way. We picked Jessica up and about 20 minutes to 6. Then we all went catch the ferry to Vancouver.
At the ferry terminal, we got out of the car and we were looking for other people who from our group who might have been walking on. No one was there yet. Up and down the aisles of cars we went to see if anyone had driven to the ferry. The only person we found was Adrien. We stayed with him until the ferry began to load.
We met a friend who was headed to Cameroon for the summer on the ferry. As we were eating with her, one of the people from our group found Alex and me. He let us know where everyone else was sitting. When we found them Adrian, Kayla, Jessica, Jessica, Naomi, Casey, Natasha, Michael, Alex and I were all taking the ferry.
As we drove to the airport, we made good time and arrived before anyone else. Finding an area that had space for all 15 of us was a priority as we waited. Adrian arrived about 30 minutes after us. Then the others began arriving. We wanted to wait for our entire group before heading through customs.
Some people were late in arriving and we didn’t want to wait too long because the customs line was long. A quick check of the airport and outside revealed Linda but the others weren’t there so decided to go through customs.
In line for customs, we met Chris and Carl, the only two members of our group missing. I was randomly chosen for a search going through customs. Once through the terminal, we re-established our space as a group. We took over a whole area to put our bags down and, through no fault of our own, scared others away. It’s probably because you were a large, loud group.
The first flight was from Vancouver to Los Angeles. It was amazing to fly over LA. The suburbs are so large that there are 10 Lane highways and the smog becomes very thick. This is always something that amazes me, flying into new cities, because I grew up in a small-town middle of nowhere. My hometown is far away from anything else (3 hours to a city with a Walmart through a forested road). There is no stoplight and three cars at a stop sign is a traffic jam. It’s a very sleepy quiet town but we don’t have the hustle and bustle of a big city.
When we disembarked our aircraft, the goal was to find out what gate we were supposed to be at. It turns out that our layover was so long that our gate hadn’t been posted yet. So, we didn’t know where we would have to be in the end but we decided to try and find an area that was large enough for the entire group of us so we could all stay together. I found a place that had a plug-in near it so we could charge our computers and everything else we left our bag there and made sure that there were always a few people around. Then people would wander off to go shopping or eat food or whatever else they wanted to do while we waited for our next plan to arrive.
Once we had a gate and a plane, we decided to do a Duty-Free Run. We knew that we were going to be spending six weeks in the Cook Islands we weren’t sure what facilities there would be like so we decided to load up on snacks and things that we thought we would need from the duty-free. Then we relocated to our gate and waited some more. Then suddenly, it was past the time we were supposed to board but there was no boarding call and no information about a delay.
Finally, they told us there was a problem with the plane. Not only did we need to change gates but we needed change terminals. We moved and continued to sit around. Then around 11 pm, over an hour behind schedule, we went by bus to a remote terminal. Shortly after that, we were finally able to board our airplane.
The Air New Zealand plane was very nice. Blankets, pillows, and everything else already set out on our chairs. The plane was quite empty. We waited until after takeoff but when we saw how many empty rows the plane had we each found a row of seats and were able to lay flat to sleep. I took the pillows and the blankets from all the seats in one of the rows and I made myself comfortable. That meant four blankets that I was able to use to keep nice and warm despite the usual cool temperature of an airplane.
I woke up a few times stiff and sore. It was uncomfortable to sleep on all the seats, though it was better than sleeping sitting upright. I would stretch and shift and I’d go right back to sleep. I slept for most of the flight. When I woke up we had only 2 hours left in the flight. I started migrating to other people who were also awake on the airplane so I would have something talk to.
April 30th
What a start to a trip. We touch down in Rarotonga and begin to disembark the plane. In my excitement and eagerness to get off the plane as quickly as possible, I forgot my camera in the overhead luggage and my passport in the pouch in front of my seat. Linda and Brendan who were still in the plane we’re Lifesavers. Brendan grabbed my camera and Linda my passport. Lucky. The customs line was very short as there weren’t very many people on the plane.
Our hotel was called the Paradise Inn. It was at about 8 am. We are given 30 minutes to put our things away in our rooms before we had a meeting. Our meeting was to cover all the bases: 1) No renting motorbikes 2) No staying out too late. That was it. We are all adults on this trip, and we are expected to act like it on this trip.
After our meeting, we returned to our rooms to unpack and settle in for a little bit. Exploring town was on the agenda shortly after the meeting. We went to town in a few different groups to buy groceries. This simple task turned into a complex process. We weren’t sure how far the store was or what it looked like or what its name was. Also, we needed to find a bank and change money. The group composition changed quite frequently as people did basic tasks.
My sandals broke on the way to the grocery store. I needed a shoe store too. I only found one store. The shoes are either $5.00 or $55.00. I bought a cheap pair. They only needed to last for the few weeks of vacation. I also found an ice cream stand and despite the early morning hour, I decided that I was on vacation and I was going to treat myself.
After various shopping excursions and tours, we all began heading back to the hotel. We decided to explore the beach in front of the hotel and have a swim. The beaches on the island are part of a coral reef and are shallow for quite a while. Then the reef suddenly ends, and the water is immediately deeper.
We came back in from the beach and had lunch on the porch. We spent the afternoon just relaxing sitting on the porch or down at the beach. Watching the water and everything else that was happening. We had shallow conversations, generally getting to know all the other people that we were on the trip with. Around 7 pm in our very long day, some of us decided that we were getting cold and we headed back to a room. We played some cards and other games. We learned interesting facts about each other and generally just spent time together.
May 1st
We woke up late today. Or at least what was going to be considered late for us. It was only 7 a.m. Or a little bit after. We made breakfast and took it to eat on the porch. It seems most of us had this idea. We began talking about our plans for the day. We decided to bike around the island. Some of us went to go and get bikes from a small shop down the road. The place we went to only had nine bikes to rent. Alex decided to stay behind, she was more interested in taking a bus ride around the island and getting off to shop at various locations. Kayla, Casey, Natasha, Jessica, Jessica, Linda, Michael, Naomi, and I went biking. We started at 8 a.m. We went back to the hotel to get changed and packed. About 8:30 we were ready to set out.
Rarotonga Island as one large road that circles the island along with Coast. It also has a few smaller roads on the inside of the island that are less used in a little bit quieter. We decided to bike on one of those back roads to reach Muri Beach. We were told it was the nicest spot on the island for swimming. It had both shallow corals that you could drive down to look at as well as deeper swimming a little bit farther out past the reef.
We stayed there for about 2 hours of swimming and snorkelling. Then there were a lot of tourists because a cruise ship had docked. They had been taken by bus to Muri Beach. We stayed at the beach. Someone always took a turn to read or tan on the beach to watch everyone’ belongings.
To finish the day we decided to complete the circle back around the island to reach our own hotel.
We biked for a while before we came across a fruit stand. We decided to stop and get some fruit for our journey. It was unbelievably cheap translating to around 20 or 30 cents per piece. We carried on and stopped at an unmarked beach we did some more snorkelling. The coral was quite close it was good snorkelling lots of fish to see. I ate some of the fruit that we bought and cooled off in the shade before we decided to continue with our travels around the island.
Somewhere along the line, something happened to Michael’s bike and it was not working. I’m not sure what was wrong with it. I was glad it wasn’t mine. I had no idea how to fix it. We went with Michael to a nearby gas station to get help and get it fixed. We offered to stay with him but he insisted we continue, so we did.
Naomi kept stopping to look at all the different shops when we reached a village. We ended up getting back to the hotel in the late afternoon. We rested for a while before we went out to return our bikes. After that, we just lounged around the hotel on the deck in the rooms over by the beach anywhere we wanted really.
The hotel was fairly small only having about 14 rooms and we took up 12 of them as a group. So there wasn’t really anybody else at the hotel so we could feel comfortable spreading out and taking up space more than we would in another spot because there wasn’t anybody to disturb.
Most of us decided to go to bed at a decent hour we had classes beginning in the morning and we didn’t want to be late for that. Jessica set the alarm for 7 a.m. We figured that be lots of time considering classes started at 8 a.m. And we weren’t going very far to get to university.
May 2nd
Was the first day of class I was rather excited. I slept poorly and ended up getting out of bed before the alarm set for 6:30. Jessica was already up so we decided to go for a walk. Alex decided to stay at the hotel and cook breakfast. Jessica and I got back to the hotel around 7:30 to get ready for class.
Our professor was Gary Tunnel. He gave us our morning lecture. The topic we are learning about is the sailing culture in the region of the South Pacific. We learned all about some of the traditional ways that they travelled by navigating and reading the stars. It was all very interesting.
After our lecture from Gary, we were shown to a computer room where we had our 15-minute break and we were able to use the computers to send emails and check the internet. The computer I had, unfortunately, didn’t work. But that was fine, as I had my own back at the hotel.
When we went back to class, we had a guest lecture. Ian is the president of the Sailing Community in Rarotonga. He taught us about Vaka, traditional double canoes from Rarotonga and the surrounding islands. There is evidence that this type of boat was used by the Maori people to populate the islands of the South Pacific. We learned about how the people of each island could visit other islands for trade. Ian talked about the discovery of new islands and in what order the islands were populated.
Then we went for a second break. I was able to get a computer that worked so I sent an email home. Ian continued his lecture for about an hour in the afternoon but by then he could see that we were all antsy and eager to explore. Ian let us go early.
First stop was the university bookstore to buy books for our course. We were amazed because the textbooks in the Cook Islands were actually cheaper than they were back at home. Which surprised us because it’s a far way to ship books to get them to Rarotonga. But it turns out that we were paying basically the same price the university paid because they don’t mark up their books. Each textbook was a large hardcover book and we paid $35 each. At home, my university would charge at least $100.
We went back to the hotel to drop off the books, we didn’t want to carry them around. We decided we didn’t want to waste the day sitting around and that we were going to catch the bus to go to the unnamed beach we’d been at the day before.
Some people had a few errands to run in town, so we decided to make it simple. We were going to catch the bus that left the terminal at 3. That meant that if you were in town you would catch a little bit earlier than the people who would catch it at the hotel but we would all end up on the same bus that we could all get off at the same stop we decided that we were going to head to Fruit to Rarotonga in case we were separated.
We got off the bus and headed to the beach. Some people brought snorkelling gear and we took turns sharing. Some of us would just sit around in the shallow water and enjoy the warm day. Everything was going well until it started to rain. We got out to move our things under palm trees where they would be protected and dry. By the time we had all our things moved under the palm trees the rain had stopped again.
Rarotonga has two main bus routes. One that starts at the terminal and goes clockwise and one that starts at the terminal and goes counterclockwise. To get to the beach we caught the bus that went clockwise because it was a shorter distance. We figured that when we were ready to return to the hotel would catch the bus that went counterclockwise. After the rain, we decided not to chance it and started heading back to the hotel.
We went to the bus station to look at the schedule. It turns out that the counterclockwise bus that we wanted to catch didn’t run after 4. It also turned out that the clockwise bus didn’t do a 4:30 run. We would have to wait until the bus came by at 5:30 and go all the way back around the island to get back to our hotel.
We decided that there was nothing to do about it and that we would just hang around. The rain hadn’t been cold and it hasn’t lasted very long. So, we stayed at the beach. After some time one of the girls started to get worried that we would miss the bus. She wanted to leave and we put a lot of effort into resisting. We had lots of time but eventually to ease her anxiety we did pick up all of our garbage and went to wait at the bus station for the bus. It was about 20 minutes before the bus arrived. When we got back to the hotel, we made dinner and then sat around until it was time for bed.
May 3rd
I woke up at 6:30 in the morning. Jessica was also up so we decided to go for a run. When we returned Alex was awake and she swore that one morning she would get up in time to join us.
We had leftovers for breakfast. Then we went to class. Gary gave us our morning lecture as normal. In the afternoon we had a doctor come in. She had never given a lecture before and it showed. It was interesting but a little biased. There is a large dose of religion in the lecture. That made sense to us because the Cook Islands is a very religious area. The lecture went a little longer than expected. We were okay with that. When it was over, I presented our guest lecturer with a gift which was our payment to her for giving us the lecture.
After classes for the day, we returned to the hotel. Alex and I set out to change money in town and to go to Telecom where we could buy Internet cards as well as phone cards. I got a phone card for $50. It gave me about 14 minutes of talk time with Canada. I called Mom at work. It was nice to be able to talk to her and let her know that I had arrived safely in the Cook Islands.
After, as we headed back to the hotel, we ran into Casey, Chris, and Kevin. Kevin was going to one of the tattoo parlours in town to check out prices. I thought that could be a lot of fun. So, I tagged along. We were told that they had plenty of openings in the next few weeks and we could book whatever spot we wanted that was available. Kevin scheduled an appointment but I decided to think about it.
Back at the hotel Alex and I decided to make dinner. We cooked homemade chicken noodle soup. We had previously made chicken broth and left it in the fridge. The fat needed to be skimmed off the top. We started chopping veggies and frying them up with garlic and other spices. Once we had all our veggies done we cooked some rice and some pasta. We threw it all into the broth. We left it on the stove to simmer for a little while. When we went back to it, it really couldn’t be called soup anymore. Most of the broth has been absorbed into the pasta and rice. But the dish was good and there was so much left over.
After dinner, we got ready to go to the national dance finals, which our group had been invited to. We left just after 6 to get good seats. Opening ceremonies were at 7. The dancing started at 7:30. The dancers were amazing. I could never do what they were doing. We stayed for two sets. There were 12 dancers in each set. There was more to watch but it was getting late, almost 10:30 at night, and I still wanted to be up to run in the morning. When the intermission came I went back to the hotel and directly to bed.
May 4th
Jess and I got up at just after 6 and we were on the way out the door to go for a run. As we were leaving we saw Gary, he was up to do some marking. Linda popped out of the lounge she was also going for a run, so we decided to go together.
We went out to the front of the hotel to stretch and ready ourselves. We ran and ran and ran. Linda is a committed long-distance runner, she goes out every day. She is also in much better shape than Jess and I. I kind of thought I was going to die from exhaustion during the run. But I did my best to stay caught up until we hit the last stretch. We were exhausted so, I decided to walk the last stretch with Jessica has a cool down.
Jessica and I got ready for the day. Alex heated up the leftovers from dinner the night before. IT was nice to have a warm breakfast before we were headed to class. Gary started off our morning with a lecture. After a break, we had our second lecture Ron Crocombe giving us our guest lecture. Ron was an expert in land use tenure in the Pacific and that’s what his lecture was on.
After lectures, we decided to talk with Gary about the possibility of a trip to Aitutaki, a small island with a large lagoon. Many of the pictures you see of the Cook Islands are taking on this island. Some of us thought we might be interested in going. So, we use the university computers to do but get research. We found out the day trip would cost about $350 but that wasn’t too bad considering it paid for our flight, our food, our tour, as well as local drinks. We’re going to investigate it more but some of us might go.
I used my Wi-Fi card to send everyone an email. I sent one to family, one to friends, and I posted on my Facebook. Then I went back to the hotel to eat lunch, change into something more comfortable, and sit in the sun. I used my lazy time to catch up on my journal and then do my readings for my classes.
I didn’t get much reading done so Kevin borrowed my book. The entire group of us mostly lazed around until we went out for the evening. It was Friday night so we decided we were going to see what kind of nightlife the island offered. We headed out at about 8:30 pm and we decided that we would go as far as we could into town and then we would slowly walk and work our way back.
We started at a place called the Hideaway. This place was very open concept. There were a few tables on one side and a bar across the floor. There was an outside area that was covered. It had the Dance Floor. We stayed and we danced for a bit but grew bored.
The decision was made to move on to the next bar. We tried to account for everyone. We took some time to get everyone outside so that we could all stay together. When we did this, we found that we were missing Chris. We went back in so the guys look in the bathroom. We searched everywhere, we were starting to get a little scared. Finally, we talked to a security guard who told us he had already left. This changed us from scared to angry.
So, we all went on our way. We came to a place called The Banana Court. It had a $2 cover, which is cheap but we’re poor University students. Without knowing how the place would be we were too cheap to go in.
Then we found a place called Whatever Bar and Grill. It was a rooftop bar and grill. We went upstairs, outside there were covered areas where the bar and grill were, as well as open areas to enjoy the cool evening. It was a nice place to dance. We stayed there for the rest of the night.
Around midnight Alex and I decided to go home. Some of the guys said they were going to go with us, so we decided to wait for them to finish their drinks. While they were having their drinks they found some locals to talk to. It became more and more difficult to get them to leave so Alex and I decided to go ahead of them. At the hotel, we had a light on in the room because we were getting ready for bed. One of the guys came back and started banging on the door. Neither of us wanted to deal with it so we turned out the lights and ignored him. He quickly was distracted and left.
May 5th
This morning was Saturday. It was a lazy day, we all got up at our own pace and did whatever we wanted. In our room, Alex, Jessica, and I ended up waking up around 7:30 but we stayed in bed. We got up had breakfast went through the morning routine around 8:30. Then we were ready to head to the market.
The Saturday market had a variety of things, not just local produce but also local jewelry and clothing and things like that. We found a stall that had imperfect pearls they were nice, but the imperfections made them unsuitable for jewelry. They were selling them five pearls for $20 and I decided that imperfections aside they were beautiful, so I bought some.
There were some food stalls. One that came recommended made wraps. Alex and I stopped and bought some different wraps to eat for lunch. Adrien had breakfast at the market, waffles with ice cream, strawberries, and maple syrup.
We bought local produce; bananas, papaya, starfruit, sweet potatoes, corn on the cob, and watermelons. It was all so fresh and so good. With the food weighing us down, we decided to head back to the hotel so we could ditch our bags. After we put the groceries away our lazy day began.
It was raining on and off all day, so we decided to sit around and be lazy at the hotel. We all had different things downloaded onto our computers and onto an external drive, so we mostly hung around the room watching movies on the laptop. We would all move between rooms watching different movies, reading books, playing games, and everything else. Saturday was spent indoors very lazy until we decided it was time for bed.
May 6th
Sunday was another lazy day. We slept in late which was about 8 am. Me too slow the left breakfast of leftovers. We sat around on the porch drinking tea and coffee and waking up. Then we decided we would spend the day on the beach.
We spent the day swimming, playing frisbee, and relaxing on the beach. A group of us decided to go for a walk down the beach and explore. When we got back to the hotel some of the guys decided that they wanted to go for a hike. The girls asked them to wait because we had a meeting at 1 p.m. But they didn’t want to, so they left without us.
Us girls had meetings about feminine hygiene and other things having to do with the local septic system. It was about how to deal with all these different things. After that, we decided to keep lazing about. I ended up falling asleep and having a nap right through dinner.
After I woke up, I had leftovers from dinner, and I read my book. When the guys came back from their hike they decided that we should play some board games. We started games but we are all tired and not all that into it, so we had people quitting all over the place which made it more difficult to play a game. Eventually, we all decided to quit and go to bed.
May 7th
Because of all the rain over the weekend, the water level in the street was high. It looked like a pipe had broken or something. On top of that, there was no water at the hotel. We had a little hot water that was already in the tank, but no water was being refreshed and there was no cold water. For this reason, we decided to skip our morning run. Because if we were going to have showers they were going to be scalding hot. We got dressed in nice clothes before heading to the lecture because we had a welcoming ceremony in the afternoon.
We went to class and had our usual lecture from 8:30 till 9:30, then we went directly to the National Auditorium. There was a little bit of confusion at the auditorium. No one was sure if we were watching the procession or taking part in the procession.
We ended up watching the procession. We waited outside and watched while all the delegates and house speakers from the other islands in the South Pacific and the Peoples Republic of China entered.
The National Anthem began the proceedings. Then we listened to the Speakers of the House welcome the delegates. We listened to a few people make parliamentary speeches. We were invited to join the delegates at the welcoming feast.
The Welcoming Feast with a large buffet constantly being refilled. It was chicken, pork, mussels, oysters, shrimp, egg salad, potato salad, taro, curry any other number of things that you could choose from. People had eaten their fill at lunch and then dessert was pulled out. Banana bread and chocolate cake and ice cream and fruit in yogurt. It was all very good we ate until we were bursting.
The local dance troupe provided entertainment. There was dancing and drumming and everyone was amazing. After the welcoming ceremony and lunch were done we went back to the hotel. We changed into more casual clothes. Then we had to be back at the University.
We started our art program this week. It wasn’t exactly what I was hoping it would be. I was hoping we get to do something within the dramatic arts or the physical arts like dancing or drumming. Unfortunately, it was visual art and we were learning about local styles of painting and block art. Things that I’m not very good at.
We were given the boards that we are going to paint, and we painted them white in preparation for the morning. Then had a small art lecture about the meaning of some of the symbology that we would be using within our own art. We had time to think about what kind of thing we were thinking about painting. We finished after 3 and we cleaned up our art area. Then we hurried back to the hotel to drop off our stuff and go downtown.
I headed into town to go to the bank. Unfortunately, I was already too late the banks closed at 3. I saved that for another day and we continued to the grocery store to buy food.
Rarotonga is a remote island. Outside locally grown food, everything needs to be flown or barged in. This can be quite expensive. Milk was $8 a litre because they didn’t have cows on any of the islands. Cheese made from goat’s milk, which they did have on the island, was relatively cheap. They also had things like broken produce or produce that was close to its due date that would be marked down to relatively inexpensive.
After buying our groceries for the week we headed back to the hotel. My roommate complained about the shopping experience and about the art project that we had to do. She was complaining about having no artistic talent. Some of the others, like myself, don’t have talent either and we just grinned and bared it. She thinks poorly of herself and is always talking badly about herself. It can bring the other people down and it gets kind of depressing. I hope that we are able to bring up her confidence with some things and that this attitude of hers changes soon.
We sat on the porch for a bit visiting the other students before dinner. Some people decided that they wanted to go out for dinner. We had just bought groceries, but I figured why not. The place everyone wanted to go for dinner was closed. So, we started walking back to the hotel and past a Chilis. It was open and it was fine so that’s where we went for dinner. We went back to the hotel. We sat with Gary and visited until it was time for bed.
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