The Cook Islands

We arrived in the early morning and were greeted at the airport with a guy playing a banjo and singing to us, then we got through customs and were given a flower necklace and a bottle of well needed water!! It was scorchio even at 0630 in the morning. We got on our transport and brought us to our guesthouse. It was amazing, just over the road was the clearest sea I've ever seen and the house has 2 dogs that were abandoned by their owners and kinda just live there, they have no names but follow the guests everywhere and spend the day with you at the beach etc. We arrived and went straight to bed after the long 10 hour flight from LA and minimal sleep on the plane. In the afternoon we met the other guests and Patrick from Ireland was actually from NZ and some other foreigners were here but were leaving the next day, then I met Michael, well we didn't know it at the time but Michael is special needs, so I tried to talk to him and he just stood there grunting and dribbling!! Its quite sad how he is and I don't think he'd had a shower since he got here!! Anyway we got settled in and checked out the beach immediately and it was like bath water and super clear, got me snorkel stuff on and went looking around. We saw a lot of life and some fantastic colours. The next day we went to get a licence for a scooter so we could bomb around the island with the newbie Al the Kiwi. So we all got our bikes and bombed round the islands and enjoyed our freedom!! We had the Czechs people here aswell, they were odd but might meet up with them in Oz as they live there. So with our scooters we checked out the snorkelling elsewhere round the Island, it was absolutely incredible. One day we decided to walk across to the other Island cause it was so shallow, halfway across I got bitten twice on my ankle by these pretty fish but soon became my enemy, everytime we went into the water they would be waiting to terrorise us the little buggers!!!!! We went to an Island Night at the Roratonga Beach Resort and saw them dancing and had a big feed, went to the Vaimo twice and had beautiful food. Most of our time was taken up with sunbathing, it was hell!!

The people who run the Guesthouse are really nice, Mata the woman brings us fresh bread and fruit everyday for us all to eat, they don't live on the premises but a few miles up the road so we have the run of the house. Its great. Then the yanks arrived and a bit odd but we all seem to get along together and drink wine and play scrabblle!!