Tonga, Tongatapu, Nuku'alofa, Neiafu...jeeezz (Tonga)

Leaving Samoa, we again had to fly through Auckland.  Our flight had been delayed in Samoa, and I was stuck sitting in the middle seat between two Samoan-sized Samoan men (I think you know what I mean), so by the time we arrived in New Zealand at about 5:30 in the morning, I was beat.  I use the public restroom as my personal bathroom, and the duty free lotions again as my personal toiletry stash; do you know Chanel make a cream that’s $450?!!!  Anyway, we got our spots on the plush lounge sofas in the international terminal, I put on my eye mask and ear plugs and settled in for a few hours of sleep; it’s not so bad, see?  We left the airport early afternoon, so we didn’t have too much idle time after exhausting our 30 minutes of internet.

The flight to Tongatapu, Tonga was easy and got us into Tonga with plenty of day light.  The first man to approach us offered us a ride to our accommodation, which Jared had reserved.  We drove in with a couple other people, and the driver, Mana, told us that he could provide us with a tour of the island for the next day if we wanted, so Jared, myself and another woman decided we would take him up on the offer.  The drive into Nuku’alofa, the city, was not long, and we arrived at Dayspring B & B; unfortunately, the manager was not informed of our arrival, so there was a bit of a dispute regarding the deposit we paid, but in the end, she quoted Jared a bit less than was listed online, so it worked out being the same.  It also actually worked out well, because Jared had originally booked us into the hostel for four days, but changed his mind that morning in Auckland…well he didn’t exactly “change his mind”, more like he forgot how long we reserved, and booked a flight for the two of us to go to Vava’u two days later.  Anyway, like I said, it all worked out fine in the end.  As usual, the first thing we had to do was find some food.  Judging by the map, we weren’t too far from the center of town, and the manager told us the walk into town would take about 30-45 minutes.  I HATE getting walking times from locals, they always SUCK, and it happens EVERYWHERE; people always kind of smile and say “oh you know Cook Island Time, Samoan Time, Tongan Time”; NO, I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking.  It is HOT people, we do not want to have to walk for an extra hour and a half, thinking we are lost, because you clearly have zero sense of time…anyway, I digress!!!  About an hour later, I looked at my phone map and it barely looked like we had moved at all in relation to the center of the city; we still had a very long walk.  It was also incredibly and uncomfortably hot and humid.  The only sources of food that we could find were little kiosks set up behind metal bars with things like overpriced tuna and corned beef; on a side note, canned corned beef is EVERYWHERE in the Pacific, I dunno why, but if you like the stuff, any island will be able to keep you well stocked.  We kept walking, our resolve fading, quickly until we finally passed a little shack with a list of 5 prepared meals, all of them in Tongan.  The only one we understood was “Kentucky”, which we correctly assumed was fried chicken.  Someone actually came in, ordered that, and told us it was really good, so we ordered the same and just decided to split the very large quantity of fried chicken and manioke.  It did in fact fill us both for dinner and cost a grand total of about $2.50.  After getting our food, we walked back to the hostel, ate, and took cool-off showers.  We lucked out big time with this place, because there was wifi, so the rest of the night, we planned, booked, emailed and paid for things before going to bed.

Our first full day, we had the breakfast that was included in our hostel stay.  At about 10am, our cab driver from the day before, Mana, came to pick us up for our day tour, along with a couple other girls.  Our first stop in town was the market.  No matter where we are, we always enjoy the markets.  Along with the normal vegetables and fruits, we inevitably find some alien edibles.  We also get to check out the local handicrafts and some of the prepared treats they have, usually baked goodies.  There have been a lot of really good baked things in the islands, so we’ve indulged a bit in carbs.  We drove around town to the King’s house, surprisingly understated, big, but understated, and the graveyard of the old king’s tombs, which are mounds built high above the ground in tiers, capped by the normal sized mound you might see when a body is buried below; it seemed a bit anticlimactic.  We made a few stops throughout the tour, including the South Pacific’s “Stonehenge” named Trillithon, I’m not coining that myself, I’m quoting the guide books.  I have not been to Stonehenge, but if that was any indication of what I might see, I think I’ll pass.  We stopped to have some lunch from some vendors on the side of the road; we read that one of the traditional cuisines was the same taro leaf in coconut milk that we loved, but in Tonga they add meat or fish, so we were siked when this vendor sold that dish.  We were however, incredibly disappointed when the whole thing was sort of ruined by the bones fat and miniscule amount of actual meat inside.  Unfortunately, we had ordered two, so I gave mine to Jared for dinner.  We saw more tombs of old kings, along with the standard front yard graveyards, the Mapu ‘a Vaea blow holes, Hufangalupe land bridge, which sort of looks like an area where the earth has just fallen away into the ocean creating a natural bridge in the earth; we went to an inconspicuous house, which Mana said belonged to the Queen and saw a ton of gross fruit bats in the trees, and lastly to the Anahulu underground caves.  I was a bit suspicious of Mana’s knowledge of Tongan history during the tour, because I would ask questions, such as the religion prior to the arrival of Christian Missionaries to which he responded that Tongan had no religion prior to Christianity…hmm, that doesn’t seem right.  Later during our stay in Tonga, a man lamentingly explained to us that the church seems to have “beaten” such knowledge out of the Tongans.   At the end of the tour, Mana dropped us back off at our hostel, and we had a bit of dinner, before showering, playing on the internet and heading to bed. 
On a side note, there are a few things that I want to address.  Normally, when you travel to these “Paradise” style islands, you might not venture into the culture, politics, and beliefs of the people, but I’ve learned a few things along the way that seem to ring true throughout the Pacific.  I explained in Samoa how the church exploits the locals, impoverishing the impoverished, well the same seemed to ring true in Samoa; though Samoa did seem a bit wealthier is a country.  It is actually illegal in Samoa to walk around without a shirt; when people swim on public beaches, they are to wear shirts and long shorts.  I understand how the church thinks in regards to people showing their bodies, but it seems interesting that a people that walked around half naked a century ago are now so staunchly opposed to the sight of flesh; it also seems a bit impractical on super hot small islands, I’m just saying.  Samoa is the only surviving monarch in the South Pacific, though, much like Great Britain, there is a Parliament, Prime Ministry and local elected officials.  The Tongans do not pay taxes, and when I asked how they paid for things like roads and city maintenance, everyone said it was from aid money.  But none of that aid money was being used for things like agriculture and education…are we aware that this is happening!?!?!?  I met a guy, Harry, from the US who works with the Peace Corp.  I think he’s doing a great thing and that Tonga is really lucky to have people willing to dedicate themselves to educating the population…in theory.  In reality, Harry lives on a teenie island (which I’ll get to later) and teaches English class in the small school for two hours a day…that is it.  That is all he does with his time in Tonga; I’m sorry, he also seems to drink an excessive amount, or at least excessively talks about drinking.  In a country like Tonga, I think resources like money and actual humans could be put to much better use than they are.  Just a bit of food for thought.  Oh, by the way, I feel pretty bad for Harry, he seems excruciatingly bored living on this really small island with no one to hang out with.  Lastly, is anyone aware of China’s presence in the Pacific Island region?  In every single island we’ve been to, the locals tell us about the Chinese.  In Tonga, they were physically present more than we noticed in any other place, with almost all of the small kiosks selling food run by Chinese.  Apparently, the Chinese are benevolently donated buildings, construction material etc to the Pacific Islands in exchange for the right to fish jussssttttt a bit in their waters.  Seriously?  “Just a bit” of Chinese fishing is like a hostile takeover of the underwater kingdom.  There is nothing that the Chinese government uses “just a bit” of, there are over a billion people there!  Alsooooo, word on the street is (and I learned this from the owner of the hostel in Nuku’alofa while sipping Noa with him) they are trying to post naval bases on these islands.  Poor poor Pacific Islanders.  At least there is some resistance, because all the land is privately owned and passed down through the generations.  So we’ll see how that goes. 
Alright, back to adventures.  Tonga was actually probably our laziest country (though I’m saying that as I’m sitting in Fiji being especially lazy, so it might end up being a lazy tie in the two countries; I’ll let you know); almost all of the islands are coral islands, rather than volcanic, there is no hiking or trekking, so the options are pretty limited to beaching and culturing, though as I mentioned before, much of the traditional culture seems to have been…replaced.  We did still get to see a lot of traditional attire; almost all of the men and women wear sarongs and shirts and large tightly woven grass skirts over the sarong; pants are almost never worn.  The tradition of dancing is less prevalent on the island also. 
The day after the tour, we packed up our things again and got picked up by Mana to go back to the airport.  We were flying to one of Samoa’s farthest island chains, the Vava’u islands.  The flight was easy, and we were quickly picked up by a cab driver.  We weren’t exactly sure of where to stay in the city of Neiafu on Vava’u, so we told him to bring us to a backpackers, and easily found some cheap accommodation.  It’s been low season everywhere we’ve been, so we were actually the only two people in the hostel; love when that happens!  We settled in and decided to head out for some information on how to spend our five days there.  The actual Information Site was closed…at 2pm, so we instead found a Go Kart tour place, run by a couple expats, and they surprisingly we able to help us set up all of our activities.  It’s a very small community, so the woman was able to call everyone directly and set things up for us on the spot!  She did toot her own horn and convince us to go on a Go Karting tour around the island, which was really the only way to get out of town unless you wanted to hire a cab.  So we booked that for the afternoon, and headed to the market to pick up a few things, including manioke, which we had never prepared ourselves but wanted to try some local unknown items.  When we got back to the hostel, we made some lunch, where I peeled and boiled about 1/9^th of the manioke, and did not like it at all!  Uh oh.  Next we put on “clothes [we didn’t] mind getting dirty” as instructed by the Go Kart woman, and headed out.  By the way, all these things were within probably 100 yards of one another, so nothing was a far walk.  Jared and I shared a kart, and we drove out of town to see some of the better things on the island, including a few lookouts, Utula’aina Point and Keitahi and Ene’io Beach.  To be honest, we had the most fun during the tour driving like maniacs through the woods in the Karts.  Jared was more of a daredevil behind the wheel than me, but we did both get to do some donuts, and without helmets or seatbelts the whole thing was probably a bit more exhilarating!  I have no idea how people get to the places without a kart, there is no road and the path is often so overgrown and occluding I can’t imagine trying to drive a car through it.  Anyway, normally I would look at propaganda for tours like that and scoff at how cheesy it must be, but it was actually really really fun.  We were so covered in dirt and dust by the end, I was actually picking out huge eye boogers of dirty until the next morning, gross!!  After the tour, we took showers aggressively scrubbing the dirty off.  We grabbed some of the local beer, made a surprisingly good dinner where I made chips out of the manioke, and settled in for a movie before bed.
The next morning, we woke up early, grabbing a nice breakfast, before heading out for a snorkel trip with a man named Don.  Along the way, through the islands surrounding Vava’u, he told us a bit about the history of Tonga’s European discover and Polynesia including the mutiny aboard the HMS Bounty by Lieutenant Bligh.  On the trip, we stopped at two caves, one about two yards under water, and completely sealed even during lowtide, that was apparently used by William Mariner, the British teenage ship clerk that was spared from Tongan cannibalism, lived in Vava’u with the native and returned to England years later to write a book on Tonga; that would be an interesting read!  We swam two reefs, both with really nice coral life, but not a ton in the way of fish.  Damn Chinese government.  Anyway, we were the only two people on the tour, so we got to spend as much time as we wanted in the water, and by the end of each swim, I was freezing.  Don provided us with snacks and a light lunch along the way, before heading back to shore and treated both myself and Jared to a couple of margaritas at one of the handful of local bars set on the bay and run by expats; it was there that we met the Peace Corp volunteer, Harry.  It was also at this location where we learned of kava, a local drink made from basically sticks, ground up into dust and mixed with water; the drink apparently has narcotic properties and people spend ages drinking at night and singing together.  Say what!?  Yes, we could participate!  They also told us about a rum punch that we just HAD to try, so it was looking to be a sloppy night for us.  Once we had finished our margaritas and chatter with the local expats, we made our way back to the market for a few more groceries and to the hostel to clean up and make dinner.  Unfortunately, after dinner I was wiped out from the sun and snorkeling, but Jared braved on and went to a kava bar to drink with the locals.  By the time he was back, I was passed out.  He reported back though that drinking at that kava joint was by donation; he paid 10 pa’anga (the currency) and was able to drink an unlimited amount of kava…but he preferred to just try a bit.  The first glass made his mouth numb, and the rest had no effect, but he got to watch as the locals participated in impromptu sing-a-longs.
After a good sleep, we leisurely woke up, ate breakfast and packed our bags.  We were headed farther into Tongan country to a very small island called Ofu; there was one backpacker lodge there and that was the only place to stay on the island.  Late morning, a man picked us up along with a few other people and drove us to the old harbor where a small motor boat was waiting, along with Harry hoping for a ride back out to the island where he lived, Ofu!  Jared and I were the only ones staying more than one night, and we had to bring our own food and water for every meal, so added to our normally huge amount of stuff and the two other couples, we packed in tightly on the small boat.  The ride was only about 20 minutes, and dropped us off at a small house right on the beach.  The family had built two rooms about 20 feet from the beach, and that was the entire hostel; thank gosh it was low season.  Our boat driver/the owner of the hostel gave us the ten-second tour and left…back on the boat to the main island, and told us he’d be back that night.  Literally, he left the place entirely empty when he dropped off six stranger to his home.  Anyway, we settled in to our cozy room, and immediately started doing nothing…but on the beach, so it was a good northing.  The water was clear and the beach was nice.  They had lounge chairs and hammocks, so it was an optimal reading/doing nothing environment.  We had planned on staying for 3 days, so we weren’t in a hurry to do anything but lie.  After a few hours, we grabbed some kayaks with a few other people, including Harry, and paddle out to an even small island with a super expensive resort on it.  There couldn’t have been more than 3 nice sized rooms on the entire island, which you could probably walk all the way around in less than 10 minutes.  One of the couple who joined us looked into staying there and said it was a bit of $400 a night; HA and we got to stay just a touch away for about $45 pa’anga!  The owners of the place we also expats, but they had gone away sailing for the holidays, so they left the place in the charge of a cute young English girl who was just, you know, traveling around.  Lord, that was a lucky find!  After throwing back a few beers at the beachside bar, we kayaked back to our place to get ready for dinner and watch the sunset.  I will say the place was pretty bare minimum, we did have our own room and bathroom; you don’t really need too much when your plan is to lounge on a beach, but the kitchen was pretty nasty.  They made zero attempt to perk it up as a kitchen to cater to foreigners; now I’m not a priss, but there were flies everywhere, no good sponges to wash things, junk left on dishes etc.  Gross.  I tried to make dinner as quickly as possible, while using as few things as possible inside the kitchen.  We decided to live off the land a bit, and grab ourselves a breadfruit from one of the trees around.  Jared went on a hunt, came back with a nice big one, which we cut into and…hmmm, it’s brown inside.  Is it supposed to be brown inside? I dunno, I’ve never seen an uncooked breadfruit.  Neither have I.  Isn’t it always white when we eat it?  Maybe it turns white when you cook it?  O, Lord.  I crossed my fingers and boiled the meat of the breadfruit, mixed it with our sautéed vegetables, and basically ruined the entire dish.  The breadfruit was definitely too immature to be picked, apparently they are not supposed to be brown on the inside.  Well, this whole “living off the land” thing is all about trial and error.  We chocked down dinner while watching a nice sunset, said goodnight to Harry and the two other people staying there, and headed to bed.
It was Sunday next, and we had heard there was not a lot going on on the island on Sunday.  Oh my god, were they right!  Somehow, people managed to do less than they had done the day before, which was absolutely nothing.  Church services started at 5am, then 10am and again at noon and 2pm.  The people who were not in church during any one service only left their home if they wanted to sleep outside in the shade with the breeze.  There was absolutely no one around anywhere; no noise, no laughter, nothing.  It was actually somewhat eerie, but it did make the place kind of feel like our own!  After hours of doing nothing, we grabbed the kayaks and headed out to a teenie island where we were in fact the only people.  I actually commented on the milestone we hit; we’ve been the only tour group on an island, sometimes consisting of just a handful of other people, we’ve been the only people on a beach, but never before have we been the only two people on an entire island.  I thought it was pretty cool!  Let’s seeeee, what did we do the rest of the day.  Oh right, nothing.  When we went back, I’m pretty sure we probably lounged again for a while reading.  Honestly, when absolutely nothing happens to the degree at which it happened on that island, things just kind of start to blur together.  At some point during dinner, Harry popped by as he was incredibly bored and in search of friendly faces.  I think that night was when I really started to feel bad for Harry, listening to his stories of solitude and cultural isolation.  Anyway, in a gesture of good will, Jared let him borrow his tarobyte hard drive and download shows and movies to his heart’s content, which he seemed to really appreciate.  In exchange, he gave me a chocolate bar!  I’m not sure how Jared won with that exchange, but I was happy. 
The next day was our last on the small island; we decided to cut it a day short for outbound flight reasons.  Anyway, not-so-long story, even shorter, we did nothing, took the 10 minute walk in both directions from where we were staying until the road was blocked.  At some point, we again took out the kayaks around the island, which we actually discovered is quite big, but only inhabited in that teenie area, which again, we were unable to explore any farther than the road cut off (like the Cook Islands and Samoa, all land is privately owner so we couldn’t just go a-wandering).  That evening, we packed ourselves up and hopped back on the teenie boat back to Vava’u and Neiafu.  We got back with a few hours of sunlight left and headed to expat run Bounty Bar for the supposedly amazing rum punch, which were in fact very good, and we even got comped an extra on by the owner.  We went back after to take a shower and headed over to a restaurant down the street; we were told that the owner’s son was a former Marine who returned not long ago, and Jared wanted to meet him.  Unfortunately, we did not find the guy, and instead, decided to stay at the restaurant to try their ota ika, which is basically ceviche marinated in coconut milk, sadly though, the dish was pretty bland.  After dinner, we went back to the empty hostel and went to bed.
The next was our last in Vava’u.  We had breakfast, packed and waited for our cab driver who took us to the airport.  When we arrived back in Tongatapu, Mana picked us up again from the airport.  On the way into the city of Nuku’alofa, Mana stopped on the side of the road to pick up some fresh fish and invited us to dinner with him and his wife that evening.  This time in Nuku’alofa, we stayed at a different hostel closer to town.  Upon arriving without a reservation, we were somewhat curtly shuffled into the dorm room, which ended up being the same price as the private room we had at Dayspring B & B, and without internet; we were not impressed, but it was right in town, so we decided to stay.  After settling in, we were immediately invited onto the porch with a few other travelers, locals and the owner of the hostel.  He was a local man who brewed his own liqueur called Noa, made from coconuts and coffee; it was really good and tasted a lot like Kahlua.  We spent the next couple hours sipping on Noa and chatting with everyone, until Mana came to pick us up for dinner.  He drove us out to his place, where his wife Isabel was waiting.  We spent the night sitting on the floor talking, drinking from coconuts, and eating the fresh fish she had cooked in coconut milk with peppers and sweet potatoes that wer blue!  After a few hours, Mana drove us back to our hostel, where we slept well.
The next morning, we woke up and headed to the market for breakfast.  We had planned on attempting to go to a small island called Eua for the next two days, but Mana talked us out of it, saying that the weather was meant to be a bit unpredictable, and our ferry back could very well be cancelled, which would make us miss our flight.  Instead, we thought we might take a ferry to a closer island just for the day.  Prior to heading out, we got walking direction to the port, and wouldn’t you know it!  They were wrong!  As instructed, we walked out to the coast and took a left; supposedly, the port was about a 15 minute walk along the water.  Turns out, we were supposed to turn right, which we were told by a local after about 30 minutes of walking without seeing anything resembling a port ahead along the water.  Unfortunately, because that had taken so long, if we tried to double back we would still miss the morning ferry out.  Jeeeez.  Anyway, we decided to just head back to the hostel and regroup.  We attempted a different route back, getting us a bit lost, but landing us smack dab in front of a different hostel, which had a private room for less that we were paying for a dorm room.  Gotta love those finds!  We raced back, packed up and left.  Since we had absolutely nothing to do, and we were now going to be staying in the city for the night, we went back to the market to pick up a few things.  We were pretty lazy the rest of the day, given a bit of rainy weather and humidity, so we just made some food and watched a movie that night.
The next day, we sort of debated attempting to go back to the port to try to catch another ferry, but questionable weather and extreme laziness prevented us.  Instead we lounged the day away reading, popping back over to the market for some more browsing and some ice cream.  In town, we ran into Mana who invited us to his place that night for a BBQ.  Later in the day, he picked us up and drove back to his place.  Jared and I grabbed a few drinks for “everyone”, which ended up just being me, Jared and Mana, instead of the 6 people that were expected.  Mana showed us how to use a machete or knife to form spiked…well they looked just like spears I guess, but they were used to cook the meat on the fire.  Jared and I were both pretty bad at making our spikes (a big machete is actually pretty heavy), and Mana took over to get all the meat on at the same time.  I bit later, he received a phone call from one of the girls who had gone on the city tour with us a few days prior, asking him to pick her up from the airport in a bit.  Hmm, bit of a conundrum as the meat was just put on the fire.  Now, you might think, no problem, Mana go pick up the girl while Jared and Kathleen just watched the fire and meat, rotating the sticks occasionally, right?  Shockingly, that was not how it played out.  Instead, Mana gave me the keys to his van and asked me to drive to the airport, giving me spotty directions, and just to bring the girl back there where he would drive her back to town.  Lord, that was a terrible idea.  I mean, it was fine in the end, I had no troubles getting there (there aren’t many roads to get lost on) and back, but it probably took me double the amount of time it would have taken him, because I was driving so cautiously in the dark…without my license on me.  Anyway, after a bit of a delay, we finally started our BBQ.  The other guests never showed up, so we had a surplus of cooked lamb and boiled manioke, which worked out well for me and Jared.  Late into the evening, Mana drove us back to our hostel for the night. 
Travel day as next; we had to leave Tonga.  We had a late flight, so we leisurely ate, packed and lounged around reading until Mana came and picked us up.  Our next flight to Fiji was the first direct flight we’d had in a while!

It's Pronounced SAMoa (Samoa)

Auckland, New Zealand is the gateway to the Pacific as we have found out from all of our Pacific Island flight purchases.  After leaving Rarotonga at night, we arrived in the Auckland airport at about 1am.  We ate a bit of our leftover coconut and rice and settled in for sleep.  I thoroughly abused the vacant duty free area to make myself smell fresh for bed and apply the most expensive night creams before settling down.  Luckily, the Auckland airport has plush couches, so we had no problem getting a pretty good night sleep. 
The next morning, I again proceeded to use and abuse the duty free lotions and potions area, and take advantage of the nice makeup.  We had to stay in the airport until midafternoon, so there wasn’t exactly a lot to do, though we could only use the internet for 15 minutes, so duty free was the place to be.  Anyway, we finally boarded our flight to Samoa (by the way, it is pronounced SAM-oa with the emphasis on the “Sam” rather than the “o” like we pronounce it; just in case you wanted to know).  The flight was easy and got us into the island of Upulo, Samoa at about 10pm.  We found a “shuttle” going into the city of Apia where our “hostel” was located; I used the quotation marks on shuttle because, it was, in fact, a taxi driver attempting to seem more economical to tourists by holding up a sign saying “shuttle to Apia” (sly guy).  We told him our destination, which we finally made it to after going to the hostels old location, and then stopping to ask about three different people lounging on the side of the road for directions.  Now, earlier I used the quotation marks on hostel because, this was a person’s house, not a hostel.  We walked into a man’s living room, where his three children were watching TV.  His showed us to our room, which was next door to the children’s room, and we all shared a bathroom.  Either way though, we were happy to not be in an airport.  We promptly took showers as it was dreadfully humid and went straight to bed.
The next morning, Jared and I were prepping to head out to the grocery store to get things for our meals, when there was a knock on our door telling us breakfast was ready.  Score!!  Free breakfast!  We went downstairs and sat with the family, eating fresh bread (really good), something that looked exactly like an empanada but was filled with pineapple jelly (not so good), other pastries, mangos, and tea and coffee.  We much preferred to sit with the family over a meal and get to discuss the island, their lives and exchange ideas.  The family gave us some pointers for the day and we set off.  The first thing we wanted to do was drop off some laundry, so right off the bat we walked in the wrong direction.  We did finally find a laundromat by the main road, but, as we found out when we started the long walk into the center of town, we were probably at least a mile out of our way.  Oh well, we found a grocery store along the route into the center of Apia, which we explored and found that prices were not a lot better than the Cook Islands.  In the center of town, we stopped into the Information Site to get some recommendations on how to spend our time in Samoa, after which we explored around town a bit including the central market and the lively, hectic bus depot.  We decided to grab a bus up to the Robert Louis Stevenson museum, which wasn’t much of a museum.  I have no idea how that made the list of top 10 things to do in Samoa, but we were clearly misguided, as was the person that wrote the list (if you’re reading this Trip Advisor [yes, I’m aware that’s unlikely], I am available for a job).  We paid $10 just to walk around his former house…yea that was it.  It wasn’t an artistic house or especially…anything…it was just a house!  Anyway, that was a failed decision on our part.  After the 10 minute-$10 tour, I wasn’t feeling very well, so I sat around and read while Jared hiked up a small hill to the Robert Louis Stevenson tomb, which apparently was also a bit of a disappointment, not revealing a view of anything expect the shrubbery directly in front of him.  Anyway, after that, we got back on the bus into the center of town and made the long walk back to the laundromat and grocery store before heading back to our hostel.  Upulo was so hot and humid throughout the day, especially as we walked out of town and off the coastline; by the time we got back we promptly took cold showers just to cool off.  The rest of the evening, we relaxed, ate dinner and took at least one more shower before getting into bed spread eagle in an attempt to prevent overheating before falling asleep. 
The next morning, we had breakfast with our family again and packed up a few things for the day.  The man who lived in the house offered a full day tour of the island, which we decided to take.  The island is deceivingly large so it was the easiest and most time efficient way to see everything we wanted.  First, we drove through the center of Apia, and along the coast eastward, as he explained a bit of the history of Samoa, their culture, and his life there.  Like the Cook Islands, Samoa is a very religious country, with huge churches dedicated to very small villages…hmmmm, perhaps a bit of misallocation going on there, but who am I to tell the church to give back the poor!  I digress.  An interesting feature of the Samoan urban and suburban landscape are fales, which are open-aired meeting houses.  What we might think of as a “neighborhood” are villages here, and every village is made up of basically one large extended family; all land is privately owned and passed down through generations, and every village has rules that are to be followed as law.  All family gatherings, family meetings, disputes and decisions are made in fales, where the family will meet whenever necessary.  It also appears to be a place where people tend to lounge and nap on hot days.  Our first stop on the tour was the Piula Cave Pool, located behind a Methodist ministry school.  Despite the fact that I felt a bit uncomfortable at a ministry school on an intensely religious country, in my bikini, the cave pool was quite nice; the water was fresh and clear with the mouth of a cave opening up to it, where you could dive down and swim through to another cave, and the entire scene was right on the coastline.  After, we continued to drive through the countryside, spotting waterfalls and expansive landscapes of rolling hills and rainforests stretching out to the sea.  On the opposite side of the island, we stopped at Lalomanu Beach for lunch of fish and chips (french fries) and a bit of swimming in the clear blue lagoon.  We continued our drive farther around the island, stopping at Te Sua to walk through their botanical garden and lava field, play around the blowholes, which attacked unsuspecting Jared as he had his back turned to them, and lastly swim in the fresh water of the giant swimming hole, maybeeeee thirty meters below the ground, which would have been called a cenote if we were in Latin America.  Our last stop of the day was the Togitogiga Waterfalls inside the O le Pupu Pue National Park, where we got to jump into a waterfall pool and get a back massage by the waterfalls.  On the way home, we quickly stopped at Papapapaitai waterfalls, which I really just wanted to mention, because I love the name, and they were actually really lovely to see.  The whole tour took until about 5pm, which was perfect to head back to the house, for some showers, dinner, relaxing and bed.
The next morning, we decided to pop out to Manono, a very small island just off the coast of Upulo.  After breakfast with the family, we leisurely walked to the center of Apia to catch a bus.  The bus took a while before we could actually leave, the ride then took longer than expected; I mentioned the island being deceivingly large.  During the ride the bus went through varying stages of jam-packed including requiring probably about 10 passengers to actually sit on the laps of perfect strangers.  People are really helpful though, they will take your bag right out of your hands if you’re standing and put it on their laps! Also, they always asked where we were going and called out to the bus driver to stop when we reached our destination.  Despite leaving a bit before 9am, we didn’t actually arrive until about 12:45pm.  When we got off the bus at the boat ferry, we had to wait awhile for enough people to show up to fill the ferry; we were told that only required eight people.  We waited for ages for another bus to come around and offload some more people, at which time we sort of started to meander to a small boat.  At that moment, a man came over and flagged us toward him, so we figured that was the boat ferry to the other side.  He started explaining how the boat would drop us off and could wait until we wanted to come back, at which time, we realized he was soliciting us for a private ferry ride.  We declined his offer and made our way back to the area where we were originally going to board.  Right as I was approaching, the two men said something to one another in Samoan, and the guy on the departing boat tossed the rope anchoring the boat to the dock and started floating away…just as I was about to board!!  As I looked on in totally shock at this “FU” move, he apologized saying that boat was a “special ferry”.  I was apoplectic; I believe (Jared does not) this entire maneuver was to force us to have to pay for a private ferry ride instead of just taking the public ferry with the locals.  The first man again approached us offering his private boat ride; he was trying to charge $100 for a round trip boat ride, at which time I went off on him saying he was forcing us into this decision and could go f*$& himself (in nicer terms) if he thought we were going to take this type of crap treatment just because we were tourists.  Jared called it a “temper tantrum”, but was impressed that I convinced him to come down $40 from his initial asking price.  We ended up accepting the offer, with Jared profusely apologizing for me.  Haha whatever, I’m not gonna be taken advantage of and not put up some sort of fight.  Either way, the good cop bad cop routine worked and we boarded the boat.  It was a quick 20 minute ride over to the small island of Manono.  There wasn’t much to do or see on the island but a couple things, so we started walking leisurely expecting to swim and see an ancient grave site called the Ancient Star Mound and 99 Stones along the way (which by the way is supposedly the graves of a man and his 99 wives; he apparently dead with the 100^th wife).  Along the way we smiled and waved to everyone we saw in their open-aired homes; we didn’t make it very far before a young girl hollered out asking us to join her for lunch.  We initially just sort of waved and continued on, until Jared decided he was actually hungry and wanted to join.  We walked back and approached the girl who enthusiastically welcomed us, despite obviously being a bit anxious about the amount of food they had for their own family.  About one second after Jared and I noticed her momentary apprehension, we felt about two inches tall and wanted to just turn and run.  Instead, we walked into the home and said hello to all the different members of the family. They welcomed us into their main family living area, a large mostly unfurnished rectangular area with screened windows and chairs lining the exterior.  This was apparently the area where most of the family slept at night and watched TV from a huge big screen gifted to them by their aunt who lived in the US.  They set up a table, and gave us coconuts right away.  We sat down with two girls a bit younger than us, and chatted with them while we sipped our coconuts.  The family brought us servings of fresh fish, breadfruit and taro with a really good salted coconut milk sauce.  The girls asked us about traveling and life in the US and told us about their aunt who lived in Salt Lake City, while we asked about growing up as young girls on a small island in Samoan culture.  We felt pretty bad about eating a significant chuck of their food for the day, so we bought the whole family sodas, which they mentioned they loved and didn’t get a lot.  After lunch, we strolled down the island with the girls for a few minutes before we had to get back to catch our return boat to Upulo.  We exchanged names for Facebook (which I actually can’t find now and feel really bad about), and set on our way back to Apia.  Once back on Upulo, we didn’t have to wait long for the bus, which was not dreadfully crowded.  Back in town, we made our way to the hostel, stopping along the way to pick up highly recommended cinnamon bread (yum) and local fruit ice cream (super yum), before calling it quits in the usual way back at the hostel.
The next morning was our last in Apia; we were headed for Savai’i, the largest island in Samoa and third largest in Polynesia.  Our flight wasn’t until the evening, so we still had the whole day to spend in Apia.  We had breakfast with the family, packed up our things, and started out.  During breakfast, we had all commented on our luck with the weather while in Apia, as it only rained at night or in the mornings before we left; that day our luck changed.  We had to walk out to the main road and bus station in the pouring rain, but I’ll tell ya, it was so hot I think I was still sweating under being completely soaked.  Once we got into town, we went into the Information Site to await their cultural show.  I ran around for a few errands, including FINALLY being able to send off my New Zealand nursing registration application.  The cultural show at the Information Site was great, probably our favorite cultural exhibit yet.  We started out with two men in traditional attire as they explained some of the basic principles by which the Samoans live.  He explained the fales we had notice everywhere, village and family hierarchy and family duties.  My favorite was probably when he stated that when a little girl is born, she is to be served, and when a little boy is born, he is to serve.  Men and women basically perform the same duties they do in most other cultures (except men are expected to cook for the family), but they clearly just view male and female relationships and gender equality differently.  Anyway, I obviously liked that concept.  The two men showed us how to cook a traditional umu, underground cooking hearth, from getting the fire started, yes I now know how to make fire from two sticks of wood, and NO it is not how you see it in the movies…pretty cool, all the way to putting the prepared food on the umu to cook.  They showed us how to make coconut milk from the meat of a coconut, how to make the really yummy taro leaves in coconut milk, and how to braid a fish into palm leaves to cook.  Next we saw how women make tradition clothing from bark; the woman literally started out with a thin stick, and ended up with a 3 x 1 ft strip of thin cloth!  Next we saw the traditional tattooing!  We actually saw a man getting tattooed!  There were two women fanning him as he lay on his stomach, two men stretching the skin on the back of his legs and one man with two sticks: one stick had a thin metal blade attached at the end, and the other stick was used to firmly tap the first stick and metal blade into the skin!  I imagine it’s kind of difficult to visualize from my description, so maybe try googling or youtubing it; it’s actually quite interesting and a completely foreign way of performing tattoos.  Apparently, in the Samoan culture, tattoo artists are highly revered, and it is one of the only professions passed down within a family.  The most respected men and woman in any family can choose to undertake a tattoo, which can take several months to complete.  The men get a tattoo from their waists down to their knees, and women from their upper thighs down to their knees.  If a man or woman decides to undertake the lengthy process and then at some points backs out, he/she brings shame upon the entire family and village.  It is not a decision taken lightly, and once completed, the person is forever looked up to as a leader of the community and someone to be respected and revered.  I thought it was so interesting how opposite their culture is to western culture in regards to tattoos.  Lastly, we saw the carvers who make all the tools and boats for the community, before finishing off with lunch from the umu we had originally prepared!  We both really enjoyed their entire experience, and came away knowing a bit more about Samoan culture.  After the show, we headed out to the bus, and went to the ferry terminal.  Basically, the entire bus was going to the ferry, and it was packed.  We had our huge bags, which apparently everyone but us knows how to deal with, so Jared’s bag was taken and thrown in the back under some benches, while mine was up front being straddled by people sitting, and almost everyone had someone sitting on their laps.  Besides effectively cutting off circulation to Jared’s legs, the ride was easy (I say that because I was sitting on Jared; he might have a different story) and we didn’t have to wait long for the ferry once we arrived.  The entire boat ride over to Savai’i was just about an hour.  Once we arrived, we assumed we could just wait on the side of the road for a bus and hop on that…silly tourists.  Basically, every bus on the island, which was like five, were waiting to leave at the ferry.  We were one of the last off the boat, so we had to scramble asking around to find out which bus to take.  Once we did, things did not look do-able.  The bus was jam-packed, worse than I had seen before.  No room at all, and we had our huge bags to maneuver.  Ug, I did not think we’d be able to swing fitting everything on the bus.  Luckily, despite the fact that we were clueless, they were not.  Two guys came over and grabbed our bags and ran to the back of the bus.  I took a quick look at the back and saw one hemp string hanging from the bus, which they were fastening to the bags.  At that sight, I literally just started laughing and jumped in with the other passengers; if the bags died, the bags died!  There wasn’t even room to sit on anyone’s lap, but a nice man did grab my purse and backpack from me…it’s an odd feeling that you just have to go with, so as not to be that Crazy-bitch-American who thinks everyone is trying to steal from her.  The ride was an uncomfortable hour and a half of being too close to too many people, but at least people weren’t rude or obnoxious during the journey, like the 8am NYC subway.  Some nice people notified the bus driving when we were at our stop, and we got dropped off right in front of the recommended accommodation, Tanu Beach Fales.  Miraculously, when we got off, both of our bags were on the side of the road and intact; the only casualty of the ride was my Nalgene bottle.  We entered a large area full of open-aired fales, some bigger, some smaller, some clearly dedicated to dining areas and other to rooms.  We were greeted by the head of the family, nicknamed Mount, who gave us some coconuts to drink, checked us in, and gave us the lay of the land.  Our beach fale was about fifteen feet from the water at low tide, and about five feet from the water at high tide.  The fale was bare, basically an elevated wooden platform with retractable palm leaf panels as the walls, and a mosquito net for the floor bed that was placed inside the fale when we arrived; it was perfect!  We settled in with our bags, met one of the four other people staying there, and relaxed in our fale.  At about 8pm, a bell rang alerting us to dinner.  We met the last three people at the accommodation, and we all sat together and had dinner of breadfruit, fried fish, sausage in curry sauce, rice, taro leaves with coconut milk and vegetables with a lemongrass tea; it was more food for dinner than we’d had in a long time, and it was all really good.  The rest of the night we spent relaxing, reading, and listening to the ocean outside of our fale. 
The next morning, we woke up but refused to get out of bed, and instead looked out of the fale onto the ocean, until a bell rang again for breakfast.  We joined the other four people for a hearty breakfast, and planned our day.  We originally wanted to take a bus back a bit beyond the ferry to go to Afu Aau waterfalls, and do a hike in that area.  Unfortunately, we were informed that the only bus out to that area had gone for the day and there was no bus until late in the afternoon, which was the last bus going anywhere.  We debated a few other options, including taking a full day tour the accommodation could set up for us, and decided to just rent a car ourselves for the next day, as it was already approaching noon.  Along with one of the other people staying there, Christian from Germany, we decided to walk to the Paia Dwarf Caves, which we were massively incorrectly informed was a 30 minute walk away.  Boy was she way off; it was a 30 minute DRIVE away.  Luckily, over an hour into the walk, a car pulled up with a Danish couple, who were going to the Paia Dwarf Caves as well, and they offered us a ride.  Thank god!  We still had close to an hour walk left; 30 minute walk my a**.  Anyway, it worked out perfectly in the end, because you need a guide to accompany you through the cave both because the caves are on private land and because they are pitch black and you need someone who knows their way, if you want to stay safe.  Along the road, we picked up a man who lived on the property and could be our guide; he didn’t speak much English but could get by.  The Danish girl who picked us up, Katja, actually lived in Upulo doing research for her Anthropology thesis and had visited the caves before, so she told us to bring absolutely nothing and allowed us to put everything in her car, which was really convenient for us.  The five of us and our guide walked over to basically, a whole in the ground; it was not what you would normally call a cave.  It had been formed during the eruption of 1905-1911; yes there was an eruption on the island that lasted six years.  During that time, most of the magma flowed through underground tunnels formed by the lava, one of which, we were about to explore.  As we descended into the cave, all natural light faded and we had to use the flashlights from our guide.  The ground was a mix of volcanic rock and mud; some parts easy to traverse and others really difficult with the slippery mud and the sharp jagged rocks.  We scaled down into a few fresh water natural pools and continued farther and deeper into the tunnel.  Legend has it that the tunnel goes on infinitely and far inside are small fairy sized humans (they call dwarfs), that supposedly came out once years ago to bless a man with wealth and luck.  People became jealous of the man’s fortune and wanted to know how he got it, so he told them about the “dwarfs”.  The “dwarfs” then took away their blessings and hid in their cave, never to be seen again.  The Danish guy we were with, Lasse, was a bit of a dare devil, and when the guide claimed we had come to the end of the tunnel walk (but obviously not the end of the tunnel), Lasse kept going until he hit what appeared to be a wall blocking the tunnel…until he found a crawl space in the wall.  All the boys followed suit and kept going, but Katja and I opted to save our bathing suits from the garbage and refrain from crawling through the mud.  So lame I know; too bad Jared doesn’t write the blog.  Anyway, after a few minutes, the boys returned and we made the slow walk back to the surface.  Katja and Lasse offered to give us a ride back to Tanu Beach Fales for lunch, and then even invited us to accompany them to the island’s canopy walk Falealupo Canopy Walk.  After eating a bunch of free bananas Tanu offered, we all met back up and went to the canopy walk, which was one “bridge” build in the canopy of the rainforest, though the bridge was just a bunch of ladders strung together with planks over each ladder to walk on, so it was a bit nerve-wracking to cross.  On the other side of the bridge was basically a really cool tree house that we climbed higher into the canopy.  We had to purchase a ticket to enter the canopy bridge, and that ticket also allowed us to see the “giant footprint” down the road, which was just a weird looking indentation in the volcanic rock, that is now believed to have been the left foot of a giant as he walked (the right footprint is supposedly in Fiji…I’ll let you know), anyway not a whole lot to see, and it also allowed us to see the “rock house” which we couldn’t find but weren’t all that disappointed about.  With the Danish couple and Christian we drove around the island for a few hours, stopping at a nice beach and around Cape Mulinuu to something we think was called “Star Mound”, which was thought to be used for religious purposes or pigeon hunting…who knows.  By the way, that cape is the closest piece of land to the International Date Line; just a tidbit for you.  As evening rolled in, we hauled back to Tanu so we didn’t miss our dinner!!  Katja and Lasse ended up staying at Tanu also that night so it worked out well.  After dinner, we cleaned up and headed to bed in our ocean front fale; honestly, ocean front never gets old.

That next day, we had originally decided to rent a car, but Katja and Lasse offered us a ride in their car again, so we ended up getting to save a bit of money!  After we all had another hearty breakfast together, we piled in the car.  Our first stop was a large crater.  Almost the entire island is volcanic, and craters abound.  Directions in the Pacific islands all seem to be kind of the same in their crappiness.  In the actual Tourist pamphlet, it tells you to look for a fallen tree and the path is between that tree and an old fale.  That is how we found pretty much everything on the island: look for the coconut tree and the grave, or the old rock mound and the breadfruit tree, ug.  Anyway, after the short hot jaunt up and around the crater, we needed a little cooling off, so we headed to the Afu Aau waterfalls, where we got to swim around in the pool under the falls, and climb the rocks leading behind the falls, pretty neat.  We had some fresh fruits snacks there, before migrating back.  Driving with Katja was kind of enlightening, because she knew a lot of Samoan culture that you wouldn’t necessarily get to learn from guide books, like the fact that, though Christianity has brought a lot of unity to the people, it is also sort of stripping them of the little amount of money people have.  Samoa does not export anything; tourism is their biggest income market.  During services, the churches actually name each family and how much they have donated, in front of the entire congregation!  So basically, people can’t afford sugar, but they are bullied into donating to the church.  Hmmm, something seems wrong with that.  Anywayyyy, on our return to Tanu, we stopped at the empty town market, and the Saleaula Lava Fields.  As I mentioned before, the island was hit by a volcanic eruption in 1905, which started slowly, taking almost a full year for a huge mountain to emerge from flat earth, and threaten the towns below with ever rising bubbling lava.  Finally, in 1906 the magma spilled out of the mouth of the volcano and slowly flowed to the ocean, plowing through only a medium sized village on its route.  Because its progress was so slow, everyone in the village was actually able to pack their belongings and move, but we did get to see the ruins of the old church, walk along the undulating black volcanic lava paths, and see the imprints in the hardened earth of the metal from roofs that melted into the ground.  Pretty neat.  After all that, we headed back to Tanu for some relaxation and dinner before heading to bed.

The next day was our last in Samoa.  We woke up, had our breakfast and packed.  The bus came around at noon; luckily, it was not jam-packed this time, and we had a bit of breathing room.  We made it to the ferry easily, and back to Upulo, where we hopped on another bus to the airport.  We waited for ages in the airport, as our flight got delayed until 1am, but we got some good reading in, so it wasn’t a total loss I guess, haha.  Again, we were sad to leave Samoan Paradise, but happy to be moving on to the Tongan version.

Where God Vacations (Cook Islands)

Leaving Europe to return to the Pacific was about as crummy as leaving the Pacific to go to Europe; actually it was worse, since I almost didn’t make it back to the Pacific.  Wow, that seems like so long ago.  Anyway, I left the town of Monte San Vito at 3pm on Tuesday Nov 5^th and spent almost 60 hours in transit, stopping in three continents, and crossing the International Date Line twice.

I gave myself plenty of time initially, sleeping in the airport the night before my flight so I didn’t have to rush to the airport really early in the morning.  My first layover was a short two hours in London.  Predictably, that flight was uncomplicated, unfortunately the transfer was not.  In Rome, they were unable to print all of my tickets through to the Cook Islands.  The woman wasn’t sure why, but assumed it had something to do with Air New Zealand and that maybe they needed to print their own tickets for some reason, but she instructed me on exactly what to do in London.  When I arrived in London, I immediately made my way over to a different terminal and the Air New Zealand desk to print my other boarding passes.  Many countries, including the Cook Islands, require a departure flight to be already purchased prior to entry, which I had.  Jared had in fact purchased all of our tickets through to January, so I was set for the next few destinations.  The woman asked for the proof that I was exiting the Cook Islands, so I showed her my ticket to Samoa.  Then for some reason she wanted to see my subsequent tickets exiting each country I was visiting.  Once I got to Indonesia without a ticket out, she informed me that, because I did not have any ticket to a country where I had a “right to abode”, that I could not board my flight to the Cook Islands.  She said I needed a ticket home.  I explained my traveling situation, and my previous experiences with this type of requirement; many of the countries we’ve visiting have this requirement, and according to those experiences, as well as the US State Department website, each individual country requires proof of exit, not proof of exit to a country where I have the “right to adobe”.  The Cook Islands doesn’t give a S*#@ where I go, as long as I go.  She called her supervisor who confirmed what she said.  Then she informed me that, they were very sorry, but because we had been discussing this for so long, the flight had actually closed and I wouldn’t make the connection.  I freaked.  I got on the phone with the supervisor explaining that a) they were both being f*$#&@^ morons b) neither of them was an immigration officer and c) THEY WERE WRONG, oh yea and d) I paid close to 2k for this flight, I was not missing it because they were dragging ass.  I’m kind of surprised they didn’t call security…people were staring.  Anyway, at some point, the supervisor realized she was wrong, made up some story about finding a visa for me to go to New Zealand (I haven’t even applied for the visa yet, and she could never look up my visa status without information like, you know, my birthday and passport number).  Anyway, whatever.  They printed off my boarding pass, I gave them the biggest eye roll of my life and hauled A to my gate.  The rest of my flights, though long, were all hassle free.

I finally arrived in sunny and warm Rarotonga, Cook Islands in the afternoon.  I was so excited! Everyone always seems especially excited when arriving to a location like this.  I made it easily through customs, and went to pick up my bag…which never came.  Yes, the airline had lost my bag somewhere; I don’t want to point any fingers, but London, I’m looking at you.  Not a big deal, the airline gave me $100 to spend on a few items, and the only things I’d need for the next week were a bathing suit, flip flops and a sarong.  I just crossed my fingers that the bag wasn’t gone forever, and promptly brushed it off.  Jared was arriving from Tahiti not long after me, so I waited a bit for him to arrive.  He had arranged a pickup from the airport, so when he arrived we both met our transfer and drove to our hostel.  Most of that day was gone, so we just settled into the hostel and walked down the block to the beach.  The island is surrounded by a reef lagoon, so the water looked especially clear and pristine with lots of coral easily seen and coral fish.  We were really excited to explore the island and fantastic beaches, but we were pretty exhausted, so instead we spent a bit of time planning out our activities for the next few days.  We had an early dinner that night, watched a movie and passed out; my jetlag was setting in.   

The next day, I woke up retardly early…like 1am early, and couldn’t fall back asleep; ug, jetlag.  Anyway, around 7am Jared FINALLY woke up, lazy bones haha.  We had a small breakfast, mostly because we had no food, and set out.  There is one main road on the island, circumventing the entire island right on the coast.  In accordance, there are two buses, labeled “clockwise” or “anti-clockwise”.  We got on the bus heading to town (clockwise).  We needed to pick up some groceries, and I had to get some beach appropriate attire.  All I had were my pants (not appropriate hot island attire), an XXL see-through T-shirt the airline had given me the day before, and my stinky clothes from 3 days in airports.  We had a nice walk through town, and I got a bathing suit and sarong.  We had been warned not to buy produce, as it was much more expensive here, but we were not prepared for how expensive everything else would be as well.  A small can of tuna was over $4, zucchini was $18 a kilo, a bag of pasta $4 (the kind that was normally 65 cents).  Anyway, we had to get a bit creative, but we found things for our budget.  Once we had loaded up our bags with the things we needed, we made our way to the Cross Island Walk and Needle Walk.  This walk went directly through the island from one side to the other, climbing Te Rua Manga to “The Needle”, a large sheer edged rock piercing up through the top of the mountain.  The day started off very hot, but once we got into the forest canopy, the temperature drastically dropped, making the hike tolerable.  The ascent itself was pretty easy; it was mostly a slight incline, and then a sharp continuous climb for probably a touch under 300 meters.  The climb brought us up to The Needle, where we could see the coastline along almost the entire southern and western coasts.  At the top, we met a few people from the US.  One was the pilot of a drone plane being flown around the island for tourism photos and videos.  Apparently, he took some pretty neat footage of me and Jared right at the edge of The Needle; we’ve gotten his business card, so hopefully you all will get to see that footage if we ever get it.  We also met a young guy who worked for a tourism agency (he was at work at the time…tough life), who could not recommend an island called Aitutaku enough.  Jared knew of the island; we had discussed visiting Aitutaki.  I opted out, because the plane ticket cost over $400, but Jared decided he would splurge and buy the ticket, so he was already planning on going.  Anyway, after discussing it with the tour guide, he really sold the trip well, and I started to rethink my decision to bypass this island.  Apparently, it’s the “undeveloped Bora Bora”.  We spent a bit of time snapping photos and taking in the amazing landscape before making our way down the other side of the mountain to the other side of the island.  When we got to the end of the hike, we passed some people I had noticed on my plane the day before.  Oh, Lord, I should mention this.  The people here are the nicest I have ever met.  They will literally call you out from across the street as you’re minding your own business, to just to say hello and wave.  Everyone waves to everyone else, says good morning, offers what they have.  It really struck us.  Anyway, so we walked past these people and waved our hellos and continued on our way.  A few minutes later, as we were walking down the road, they pulled up behind us and offered a ride!  As we drove down, we realized we had a much longer walk down the road than we anticipated, and we had a bit of casual conversation with them, discussing all the fantastic things about….Aitutaki.  They were locals and one of the couples was actually getting married there that week.  BAH!!!  I was really starting to regret my decision to forego that island.  When they dropped us off at the hostel…my bag was back!!!!  Jared and I started discussing my option to come to Aitutaki, and I decided I would bite the bullet, cut out other activities in other islands and make it work!  After a bit, we put on our swimsuits and walked out to the beach at the end of our street, not so much for swimming as for grooming.  Yes, Jared and I have decided to cut each other’s hair.  I had done Jared’s once in Australia and it turned out really well, but Jared had refused to do mine before Bita’s wedding (haha), so I was in desperate need.  Part of my homework in Italy was to figure out how to cut my hair, so I could instruct Jared.  Anyway, they both turned out well; surprisingly, though mine had a lot more instructions, it took about half the time of trying to perfectly fade his hair.  After we beautified, we had a quick dip and headed back to our hostel for dinner.  My jetlag had done a number on me, so after dinner, we watched another movie in bed and went to sleep.

I again woke up at a retardedly early hour, 3am this time.  At a more appropriate hour, Jared woke up and we had our tea and breakfast.  That day, we decided to rent a scooter.  The scooter is a really common way to get around as there are only the two buses.  We got ourselves out to the bus stop nice and early, and ended up having to wait an hour for the bus to come around.  We probably could have just walked to the scooter rental location in the amount of time it took us to wait, but we did not know that at the time.  After a short ride on the bus, we picked up our temporary motorcycle license (yes, apparently you need one to rent a bike here, and yes, they will just give you an actual motorcycle license for 24 hours without asking any questions).  Jared drove us into town, where we went to the Rarotonga Saturday morning market.  As you might imagine, there were lots of fruit and vegetable stalls, prepared foods, sarongs, hats, jewelry and especially black pearls; apparently the only places to actually get black pearls are here or Tahiti, the rest are manmade.  I bought a pawpaw fruit, as I had never heard of it or seen one, but we saw an abundance on our hike the day before.  I also bought 2 small solitary black pearls.  The cheapest pearls were solitary, not on a necklace, and you could really get one for a steal if you looked well.  We went to ever pearl vendor and then doubled back to the best ones.  The market also had a small traditional drum and dancing show.  After a few hours of meandering, we got back on the scooter and stopped back at the hostel for quick lunch, before setting out to the beach.  We opted to explore Muri beach that time, as it was the highest recommended around the island.  The beach did not disappoint; the water was perfect, warm and clear.  We relaxed in the water and walked up and down the beach for a few hours.  As the later hours of the afternoon rolled in, we got back on the scooter, and opted to see the other areas of the island.  We drove the long way back around the island, pulling into some of the back roads leading to people’s land and homes.  When we got back to the hostel, we showered up and got pretty.  We were going to a traditional drum and island dancing show with dinner.  We drove back down toward Muri beach, and into Te Vara Nui village, where the show would take place.  The night we had so much good food, that we felt genuinely uncomfortable; curried pawpaw, ika mata, fried rice, lamb baked in taro leaves, bread pudding, salad, potato scallops, marinated taro leaves, and the list went on and on.  After dinner, we got to enjoy a show with traditional island drumming accompanied by male and female dancers with their grass skirts, shell jewelry, and head pieces, and fire dancers.  After the show, dancers pulled up random people from the audience to dance; obviously I got pulled up, despite my strategy of carefully examining the roof rafters as the dancer came through to the table to choose someone; I could barely move I was so full, but I feel like that was sort of normal for most people there.  After the mini-post show, we stuffed ourselves just a bit more with several types of dessert.  We were more full than we’ve been in a very very very long time.  Honestly, we just don’t really know how to control ourselves at buffets.  I think we’ve conditioned ourselves to attempt to store food for long periods of time as if we are going into a state of hibernation…but we’re not!!  Anyway, in the end, we got back on the scooter and made the uncomfortable journey back to the hostel. 

The next morning, we decided to hike to the tallest peak in Rarotonga, Te Manga, followed by some beach time.  We returned the scooter in the morning and caught the bus to the other side of the island.  We asked the bus driver to drop us off around the entrance to the track, but a while after passing what we thought were the landmarks close to the track, the bus driver pulled over and informed us that we had passed the track several kilometers behind us.  Soooo, instead of attempted the hike, we opted to just continue on to the beach!  We settled into the sand and sun and clear water lagoon for several hours.  After our skin had just about enough sun, we made our way back out to the road and waited for the bus for a while, before being informed by a local that the buses stopped running at 4pm on Sunday.  It was 4:30pm.  Oh well, we started the very long walk back while thumbing for a ride from a kind car-owning citizen.  After not long, a man with his daughter pulled over, picked us up, and went several kilometers out of their way to drop us off right at our hostel, while his dog mauled us in the back seat…Jared loved it.  On our way home from the beach, we realized that I had made a bit of a mistake when I booked my flight to Aitutaki…for the next day, Monday…or was it the 12^th?  Damn.  We got the date and day mixed up, so I booked my flight for Monday instead of Tuesday, when Jared had already booked his.  That night, I washed up a bit of clothing and pre-emptively packed my things just in case I had to leave the next day, before eating our dinner and heading to bed.

First thing, the next morning, I called the small local airline company, Air Rarotonga, and they allowed me to change my ticket without charging me!!!  I told you, nicest people ever!!  Anyway, we were excited that got resolved without issue; it wouldn’t have been a huge deal, but I had already paid for the Rarotonga hostel and I had no way of contacting the Aitutaki accommodation to get myself a room a night early, but all’s well that ends well.  Since we had missed the hike the day before, we attempted it again, this time getting dropped off at the correct location.  We made our way through the neighborhood up to the hiking track.  Right before hitting the track, we asked a man in his front yard if we were going in the right direction.  He pointed us in the right direction and offered his three dogs to accompany us along the walk, saying “just follow the dogs”; Jared was ecstatic.  We had talked to a few locals about the hike, all of whom either had never heard of it, never done it, or had done it ages ago but were pretty sure the trail wasn’t around anymore.  Option number three was the most accurate; thankfully though, the dogs did know the exact route.  That track was probably the least maintained hiking track we’ve done.  It was kind of neat to feel like we were exploring an area that had been left to nature’s devices for such a long time.  For the most part, the hike was not difficult, however, it did get to a point where things got a bit dangerous.  I don’t mind a bit of adventure, but when the track is so overgrown that you can’t see the snags and roots growing up through the path, the path is under a foot wide, and on both sides of your one-foot-wide path is a sheer drop, I get a bit nervous.  Jared was also a lot faster than me, so he would disappear for ages while I was having a nervous breakdown.  At one point, I freaked out, because I was climbing up a rope thrown down a rock face and apparently the stupid rope was snagged on some root at the top.  As I got higher to rope came lose and jerked me down.  I mean, I enjoy “feeling” like an adventurous explorer…but I am not an adventurous explorer!!!  I need the dumbed down version; the bumpers from the bowling alley, if you will.  Anyway, we made it just about to the top before fog starting setting in.  We basically decided we had kicked butt and would turn around for a very miserable descent before the fog completely settled around us.  The dogs were useful on the way up, but basically left us in the dust on the way down, so we did get a bit lost off the track, but were able to make our way back luckily; getting lost in a rainforest is always a bit of a scary prospect.  We were told the hike would take about 2 hours.  In totally it took us over 4 hours, so I’m not sure where they were getting their figures.  The day was sooooo humid, we were pretty tired.  We grabbed a few groceries and an ice cream reward before getting on the bus back to the hostel.  After a much needed shower, we made a nice big dinner and packed up our stuff to go to Aitutaki the next day!!
We had a very lazy start as our flight wasn’t leaving until the afternoon.  We hung around the hostel reading and chatting with people before making our way to the airport on the bus.  After an easy check-in, there was absolutely no security screening to go through, we boarded the 45 minute flight to Aitutaki.  I should mention, this place came highly recommended to Jared from a couple we met in Mexico last year; he again saw them serendipitously in Italy when he travelled there for his vacation from Afghanistan.  Jared had booked himself into a bungalow accommodation ages ago, but we had no way of letting them know I was coming, so we sort of just crossed our fingers and hoped they would be obliging.  We met Tracey, one of the managers of our accommodation at the airport, and she was happy to adjust for one more.  We drove a short distance to Matriki, our accommodation, where we were set up in a private bungalow right on the beach!!!  It was A-MAZING!!  The bungalow came with its own fully stocked kitchenette and balcony with a table and chairs looking out over the water.  WWooooooowwwww!!!!  We set our stuff up and then set out with Tracey to town to pick up some fruit for our breakfasts.  When we got back, it was pretty hot out, so first thing, we got into our swimsuits and ventured into the water, which felt like bathwater!!!  It was so perfectly clear, with bits of coral and coral fish scattered around.  The island was encapsulated by a shallow reef, so you could walk for ages through the water and not get into anything over your neck.  It was already the early evening, so we took a stroll down the beach before coming back to Matriki to sit and watch the sunset over the water, munching on coconut meat…you know…from a coconut we found on the ground.  That night we made some dinner, opened up a bottle of wine, and sat on our balcony for a nice dinner.  Perfection!
The next morning, my sleep schedule was still a bit off, so I woke up pretty early, and did a bit of yoga on the beach before Jared woke up.  We then had a breakfast of tea, fruit salad of pawpaw and bananas with honeyed toast.  Yum!  After packing a beach bag, we grabbed one of the scooters at the accommodation made available to people staying there.  We drove all the way around the island to the other side, and up to the highest point of the island, which revealed the most amazing view of the island, the lagoon, and the ocean surrounding.  Lord, just check out the pictures.  The day was exceedingly hot and humid; Jared and I both completely sweat through our clothes, so after taking in the view sufficiently, we headed to Ootu beach, supposedly the best beach.  Ohhh MMyyyyy GGoooddddddd!!!!!!!!!  I can’t even describe it well enough.  It was so amazing, with ever color of blue fading into each other.  You could walk for ages through the most clear water.  When I have normally described ocean water, it’s been in varying degrees of blue, but so much of this was clear like tap water.  The sand was so soft underfoot.  The people and place just seemed to ooze happiness.  We met so many other people walking around, and everyone was just the nicest and in the best mood ever, including us!  There must be something in the air there, because we were on Cloud 9!  After a bit of lounging and walking and way more than a bit of gushing, we hopped back on the scooter (I would only go if Jared promised we’d come back) to grab lunch back in our…you know…beach front bungalow!!!!!!!!!!!  I can’t even get enough of thinking about it (we also just left this morning as I write this, so it’s still very fresh in my mind).  After lunch, we did get to go back to Ootu beach for a few more hours.  While there, we met a nice couple from Wales/New Zealand and chatted with them for a bit, when I was informed of a free Zumba class that night!  A bit after 4pm, we went back to the Matriki so I could quick change and Jared dropped me off at my Zumba class in town!  After an hour of fun dancing with a bunch a locals and a few tourists, Jared came back and picked me up, and we returned to the Matriki.  Oh!!  I forgot to mention, the outdoor shower!!  We had an outdoor shower attached to the bungalow, which I always think is the coolest thing.  That night we again had dinner on the balcony with a bit of wine and some coconut meat for dessert, before calling it a night.
We woke up early and had breakfast of fruit salad with pawpaw, bananas, and coconut, with honeyed toast and tea again.  That morning, we set up a lagoon tour and snorkeling.  Our tour guide, Puna, picked us up, along with everyone else at the Matriki, haha, there are only five bungalows, and all but one were taken, so it was only six people.  After picking up a few more people, we drove to his boat and set out into the lagoon.  The lagoon is spotted with a few islands.  Our first stop was Honeymoon Island, where we offloaded a few people who didn’t want to snorkel while the rest of us snorkeled just off its coast.  The water was sooooo flippin perfect, but to be honest the snorkeling was a bit lackluster.  It was awesome to see the water so clear; you could see for ages, and I feel like such a snob saying this, but we’ve been to at least a handful of places with more vibrant sea life, most recently, the Great Barrier Reef.  I KNOW, I KNOW!!! I’m being a snob; I told you I was, I just had to be honest.  Anyway, after snorkeling, we drove in the boat to One Foot Island, where we had lunch, which was really really good.  Tons of food like grilled tuna, taro leave, fried rice, curried pawpaw, salad, potato salad and more.  Again, Jared and I ate a bit more than our share, but there were leftovers!  After a bit of beachside digestion, we headed out for our last snorkel spot off of One Foot Island.  Jared and I opted out of snorkeling and instead just frolicked in the perfect water.  A bit before 4pm, we all headed back to shore in the boat.  Puna dropped us off at Matriki again.  We had both gotten a bit too much sun that day despite being a fanatic with sunscreen; I even wore a hat, my rash guard, and my sarong for a bit.  Luckily, neither of us was terribly burnt, just very sun kissed.  That evening, Jared became coconut master by shucking, cracking, and extracting the meat from four coconuts for us to use.  I made coconut rice and we drank sweet tea that I had made early while we munched on some of our coconut.  I took a glorious shower outside, before walking on the beach a bit with Jared before settling in for sunset.  That night there was a drum and dance show at a hotel down the beach from us, so we got ready and walked down the beach with some wine and watched the show.  I again got pulled up at the end of the show.  Afterward, we walked back to our bungalow and got ourselves ready to fly out the next morning.  Wahhh!

That next morning (today as I write this), we woke up early and had a nice leisurely breakfast before cleaning up the bungalow a bit and finishing up packing our things.  We got a ride to the airport and got back on the 45 minute plan ride to Rarotonga.  We sit in the airport now awaiting our next Pacific Island adventure.  I think if I had to leave this place and go back home, I would cry.  I’m just hoping that our next places are as awe inspiring and as the Cook Islands have been to us.  I think we discovered where God vacations.