We had a short break in the Cook Islands earlier this year – such a beautiful place with a very relaxed friendly community.
Below is one of my favourites, captured while waiting for our plane. These kids were so adorable – the little one in the middle tapped my knees and, pointing to the outside, said ‘come! cwab!’. We followed them just to the entrance to find a bunch of fairly decent sized crabs (size of my hand), crowded together under the grills in the drainage area! Spent a while just marvelling at them until our plane came – they were so excited and ran to get a closer look.
Gorgeous dancers.
Punanga Nui Cultural Market – stocked up on bananas and had scrumptious food for lunch.
At one of our accommodations, the owners grew these delicious passion fruits – the skin was pinkish and light green. There were about 6 sitting in the bowl in our room – I thought that they needed a few more days to ripen but decided to try one anyway and was hooked! So juicy and full of flavour. We were also kindly given paw paw, fresh coconuts and bananas at other places – these were grown all around the islands. I’m still craving for my Cook Islands passion fruit and paw paw lamb salad!
There was just one main road around the island of Rarotonga and only two routes for the buses – clockwise and anti-clockwise. Made it easy for us tourists to contemplate the timetable! I liked how it was so flexible too – you can stand anywhere on the main road to be picked up.
First evening.
Aitutaki island.
Aitutaki airport – the island of Aitutaki was beaten by a devastating cyclone 2 weeks before we arrived.
Beautiful and pristine lagoons.
Many trees were knocked down during the cyclone.
A lot of residents lost their houses as well – we had the privilege of speaking to many locals, and heard amazing stories of how they survived while their homes were literally being blown apart.
The air was perfectly still here, but the trees were bent and shaped heavily by the cyclone. When we first landed, the whole area looked surreal – fallen trees everywhere (this was taken just before we left, the place had cleared up more by then).
Many colourful flowers around the islands.
Bought a ‘100 ways’ skirt/dress! These were made from recycled saris and have various layers so that they can be worn in 100 ways (below are a couple of examples).
