If you pick a Paw Paw...

It was a mammoth journey getting here, but we are here and it is stunning!

Our flights started off fine and dandy. On your left is a picture of some sort of arctic tundra. I'm not sure where it is but it looks pretty cold.

But... on the last little leg - flying from Tahiti at dawn, our captain announced that there were technical problems with the plane, and that, instead of landing on Rarotonga as planned, we'd have to fly over it to Aukland, and then fly back to Rarotonga on a fully functioning plane. Gooooo Carbon Emissions!! This added another 8 hours onto our journey making time spent in the air 26 hours and a 36 hour journey altogether.

I was, needless to say, happy to be happily greeted with a lovely flowery garland when we finally landed on Rarotonga.

And it is such a beutiful place to be. No cyclones!

I've been getting into snorkelling - the fishes are mesmerising - there's such a variety from gem like fish that are only a couple of milimeters in size and bright bright blue, to larger ones florescently patterned and with a tendency to nip.

I was quite suprised by how mountainous the island is - yesterday we did the cross island route which involved 400m of near verticle ascent, and some pretty trecherous bits on the climb down. The view from the top was well worth it. According to our guide (a 67 year old character called Pa), the summit that we walked to was visited by the Dalai Lama a few years back because it is deemed to be one of 7 points of strength in the world. Here's a picture of mum at the top of the mountain.

Mum is delighted with the flowers here - hibiscus flowers (and many other plants too, but hibiscus is the only one I ever remember the name of - botanist I am not) line the roads, as well as Mango, Papaya, and Avocado trees. The occassional fruit that drop off make satisfying splats when run over by the oncoming bus.

The people here are incredibly friendly and warm hearted. It seems they appreciate living here fully. We were swimming in the pool of a waterfall the other day when a huge family came to swim too and they had so much fun there with everyone laughing and shrieking at the water and the oncoming bomb dives. And it is nice to see how their friendliness rubs off on the tourists. I hope it carries on that way.

Tourism is pretty much the main income for the whole of the Cook Islands. I read somewhere that it accounted for about 80% of their income. So there's lots of new building going on at the moment which is apparently causing some controversy with the old system of land ownership. Apparently only the locals are allowed land ownership (each family having a strip of land that goes from the sea inland to the steep mountains), but increasingly foreigners are buying property on these strips, which is then challenging the way in which the land is divided and distributed.

One more day on this beautiful island!