The Sounds Of Summer

Summertime means being outdoors and cranking up the radio. Raro has quite few radio stations and I’ve found one that you too can enjoy.

Quote:

The station [Radio Cook Islands] is heard via AM all over Rarotonga, the
Southern Group islands and in the Northern Group only by car radio's with wires
strung between coconut trees.

Click here for the programme guide. It is also streamed over the Internet. Listen online.

Just a Perfect Day

Oh boy it was hot today! There was no cooling tropical breeze like I’ve come to rely on, so it made the temperature of 27/28 degrees seem hotter than normal. After Chris came home from work we drove out to Blackrock beach for a swim.

For the first time since I’ve been here I can vouch for that expression about Raro lagoon water being like a warm bath. It was glorious! The tide was in and the water calm, so I just lay on my back, floating, and listening to the glinkgloink of the lapping water, the local kids playing, and when I looked up into the sky and all I could see was blue blue blue.

In the evening at home I sat out on the deck, enjoying the last golden rays of sunlight stream through the palms, with a book in one hand and a vodka cruiser in the other. Bliss.

Night Adventure

Chris wrote about this in an email, so I’ll just quote him:

Went out to the beach the other night with the torch to see if we could see fish, etc. I was wading in the water when suddenly I saw a snake eel. Bloody hell it scared the hell out of me, and I was out in a flash. I'd seen them before and they were scary then, but at night and being in the water as well was worse. My mind knew what it was, but the body wasn't convinced. Those buggers look like sea snakes, man. Let's just say I'm not wading in the water at nighttime anymore. But I will set up a burley bag one night and see what gets attracted to it. Worked real well when we went snorkelling at the marine reserve. Heaps of fish, some looked like trevally, and I got a wee nip by one.

Picnic

We had a sunset pizza picnic at BlackRock, our fav swimming beach, and followed that up with the local Coconut flavoured icecream, which is incredibly delicious - it tastes like homemade coconut-ice.

Money Shot

Having raved about the Coral Club, one of our fav resturant/cafes here, because it has reasonable prices (almost a miracle in Raro!) and great food we took mum and Alice there tonight only to discover, of course, that the prices had gone up and the food had gone down.

Not to worry 'cos humpback whales were swimming past so M & A got to see their first whales and a great show it was: spouting, breaching and tail slapping like it had been scripted.

Holiday Fun

Mum and Alice will be visiting us in a few days. YAY! Here are a few holiday activities I have lined up for them:
- lying in the sun
- hermit crab racing
- walks through the "jungle" past taro patches and rusted-out cars to buy fresh bread from the local bakery.
- cocktails and fresh fruit on the deck in the dappled shade of the gently swaying coconut palms.
- watching the sun set into the Pacific ocean.

Chris has planned:
- plane spotting
- feeding the wild baby chickens
- more plane spotting

Messing About with Boats

Some evenings we drive down to buy a burger from Palace Takeaways located on Avarua harbour. While waiting for our food (I recommend the Special Burger) we like to check out the boats. Big boats, little boats, rusty containerships and sleek catamarans nestled with charter boats that will take you “Big Game fishing” or a glass bottom boat to view the coral reef. Click on image for full size photo.

Whale of a Good Time?

I have lost count of the number of times I’ve seen the whales now from our back lawn.
We’ve met the local whale biologist, Nan, and she has said she’ll take us on the whale research boat one day to get up close. Chris is really looking forward to that but I’ll have to give it a miss unless the researchers don’t think the whales would suffer greatly if I puked on them. Ahh well. Hopefully Chris will be able to take some good photos!

Weekend Pastimes

We went for a swim at a beach called Black Rock recently. It’s popular with locals and body-boarders because it has a good swell beyond the reef. We didn’t go very far into the lagoon, only to about chest height. Although I think maybe it doesn’t get much deeper anyway. Black Rock is a nice area for a swim & to go watch the sunsets and as it is just beyond the airport there is good plane spotting for Chris also.Plane watching here is a popular past time for tourists and locals alike is. Or more to the point, people gather when a plane is about to take off so they can stand in the Jet-blast zone.

Sealife

Over the weekend when the tide was out we went exploring the shallow pools of the reef. We saw heaps of sea urchins, (we had to be very careful of our footing even with protective reef-shoes) some with 2cm long orange spines, others with 10cm long blue/blk spines. There were clams as big as a fist, they were an intense blue colour. There were orange and black sea slugs and sea cucumbers. Crabs and shrimps. A lion fish. A squid. And a large blue starfish.

Later when we were safely out of the water we saw these white with black spotted things gliding through the water that looked like sea-snakes—but with our handy sea creature chart we were able to identify them as eels. Phew! There were also a couple of stone-fish.

I’m not sure if I will go out there again too often. All the spiny things freaked me out but Chris had a great time.