2nd May - Rarotonga, 21°S 160°W, GMT-10

Where on Earth is Rarotonga? It’s in the middle of the South Pacific of course. The Cook Islands is a group of 15 small islands with a total area of one quarter of an Isle of Wight spread over an area the size of Western Europe. The islands are so far apart that you can’t see any of the others from Rarotonga (Raro to its friends) as the nearest one is about 100 miles away. It’s pretty quiet here - standing at the end of the runway to be buffeted by the blast from landing jets counts as a good night out. There are two roads, Main Road and Back Road. Main Road goes round all 20 miles of the coast while Back Road goes around most of the island a couple of hundred metres further back. There are two buses, Clockwise and Anticlockwise, that go round the island every hour during the day. If you need to get somewhere (apart from catching a flight there’s not much that can’t wait here) then take the Clockwise bus as it’s more likely to be running.

Our flight here arrived just after midnight so we booked a couple of nights accommodation before we got here to give us a chance to find where we really wanted to stay. Everywhere we looked at was expensive so we booked the cheapest place we could find that didn’t have the word ‘hostel’ in the name. A lot of places offer free pickups from the airport and our email to Caryn at our resort to arrange this turned into half a dozen emails on the day before we arrived. Caryn’s emails were remarkable streams of consciousness that showed no evidence of any kind of review or revision. The last email had us buying a carton of duty-free cigarettes for her on the way over. It was easy to spot Caryn at the airport, tall, skinny and in constant motion. The plane was early so she was a bit late getting to the airport (everyone has the phone number of the control tower at the airport so they can check on flight times - not something that many airports encourage).

Collecting people arriving from New Zealand is a headache for Caryn. Because the flights cross the international date line you either arrive on the day before you set off or, like we did, arrive earlier on the same day. This means Caryn spends a lot of time finding accommodation for people who have arrived a day earlier than they expected.

Rather than spending our first day looking for other accommodation we spent it lying on the beach thinking that we would easily be able to extend our stay for an extra night or two as the resort seemed pretty empty. This wasn’t possible although Caryn kindly helped us by finding us somewhere else and taking us there. We rented a scooter (the oldest operational scooter on the island by the looks of it), got a Cook Island driving licence and set off on a lap of the island looking for somewhere to stay in earnest.

We find somewhere else to stay but are committed to one night in the Central Motel (Central: tick; Motel: tick). The only thing to make the night memorable was a small, inept gecko falling on the back of Phil’s head while he read. The gecko panicked and ejected its tail, suddenly there are two things wriggling in Phil’s hair. The detached tail keeps on wriggling for quite a long time while the gecko makes himself scarce.

Our new place is on the other side of the island and we manage the move in three trips on the bike, imaginatively carrying more on the bike each time - we’ve seen what’s possible in Vietnam and India after all.

Our bungalow has an information folder that consists mostly of rules. Some rules are so important that they are fixed to the wall to ensure you don’t miss them. In the bathroom there are red and white towels and a rule about not making the white towels dirty. Easy enough you might think but we get our white towels removed (and only coloured towels supplied) on the second day after someone (investigations continue) left a faint hand print on one of them.

Our plan had been to spend a few days at one of the other islands but the only way to get there is by plane and the return flights are over $500 so it’s just too expensive.

The plot of land next door to us is partly used as a family cemetery for native Cook Islanders and has a lot of coconut palms in it. We can hear coconuts make a loud dull thud as they fall from the trees, around 5 or 6 every day. It’s surprising that no one is hurt - you wouldn’t survive a direct hit from a mature coconut. We ask the owner of our place, Dennis, about this and he is as surprised as us, having heard of no deaths and only two incidents of falling coconuts actually hitting anyone: one bouncing and hitting a man and another giving a woman a glancing blow on her shoulder. Spookily the two people were from the same family. Our Mr Fix-it in Goa, Shiva, told us that the reason people don’t get hit is because the coconuts have eyes and can therefore see. I’m sure he’d have a theory to explain two people from the same family getting hit as well.

The reef, about 200m offshore on our part of the island, stops the big waves from reaching the shore. Because of its curved shape there is a wave breaking on it within earshot pretty much continuously with only the occasional quieter moment. The lagoon between the reef varies between about 15cm and 1m deep as the tide goes in and out. The water is very clear and you can see the small fish and countless sea cucumbers (a nicer name than sea slug - they look more like giant slugs than cucumbers to us).

We have a relaxing 12 days not doing very much - the trip is nearly over after all. Australia and New Zealand were very busy with things to do and places to go - the last 14 days in New Zealand had us sleeping in 12 different beds so we felt justified in staying reasonably still. We do manage to get out and about a bit, a couple of meals out (broadly disappointing - not very veggie friendly, huge portions and very fatty), walk the Reamaru Trek to a local hilltop (what a humid day), visit Wigmore’s Waterfall (named after the local supermarket), go out on the lagoon in canoes (not as calm as it looked) and get through quite a few books and Japanese number puzzles.

The weather has been incredibly changeable here. Its very warm all the time, but we have rain pretty much for part of every day, some of which is very heavy. The sun when its out is very hot but there is always some cloud close by to stop the tan becoming a burn.

To save money and because food out hasn’t been great (apart from lunch at Salsa Cafe) we eat in a lot using the still quite expensive food stores. We manage another ratatouille, a frittata with salad, pasta (of course) and we celebrated our last night here with Beans on Toast Supreme (with a hidden fried egg, like the queen has it).

Internet access is very expensive here. We have spent about £100 over our 12 days here of which about £25 was for an unwanted but unstoppable Windows Update download of Internet Explorer 10 (we never use IE) and all of its patches and updates. The IE 10 download wasn’t completely wasted though: it did stop Windows LiveMail from going online afterwards - well done chaps!

We seem to have an unconscious preference for countries that drive on the left. Out of the 12 countries visited so far, more than half have driven on the left and the last 6 countries have all been lefties. That all changes tomorrow, when we arrive in the good ol US of A.