Dive Rarotonga - 1st day

It was Wednesday September 30th. Blaise was sleeping in bed and I was up early and just itching to get going with my day. Why? I was going scuba diving in the Cook Islands today.

So I highly recommend Dive Rarotonga to anyone visiting the Cook Islands. They were recommended to me by Island Bay Divers here in Wellington. I thought why should I use them because they are on the opposite side of the island and there is a dive shop just down the road but let me tell you I am ecstatic that I used Dive Rarotonga. The owners came to get me in the morning and drove me to their shop. I had brought a lot of my own gear: wetsuit, fins, mask, snorkel, knife, etc. so all I really needed was the BC, tanks and regulators. The staff were friendly and showed me a cool way to package my gear for transport. We went down to the boat in the harbour where I expressed nervousness about a boat entry. I had done the practice on a pool edge; it seemed higher from the boat itself. After a thorough briefing we suited up and waded out to the boat. The water was sooooo warm. We zipped out the channel and were into the ocean proper, the dive spot was not far from the harbour exit and Jason, the guy who would stay on the boat helped me gear up, buddy checked me and walked me through the boat entry. After the initial feeling of panic as I was rolling backwards I realized that this was actually kind of cool and I love boat exiting now. I got a personal dive master, Charles, and another staff member, Henry who swam behind us. Turns out I came in a slow season so I got essentially private diving. These guys do the dives so often that the older fish know them; in particular the Triggerfish (named Tommy) came up, he was big. Seriously big, about ½ my size and he knows he gets fed. They cut a spikey urchin for him to eat and then there was a swarm of fish feeding and they’re so engrossed that I could put out my hand and touch them.

The water was warm, even 18 meters down I was warm in a 3-2 wetsuit. And visibility was 30m!! So clear and blue and full of fish…words cannot express the amount of fish species I saw. I will do a fishie sum up at the end of what I saw over the 2 dives.
We came back up and returned to the harbour to grab another tank and sit on the short for a SIT (Surface Interval Time) to release nitrogen from our bodies. They gave me hot chocolate and some cookies. I even got an added treat of seeing Blaise who was trying to find the police station to get his Cook Island drivers license. So I got to squeal to him for a while and bounce around like a fool explaining what I had seen so far. Back out to the ocean we went and went to another dive site where I saw even more fish, different corals and a …TURTLE!!!! I saw a Hawksbill turtle swimming through the water 15 meters down; anything I see after this is icing on the cake, I saw a turtle!

We returned to the shop where they had an excellent system set up for rinsing gear and setting stuff out to dry. Charles my dive master/buddy then proceeded to sit down with me with the fish charts and books and show me exactly what we saw, he put up with all my questions and kept going to get new books to show me the fish I was asking about. They suggested I leave all my gear with them for the rest of my stay so I wouldn’t have to bring it each time and that way it would dry thoroughly between dives. So nice of them and then they were going to drive me home but Blaise showed up on the scooter to take me home. So they said “We’ll pick you up Friday on the road, see you then.”
And I get to do this four more times, this is incredible.

A short list of what I saw (grey ones have pictures, click on the grey word):
Hawksbill turtle
Manta Ray (but only the back end as it swam away)
Moray Eel
Spikey Lion fish
Tommy the triggerfish
Pineapple sea cucumber
Multiple varieties of Butterfly fish
Multiple varieties of Wrasse
A lazy Spanish Dancer(it didn’t move but its supposed to flap around like a butterfly)
Ghost coral
Christmas tree worm
Trumpetfish
Peacock Grouper
Yellowfin Tuna

Day 1 - Tsunami, Scooters, Clear Blue Water

Around 10ish we were woken by a phone call from the property management cleaner who was on her way over, we got out of bed (Blaise cursing the roosters) and got dressed. The cleaner showed up and we headed out to explore the Muri area of Rarotonga. As we were walking out the cleaner received a phone call and told us casually that there was a Tsunami warning for the west side of the Island. Ooookay. At this point we didn’t know about the earthquake or how bad Samoa would be hit.

We walked quite a bit, there is only one main road on Rarotonga, did the east coast, was on the south coast and I was starting to get sore feet. We waited for a bus, turns out the word “island time” seemed to be appropriate, it seemed to take forever to get there. It was $4 per person one way (no on and off privileges) and while on the bus looping the island Blaise and I decided a scooter was going to be more economical over the long run. We rented one from Budget for the rest of the week.

We wanted to get some local info from the surf shops on where Blaise could kite but no one seemed to open. In fact a lot of them looked boarded up and abandoned. Again later on we realized that people had prepped for a tsunami and shut up shop.


We bought some groceries, we had a plan to use our kitchen a lot and not eat out a lot, headed home, dropped off the groceries and headed back to one of the nice white beaches we had seen on our walk that morning. We set up towels, went for a walk/swim in the crystal clear blue lagoon water and were blown away by the number of fish that swam around us. Blaise was like a small child pointing out fish here and there…after his initial nervousness about them circling him. Some tanning, I headed back out to take photos of the fish, the water was so clear that some of them turned out! Have to come back here with snorkeling gear; have to get Blaise some snorkeling gear.

arriving in Cook Islands

We got in extremely early (12:05am), got through customs relatively quickly and were met as promised by a driver who took us to Muri Tamaariki Villa on the East coast. He unloaded our bags and went to get the key out of the bbq only to discover that the key wasn’t there. No worries, he used his cell phone and called someone to let them know the keys weren’t there. We settled down on the patio furniture, looked over the bay in front of us and commented on how warm and lovely it was. Half an hour passed, then an hour…then another half hour. Blaise and I walked around the house looking for an open window. We found on and did the "pop the wife up" to be thwarted by a bug screen. We walked down to the main road to see if we could flag down a car and Eddie, the property manager pulls up quite apologetic. The date switch confused the property management staff and they thought we were coming in after midnight the next evening.
We got in, settled in brushing aside Eddie’s apologies that it hadn’t been cleaned (it looked fine) and fell into bed. A few short hours later the roosters went off. Turns out there is a large wild chicken population including roosters, who go off when they hear another one. There was a lot of roosters.

Sometimes Plans Work....

And sometimes they really don't. I was trying to build some adventure and suspense for our hordes of readers and frankly, failed.

So the 3 special guests are:
Carly's brother J and his lovely G/F L. Those who know a little bit about J will know why this is such a special occasion by itself... and to be able to meet his significant other for the first time simply rocks. The weather has been flaky as ever (spring weather in Wellington has its manic moments) but good food, good company and good beer makes most things fun :)

The third special guest is a new, permanent addition to our household, KitKat. (I've been trying to catch a reasonable photo of her for the last 4 days, no dice so far). Carly's been working on the property management company and the owners of the house we're in for the last month and a half to get permission to get a cat. She didn't tell me so as not to get my hopes up (I've been feeling the lack of animal companionship quite keenly of late). We finally got said permission last week. In a classic case of serendipity, the next day, one of her students' mothers contacted her in a panic because the person that had signed up to take their cat as they moved across the world to the US had backed out at the last moment. With 5 days to sort a new home for the cat, things were getting tense. Seeing this as an opportunity to pay back Karma for finding us a new home for our Canadian Cats at the last minute, we gladly accepted the task.

And a task it's been :) She's a 3 year old tortoise-shell Persian/Siamese mix. Mostly an outdoor cat, she's been quite skittish the last few days, hiding under our bed or in our closet. Weirder, as soon as the lights go out, she's been meowing constantly until the morning. I know it's to be expected for such a major change, but I miss my sleep. We'll update as things get ironed out with her and I'll try and get some photos up asap.