Thursday 19th February
Rarotonga
Today we are visiting another beautiful South Pacific island surrounded by a coral reef. Rarotonga is one of the Cook Islands. There are 15 islands in the group and Rarotonga is the only one with an airport and the administrative centre is also here. It is another tender port and the captain had already warned us that there will be strong currents here and that might cause problems. Although we are close to the shore, the water is too deep for our anchor to go down. This means that the ship has to be moved every so often to maintain our position. There were delays with the tenders as the swell was making it difficult to dock by the ship's landing platform. We eventually got on shore and took a taxi ride round the island. It only took just over an hour along the coast road as it is a small island. It was very hot but with the taxi windows open there was a wonderful breeze. The island is very lush with thousands of palm trees. The people of Rarotonga eat a lot of coconuts! The beaches have white sand and turquoise sea inside the reef. As we travelled past houses one thing we noticed here was that there were graves in most front gardens. After we finished our drive we walked into Avarua Town and on to the beach in the picture. The sand here is covered by coral that is washed in by the sea. It was very hot and after having this photo taken we went to a shady beach bar that looked down onto the beach to have a cool beer and some food. On the way back to the ship a turtle swam by the tender boat - it was the side Russ was sitting so he saw it but I didn't. The trip back to the ship took a long time, it was very bumpy and very hot inside the boat.