Sharks, crabs, badgers and one angry octopus!

Rarotonga, Cook Islands, South Pacific

From Mexico City we were heading off to the Cook Islands for a few weeks. Yet more beaches to be sat upon, but this time on a South Pacific island (variety is the spice of life, after all). Everything went fairly smoothly at the airport, although we both had all our bags opened up and thoroughly searched. The poor fellow charged with the task even had to put his hand into my laundry bag where I was keeping my primary pair of underpants (As it was May, I was wearing my secondary pair). I don't know how much he gets paid to do that job, but it is probably not enough. True to form, he then pulled out our (full) can of mozzy repellent. Here we go again, I thought. He held it up and read the label, which obviously was in Spanish.
"Is it flammable?" he asked, staring at the large flammable materials symbol on the can.
"No" I said, feeling a bit too glib.
"Oh, okay" says he, putting the can back in my bag. Whoever says honesty is the best policy never spent all night scratching ugly red lumps and swatting blindly at unseen buzzing noises.

To get to the Cook Islands, we had to transit through Los Angeles international airport. This was

the second occasion I've passed through this airport and I can safely say that on each occasion the experience was only slightly more pleasurable than driving a red-hot javelin through each eyeball with a lump hammer. That's all that will be said on the matter. The flights themselves were fine and we arrived in sunny Rarotonga, the main island of the Cook group, a bit jet lagged but happy to be moving onto the next phase of our trip after spending the previous 7 months in South and Central America. We were finally back in the English speaking world. I could stop pretending I spoke Spanish, and everybody else could stop pretending they understood me. Apparently, holding a conversation with me in Spanish has been likened to communicating with a dolphin, except with more clicks and whistles and only a few less fishy smells.

For a change we had arranged some accommodation in advance, if only for the convenience of getting collected from the airport and shuttled to our room. The main island of Rarotonga is only thirty one kilometres in circumference, with one main road around the whole coastline, and our first room was at a hostel on the south east corner. They could only give us a room for three nights and after that we would have to find somewhere else to stay. We hired a moped for a week to get around and spent the next day riding around the whole island, checking out all the beaches and looking for somewhere else to stay. Moped hire here is fairly cheap and by far the easiest way to get around the island. I was just disappointed that they didn't make me take the Cook Islands driving test, which usually involves riding around the car park with a bored policeman watching you. Providing you don't fall off the bike too many times and nobody gets killed, you pass the test and collect your license. I didn't hear of anybody ever failing the test, and we saw plenty of people falling off their bikes. After that, our time was consumed with sitting on the beach and trying to unwind from all the previous beach sitting we had done. In one unfortunate incident, Cara and I were walking down the beach, taking in the sights and generally having a relaxed time of it, when we spotted a couple sunbathing in the sand. Nothing unusual there, except the guy, who was possibly the hairiest human being I have ever seen, was wearing a thong. A thong for God's Sake. It was like watching a couple of badgers arguing over a piece of string. Rules should be made and laws should be enforced about this sort of thing. I'll carry that mental scar with me to my grave.

Our next stop was at an enormous apartment on the west coast of the island. It was a major budget buster but we had our own kitchen, lounge, bathroom and the sunset views across the road were truly incredible. Just a few minutes moped ride along the coast we also had a fantastic stretch of beach which was always completely deserted apart from the two of us. The beaches here are great, with the white sand, clear turquoise waters and the tall coconut palms required by every tropical paradise. This is where we met Steve, the hermit crab. I called him Steve because he looked just like Steve Buscemi, the actor, except without the facial tics and squeaky voice. Steve liked to have his picture taken and would often take a stroll across my towel when I had the camera out.

A few days later, Cara and I went out for our first day's diving. The entire island is surrounded by a shallow lagoon bounded by a thick, fringing reef. Outside the reef, the seabed drops off dramatically to over a thousand metres, with some enormous coral pinnacles and vertical walls. The sea temperature rarely drops below twenty eight degrees Celsius and average visibility is around thirty to forty metres, excellent conditions for scuba diving. Unfortunately, the once pristine coral is now almost completely gone thanks to recent cyclones and an infestation of crown of thorns starfish, which can consume whole reefs in just over 12 minutes, give or take a few months. The diving was still pretty good though, and we did a few great sites. Our first dive there was outside the southern reef. We took a rib through a narrow channel in the reef, dived down the dead coral wall and into a small cave. The tide was going out and the current was extremely strong. After a few minutes frantic finning we were reduced to pulling ourselves along the bottom using our hands. After some exhausting clambering over the rocks, we came out into a long narrow channel in the lagoon reef to see dozens of big reef sharks circling above us. The current was so strong now we were barely hanging on by our fingertips, and a few times some of us would lose our grip and go tumbling backwards through the channel before finding another fingerhold and pulling ourselves back. We began to wedge ourselves into whatever nooks we could find in the rocks to find some protection from the current sweeping through the channel. All around us sharks drifted by on the current before flicking their tails to send them back over our heads. In the excitement, I had lost track of where Cara was and looked around to see where she had wedged herself. I saw her sitting on the sea bottom twenty feet in front of everybody else, with big sharks circling just a few feet above her head. That's my girl, I thought. I inched my way over to her, one rock at a time. At one point I was pushed off the rocks and had to kick as hard as I could just to get back to the sea floor. We spent the rest of the dive just sitting there, wedged in the rocks and watching the sharks, rays and other fish circle around us in the currents. By the time we made it back to the boat everybody was exhausted and out of air. It was a hell of a difficult first dive but well worth it. None of the other dives quite matched the enjoyment of that first one but we enjoyed them all, although Cara missed out on a few thanks to her injuries, but more of that later. The snorkelling in the shallow lagoon was as good as the diving and oftentimes better. There was still plenty of live coral in the shallows and Cara and I would hover over small outcrops and watch a couple of big octopus changing colour. There was also every kind of reef fish in abundance and at one point I almost swam straight into the biggest moray eel I have ever seen. It's body was as thick as my chest and when it bared it's teeth and shook it's head at me I decided to make myself scarce and look for another octopus to play with. When I found one, I thought I would hang around for a while and just watch, but the octopus had other ideas squirted a bit splodge of octopus crap at me. There's friendly for you.

Now, I've not always been the friendly, good-natured, laidback fellow I know you all think I am. Sometimes in the past, I have done things I have lived to regret, such as pausing that split second too long when Cara has asked me what I think of her new shoes, and other such atrocities. Some of my past misdeeds may even be considered unforgivable, like the whole sorry episode in the eighties with the espadrilles and the Don Johnson jackets. But you will be pleased to know that my Karma finally caught up with me in the Cook Islands and I was punished for all my past sins. That's right folks, we went to the cinema to see The Da Vinci Code. And if you ask me, the punishment didn't fit the crime. With hindsight, I think I can safely say that I would happily remove my own cerebellum with an ice-cream scoop and kick it around a football field for ninety minutes rather than go through that ordeal again. It was, at least, all for a good cause as the screening was a special fundraising event. The good cause in question was, however, to raise cash for some local kid to fly to New Zealand to train as a competitive weight lifter. So I sat through all that bollocks so some knucklehead could pick up heavy lumps of metal? Glad we could help. On the ride back to our apartment, Cara got something in her eye, so we pulled over to the side of the road and I took a look. I gave it a quick glance and couldn't see anything. When we made it back to the room, Cara took a look in the bathroom mirror and found a very upset grasshopper cowering under her eyelid. This should tell you everything you will ever need to know about my powers of observation.

Cara completed her bout of physical misfortune the next afternoon when we were at the supermarket. Getting onto the moped, she caught the outside of her leg on the exhaust pipe of the bike next to ours. It was only for the briefest second, but it burnt the skin quite badly and she made her discomfort quite vocal, using a combination of expletives that even I had never considered using together. I took a look at the burn and told her it was nothing, dismissing the issue with the complete lack of interest that all men have for other people's ailments. It was quite a nasty burn though, and kept Cara out of the water for most of the second week on the island. She wasn't too happy about having a bandaged leg on the beach either, and I won't even mention what the scar has done to the all-over tan. On the bright side, we will soon be shivering in New Zealand, so we can put on long trousers again and cover up those unsightly tan lines.

Other highlights included eating the biggest T-bone steak the world has ever seen in a bar overlooking the sea. It was so big it wouldn't fit on the plate and they had to cut it in half and stack one piece on top of the other. In the same bar we met a couple of old blokes who were in the middle of a two year round-the-world sailing trip in their own yacht, and they both came from Leyland, which is my home town in Lancashire. I'd even met one of the guys before about fifteen years ago. Small world indeed. We had an excellent time on Rarotonga and although we were both eager to move onto New Zealand, it was difficult leaving the island. The culture on the islands is heavily influenced by New Zealand and you can get all the creature comforts imported from there , except in a beautiful South Pacific environment (although for some reason they only sold Australian beer, which I have found to be the closest approximation yet to a cold can of piss!). Imagine eating fish 'n' chips on a Bounty advert beach and you'll get some idea of what I'm talking about.

Mik