Rarotonga, my first time in the tropics!

I'm sitting in the Auckland public library (with frightfully slooow internet, I'll be lucky if this uploads before they close in an hour) after quite a week of travel, sun, scenery, and Pacific Island culture.
Nearly all the students in IES went to Rarotonga for the break. TINY little islnd out in the middle of the Pacific, 4 hour flight from Auckland. Look it up on Google maps, because it's so small, you'd never find it in that atlas you tote everywhere with you!
The cooks are a protectorate of NZ, you can use NZ money there, they do defense and help with some aid, but the cook currency including $3 bills and triangular coins (got some of both!) are no good back here. Only 13000 people live across an area nearly double Alaska with only 93 square miles of land! Tiny!

I need to go and enjoy Auckland before it gets too dark, so here's some pictures. I'll try to do a bit more on their culture later :)

Too cool to not look at. Just in the airport giftshop. I did get told off for photographing in there though.

Off we go from Auckland!

I won the coconut husking "competiton" with IES kids, but even the 12 year old boys could beat me no problem. If ever you're stuck on an island without anythign to eat, give me a call and I'd be more than happy to come join you and share coconuts.. they are SO good and filling. All you need is a big sharp stick to husk them! If you have two husked, bang them together just right and you have a liter of the best water!

There's better pictures of us driving, but there were too many unusual expressions to pass this one up. Just rolling along at the island speed limit of 50km/h. I spend a lot of miles with my head just stuck out the window, enjoying the wind and beautiful island.

On the cross Island walk, right next to the needle. Not the highest point on the island, but the needle is... pointy! Awesome looking peak,  just rises 50 m straight up from the ridges around. Home was just along the shoreline, a little to the right.

I only really own one of the 5 garments in this.. hm. The flowers returned to the earth, hat to adam, and rochester will go back to rochester. Proudly mended my nationals backpack with my mini sewing kit though!

Sunset at the house of one of our stops for "progressive dinner" awesome experience wherein you get entre (apetizers in this hemisphere) here, main down the road, and desert (amazing!) off in the woods!

HOT! I got a little addicted to these peppers, then I rubbed my forehead, and OW, that didn't go away for 4 hours.

AMAZING culture show. All the elementary through high school students showed their best. Some of the routines were amazing. The little elementary kids were just plain cute. I took some video of the final high school performance, it was so so fun to watch again too (sadly it's 4 times the size of my internet quota). The girls shake their hips like mad and the boys.. well youtube it. They move their knees and bounce, and somehow balance.