Rarotonga

Quite the trip. Started at 6am on saturday morning with Gael waking me up. I was worried that I was the last one and they were all waiting for me. Turned out the I was the first and she was hoping that I would get everyone else up. Seth argued with me: "Hey -time to get up" "no it's not." TJ was asleep in his room, lights on and door to both the room and flat wide open. Sean was actually pretty excited cause he thought it was 4 not 6, once he figured it out he was fairly disappointed. Lee just went back to sleep, I had to go get him up again, Tex was furious and he chewed me out for a couple minutes before I could get out of there. Ten minutes later, Gael asked me to check on everyone again - just to be sure they hadn't fallen asleep. Lee was, Tex yelled again, but the others were pretty good. Ended up getting out of Parnell by 6:25 - only 25 minutes late. The same thing happened at each of the girls' residences. Got to the airport and were actually on time for the flight much to Gael’s surprise. Most of us slept the entire ride as no one actually got in the previous night before 2 - but that is a story in and of itself as the night after most peoples midterms usually will be. The island was pretty cool. I'm not going to go day-by-day since I really don't remember what happened each day, but here is what we did:

Lectures: some were better than others – the ones on Polynesian migration, local fishery ecology and some disease going around, even the one on the macroeconomics of the islands were pretty good, however the one on the genealogies of the chieftains of the clans of the islands got pretty long and boring. The last one was some old guy talking about his monopoly of the interisland trade business. I don’t know whether to classify that as boring or interesting -he was almost to quite to hear, but the stories he told were about stowing away and harboring goods illegally in different ports around the world. He led a pretty interesting life.

Cross Island walk: absolutely amazing, poured rain the whole time so we were soaked through. It was only about 2 miles but it was barley a track even, without a guide we would have been lost. On that note, our guide was amazing. His name was Pa, and he does the walk three times a week every week, and he’s only 68. His wife is a princess from Poland and he did the entire walk barefoot. He wore a pair of the good kind of short running shorts – I was about to ask where he got them. Took a couple hours to complete the trek. Forded some rivers and no one even tried to stay to the rocks cause we were all so wet at that point anyway.

Snorkeling: I didn’t take my contacts and I was furious at myself for the lack of foresight. Had to swim around with my glasses in my hand and hold them up in front of the mask to see anything. Needless to say I saw a lot of the really colourful things, and I’m pretty sure that most of the cryptic ones were easily able to avoid me. Still it was pretty sweet, saw a royal blue starfish and some giant clams which were really cool.

Dances: A number of times we got to go and watch the native dances of the islands. These were amazing – predominantly younger kids as most of the ones our age go to New Zealand to make money. They were really good though. The girls did the whole hula dance thing while the guys did this weird shake their knees in and out thing that was amazing to watch. Really enjoyed the dancing and the music. There was a competition at the end of the week, whole schools from around the islands got together and we got to watch, the whole population of the island was there in the ‘National Stadium’ which was not much bigger than the Palestra (for the UR readers) or the north gym at the high school (for the Bozeman ones). The whole thing was pretty cool.

Running: weekly mileage went from 65 to 75 to 35 once I got to the islands, way to hot and way to full of a schedule. Only ran once a day and it had to be in the morning since at night people let their dogs out. It only took one night run to convince me that the morning was the way to go. I am a dog person, but I hate it when they chase me. Also there was only 2 ways to run: clockwise or anti-clockwise. It got really repetitive.

Drinking: we drank lots, there were plenty of bars, and though they didn’t sell any alcohol on Sunday, I happened to find some germans on the beach who invited me to share a gin and tonic with them, it only took about 20 minutes and they got at least 6 shots worth into me. We stopped buy the airport shortly after that for some food (cause our hotel didn’t have any – they were closed on the Sunday). It was by far the best panini that I have ever eaten, no one else appreciated it quite as much as me though. The bars were pretty decent. Good dance parties with the islanders – quite the cultural experience there.

The Hotel: if anyone goes to the cook islands and is looking for somewhere to stay don’t stay at the Aquarius. Even though their major industry is tourism, these guys were not friendly at all. We came in late and fairly inebriated one night, and not wanting to wake the others in the hotel went out to the bar area. I was the first one out there and I was standing looking out the window waiting for the others and this security guy shows up and shines his light in my face and starts chewing me out. It lasted a good 10 minutes and the whole time I was just apologizing and trying to calm him down. Apparently they don’t lock the booze cabinet and so once the bar closes they don’t want people there; something I would never have even thought to try was checking to see if the beer was unsecured. All we wanted to do was sit and sober up for a while before bed. After a while Kate came in and started to fill up a pitcher, he started in on her then and kept going on her for another good 10 minutes about why, if they don’t want us in the bar, we can’t just get water and go to our rooms either (he kept saying that someone did clean the whole barroom for us that night and with us in it, it would get dirty before the morning, so we figured that going to our rooms was fine but definitely not so). He finally allowed us to sit down and left. He came back once to yell at us for being to loud – which we really weren’t very loud at all, it was mainly the noise of the chairs on the floor. That was it for the night, I retired and got up the next morning for a run. I was wearing my running shorts and shoes getting ready to head out and this guy comes up (this is at 8 in the morning – he and I were the only two awake) and tells me that we ARE in a hotel and I need to put a shirt on and be decent. I was thinking – wait a sec, we’re in the middle of the south pacific on a tropical island – why would anyone care if I wear a shirt or not? Especially this early in the morning. I just turned around and walked off, it wasn’t even worth my time I decided to listen to him. DON’T stay at the Aquarius.

Religion: We went to church on Sunday morning, because everyone does apparently – although the church was quite empty. The Service was interesting, but in Maori so we could not understand much of it. Pa kept saying on the hike that once the missionaries came in the 17^th century, the islanders accepted christianity in one hour. He said this a number of times, it was quite disturbing. The old religion is completely lost at this point, there used to be idols on the walk apparently at the very top, but they were all destroyed at the suggestion of the missionaries. It was a typical church service, came out with the realization that lots of people actually do believe this and the children have no opportunity to even hear another side to the story. Very disheartening. They did feed us afterwards though, which was quite nice – the fresh fruit was amazing. Also directly after the church service I found my fingernail clippers in my pants pocket I had been missing them for at least 3 weeks: I figure that god was just happy to have me stop by for a visit – or is that slightly cynical?

It was a cool trip, but the girls all had to room together so by the end of it they were all crazy. I was reading Baboon Metaphysics the whole time. I tea sreally interesting to hear about how the baboons interact in their social groups and then turn around and watch the IES guys and especially girls interacting in such close proximity, there were a suprising number of similarities. I'm getting pretty bionerdy now so I'll end with this: It was nice to get home.