Diving in the Cook Islands

Kia Orana!

The hostel I stayed at in Rarotonga was the best one so far, set 5 mins walk up a tree-lined track, it was set in the hills so the views were amazing. It had a nice atmosphere, I met everyone in the hostel in the first hour of being there, and there was a great patio where everyone sat outside every night drinking, talking and playing cards, when we weren't out partying in Avarua.

We arrived on Saturday and went straight away to town (we needed food and everything closes on Sundays). There was a market in town, and they put on an Island dancing show, the men in grass skirts and the women in floral bikinis. On Sunday we went to church, the singing was amazing but the service was mostly in Maori! Afterwards we went next door to the school and the children sang to us, and we got a free, delicious lunch.

On Monday Siobhan and I started a 3 day diving course, so we are now qualified PADI divers! It was a bit weird at first, and the first open water dive it took us 10 mins to go down to a depth of 10 metres. After the second or third dive I really got into it, and now I love diving! It is such a cool sensation, floating underwater. We saw loads of fish, including a very scary looking eel, a cool Lion fish and a tiny Reef shark. I got very badly sunburnt whilst on the boat, but it was only painful for a couple of days!

The last two days we were there it absolutely chucked it down with rain, proper tropical storm style. It's actually very good fun being on the beach in weather like that, and its not cold. Rarotonga is such a beautiful island, everywhere you go you can see the sea. It has a lagoon surrounding the whole of it, like a natural swimming pool, and the waves break 200 or 300 metres out.

Everywhere works on 'Island time', which I'm really getting into. It basically means things happen at their own time, and things might be late, might be early, but who cares? Everywhere in the Pacific is like this.