Rarotonga
02 August 2019 | Rarotonga
Grace Foot
Thank you to everyone who has pointed out that we haven't changed the date on the blogs!
We are now in Rarotonga which is like a different world from French Polynesia New Zealand style bars and restaurants everywhere, coffee shacks, lots of NZ tourists and second homes, spas, gyms and yoga studios. We've been incredibly lucky to have met Ross and Cindy who have a guest house on the beach in Bora Bora as they have been wonderful on the local knowledge and finding the sail maker and fabric to get the mainsail repaired again!
We couldn't have arrived on a better week as it is the Maeva Nil festival which is the equivalent of the Haeva here. So we are about to embark on our third night of dance performances . Brian is now an expert on all steps and also an authority on the competition categories!
We are still very much in Polynesian culture although the second language is now English rather than French and Cook Islands Polynesian is different from French Polynesian although phonetically quite similar. Our language skills have stretched to Kia orana for hello and meitaki for goodbye, and moana for ocean (the name of an awful lot of boats here!) One thing that is the same here is the tradition of burying your deceased family in your garden in enormous elaborate graves which are often equal in size to the house, and then usually a further house and further graves are put on the plot, estate agents are few and far between as Polynesians are generally against selling their ancestral home and can trace ownership back hundreds of years, although some if the big hotel chains have sufficient cash to persuade some to sell they often have a grave yard to protect in the contract.
Our journey here was quite rough and uncomfortable but the wind has now died so sadly we have decided to miss out on Palmeston island and head straight for Niue a approx 4 night crossing then another hop to the northern Tongan islands. This will be a disappointment to some ex Palmeston residents who have been active in engaging with us on the dock trying to persuade us to transport various goods or people back there! It is an unusual island everyone is descended from a William Masterton who had three wives and fathered 26 children and divided the island between the 3 branches of his family, the middle one being in charge!