[Edited slightly 9th April in LA

I have just managed to upload Part 1 and I am conscious that it contained a lot of photos. This post will just have one slideshow with photos from our road trip and some of my other favourite things about the Cook Islands.]

This morning we hired a little car and took to the open road. We started with coffee in our favourite spot – the BCA Gallery “The Cafe”. Not for the first time on this trip breakfast was cake. My swimming (and to a lesser extent running) friends know that this is why we swim – for the cake. As I had already had an hour swim round one of the islands at Muri the cake barely tipped the scales in terms of excess calories.

We then followed our noses (in fact just took the road straight opposite the BCA) to have a look at one of the many churches on the island. It is being restored and was not remotely photogenic so while Janis wandered around looking at the gravestones I popped into the museum and library in search of a second hand copy of a book I’d seen in town. I had had no intention of visiting the museum but I was drawn in and was delighted to see that Janis had followed me. The museum is very much old school, crowded display cases with erratic labelling. However, there were some amazing dance costumes, some lovely examples of tivaivai and lots of shells and crabs (which is how I know the fellow in my previous post was a ghost crab). There was a scary looking coconut crab – I wish we’d seen one of those (though perhaps not at night!).

We left the museum and continued to follow the road which led us deeper and deeper into the bush until, eventually we decided that the road was probably about to run out on us so we turned around.

The rest of the day we followed our whim, stopping at the Bank of the Cook Islands to get 3 dollar notes, fuelling ourselves from road side cafes. I tucked in a swim at one of the highly recommended beaches and saw yet more fish I’d not seen previously. Shops and cafes shut early in Rarotonga (especially for someone still used to London hours) so we were pretty much done and dusted by 3.30.

I had another long swim round a different island at Muri, we went out to dinner and in no time I was on the bus to the airport – next stop LA.

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