Log in
Join travelers community
Your Profile
Logout
Cook Islands
Cook Islands
Bec2004-09-17 15:51:27
Displayed times (last time: )
Rarotonga
Rarotonga's modern airport built in 1974 was an important factor in the rapid growth of tourism here. It is well served by an inexpensive public bus that goes all the way around the island.
Rarotonga is a small island with almost 40 hotels and resorts strewn along the 30 km circular road. New Zealanders really know how to handle tourists and their influence is obvious here. In my books New Zealanders are the world's best tourist herders and Peruvians are the worst.
I had a 3 bed dorm all to myself for only 8.20$US at the Tiare Village on a back road a few km from the capital Avarua. (Tiare means Gardenia).
The Tiare Village was owned by New Zealander but run by a friendly Polynesian woman called Lilly. Several comfortable self-contained units surrounding a pool were also available there.
The modern buses that go around the island in both directions depart every hour from Cook's Corner in the center of Avarua.
The people have been very strongly imprinted by the Christian religions in the Cook islands like everywhere where else in the Pacific.
They even have their own religion called the Cook Islands Christian Church CICC which is followed by 70 percent of the Islanders. The Catholic Church has most of the remaining 30 percent but there are also some Seventh-Day Adventists, some Mormons, some Jehovah's Witnesses and various other denominations.
This is the St-Joseph Catholic Cathedral.
This "Cook Islands Christian Church" CICC church was built in 1853. The CICC religion was founded by the first missionaries sent here around 1820 by the London Missionary Society. Their efforts opened the door of the Pacific to British influence very much like French missionaries opened the door of West Africa to French colonists and Spanish priests helped to establish Spain's dominance over South America.
...
See photographs from:
Cook Islands Gallery
