Photos

We were at Rarotonga, the biggest and the capital island of the Cooks.
The island have an only one ring road, and some tracks that entered in the valleys.
There’s only one public service bus, that did the clock and anticlock round alterned, one time every hour. Sunday excluded, cause is the Lord day and ALL is closed. The few restaurants and bars didn’t sold alchool during that day!
In the first day we rounded the island and the tiny capital village, Avarua, with bycicles, but after 2 Tour de Rarotonga we were very tired (the ring road is more than 30 km long!); so we took the bus.
We were the only tourists (also in all the island there wern’t much more, cause it was the austral winter); that 2 children, brother and sister, were sitted beside us.
After few minutes the girl asked us:
"where you came from?"
"from Milano, in Italy"
"where is Italy?"
"it is in Europe"
"ahh...and why you speak so funny?"
"what?!"
"you speak funny!"
"'cause English is not our first language. we speak Italian"
"what is Italian?"
"....*§@#%...do you want a chewingum?"

Named after Captain Cook, who sighted them in 1770, the Cook Islands became a British protectorate in 1888.By 1900, administrative control was transferred to New Zealand; in 1965 residents chose self-government in free association with New Zealand.The emigration of skilled workers to New Zealand and government deficits are continuing problems. The Cook Islands has 15 islands in the group spread over a vast area in the South Pacific, total land area of only 220 square kilometres.
The majority of islands are low coral atolls in Northern Group, with Rarotonga, a volcanic island in the Southern Group, as the main administration and government centre. The main Cook Islands language is Rarotongan Maori. There are some variations in dialect in the 'outer' islands.
Tourism drives the economy as the country's number one industry, far ahead of offshore banking, pearls, marine and fruit exports. A popular art form on the islands is tivaivai, often likened to quilting.
In my opinion the better days to visit Cooks is during the celebration for the Constitution Day, the 4th of August. In Rarotonga there are 72 hours of parties, rugby matches, tribal dance competitions, BBQ...and the most part of the 20.000 Cooks people are all at Avarua.

Scanned image – very low quality