Arriving in Rarotonga

  Our flight arrived in Rarotonga 7 minutes early at 1:33pm Saturday after a very smooth flight. We bought four bottles of Chardonnay and a bottle of Gin at the tiny Duty Free store and found ourselves at the back of the immigration queue. This is quite a good plan because they have a priority queue for returning Cook Islanders and, when they have been processed, the staff started feeding tourists from the back of the long snake line to that booth!



Our Boeing 777 was quickly re-loaded for the return flight to Auckland and the above picture is of it taxiing out while we waited for our local flight to Aitutaki.

We only had an hour or so to wait and we were off to paradise.

The first glimpse of the atoll

And here we are back for the fifth time!



The temperature is around 26C and just a few clouds. Dylan ferried us off to Ranginui's Retreat where we have been put in the same unit (No. 4) as last time. The proprietor Steve (Dylan's father) is currently in Thailand trying to get his replacement hip sorted out - it keeps popping out! Not good. Dylan is now running things here but it is very much the same as last time - just very few guests.

Unit 4

We have no transport yet and tomorrow (Sunday) everything will be closed so no chance to buy any provisions. We tried the Koru Café for dinner but, contrary to their signage, they were closed. We ended up going to The Boatshed instead. Miriam had Fish & Chips (Parrot fish) which was more than she could eat while I had Mahi Mahi which is a very solid ocean fish. All washed down with a bottle of HaHa Chardonnay.




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