Rartitonga

Serai
Jason and Emily Willis
Sat 4 Aug 2007 13:29
21:11.6N 159:46.5W

We left Bora Bora just after a few days of quite heavy winds. The forecast looked good for a couple of days and then the winds were forecast to lighten. The first 2 days were excellent, with Serai managing 140 miles in the first 24 hours. After day 2 though the winds faded to nothing and we ended up motoring for 51 hours! I guess it was good to give the motor and batteries a good run, but a little expensive on diesel! We arrived yesterday at 0730 in the morning, feeling really excited about this landfall.

First we headed to the town quay as we had to be inspected by the ministry of agriculture to get sprayed and inspected for fruit and veg. On paper they seem pretty concerned about bugs and stuff coming into the islands. The reality though, is that the guys came on board, we filled in some paperwork and nothing else has happened. He wanted NZ$10 for this, but we had no money so he said he would come back but hasn't. Its certainly all very laid back. Next we were allocated a small spot on the town quay to moor 'med style' to. Disaster struck as I tried to get off the town quay, and ripped some of the toe-rail out of the deck. Luckily I did not break the actual toe-rail, which is one long piece of teak, just pulled the end of it from the deck. The air turned pretty blue for a while and then we headed over to our mooring spot. We nudged our way in with no hiccups and now are nicely berthed with a view out the back of a concrete wall! We get to and from said wall using our kayak and pulling ourselves along our mooring lines - sort of chain ferry style! Its a bit precarious, but so far has been working.

We arrived in Raritonga at the end of their Constitution Day celebrations. The Cook Islands are famous for the high standard of their dancing. They were thrown out of the main Polynesian competition in Tahiti because they won for years in a row. We went straight into town to try to get tickets. We managed to get one ticket (the very last ticket) and the lady told us she would meet us at the front and sneak the other one of us in! This all sounded very dubious of course - and I was sure we had just been taken for a ride. Anyway, we headed back to the boat and got ourselves ready. We strolled back for 7 pm and sure enough met up with the lady and were shown to some seats (better seats in fact than we had paid for); now I'm loving Raritonga and cannot speak highly enough of their kindness! The show was really interesting with some quite modern interpretations of Polynesian dancing at times. Finally I got to see girls dancing in coconut bikinis, so a dream come true there. It was a pity the show was so disorganised with long gaps between each dance and a woman going on at length about the costumes, choreographer etc, etc. Some dances though were some of the most technically demanding that we had seen. there was also a singing group who performed between dances. They were sensational and really raised the roof, getting very loud applause at the end of each song!

We have a few boat jobs to do whilst here, and will also be hiring a scooter to explore the island. I guess we will stay here a week or so and then hope for some wind for our trip to Niue. We should be able to post some more picture blogs as we have internet here too.

Till the next time.

Love

J and Ems xx