Beachcomber

Back on Rarotonga we made our way from the airport and checked into the Muri Beachcomber resort. On Aututaki we’d made some phone calls about budget accommodation but found that it was all booked up. My hunch is that a lot of backpackers that have been in Australia and New Zealand are heading home for Christmas with a break in the South Pacific along the way. Instead we used possibly the worlds most expensive Internet café (40 cents per minute!) to book Beachcomber on the www.wotif.com site. The resort was a little more expensive than we’d like to have paid, and busy too, we could only book for two days. The unit was lovely though, and well worth the money. Kayaks and snorkelling gear were complimentary but we didn’t get to use them on the first day as the weather wasn’t great and we had chores to do. In the evening we lounged around in the lounge listening to Cook Islands radio. The station was so naff as to be really charming. They even broadcast the Miss South Pacific competition, bikini round and all. It’s a bit hard to do a beauty competition via the radio. Miss Cook Islands won it.

In the morning despite the very dark clouds looming all around us we went to get snorkelling gear from the office. Whilst they had what seemed like hundreds of pairs of fins they didn’t have a single mask and snorkel that wasn’t smashed. We asked for them to keep an eye on anyone bringing them back at check-out and to drop them in our room. At that point the tide looked a little high for snorkelling so we took out a double kayak. We didn’t stay out too long as it was a bit windy and choppy, even in the lagoon. We ate lunch at the posh Pacific resort which was next door to us to the strains of the ever present ukelele. The rest of the day was spent with our heads in our books, occasionally outside, but inside when it began to rain. Muri beach is a lovely place, but the weather just wasn’t smiling on us whilst we were there.