Sorry folks, but Photo’s will have to be added in about a weeks time as I am WiFi disabled again.

Here’s a challenging puzzle to kick us off. How long was my flight? I took off at 21.15pm out of Sydney on 18th May and landed at Rarotonga at 7.00am on 18th May. Sydney is 9 hours ahead of the UK and Rarotonga is 11 hours behind the UK. For completeness, it was an Air New Zealand flight, my main bag was 22.9 kilo’s and I was in seat 19B. I’ve been away for 65 days which is similar to the position Phileas Fogg was in.

The flight was a bit uneventful as it was night time and a number of hours of sleep was on the agenda. As I waited at the gate for the Air New Zealand flight I heard the announcement that all seasoned travellers want to hear, “can Mr David Dugdale please make himself known to the gate staff!”…Sure can, I thought, upgrade coming! I didn’t hesitate and as I approached the airline girl she had a boarding card in her hand. “Mr Dugdale, we need to accommodate a family that want to sit together (yes, I am thinking). At check-in I always try to get an emergency aisle if possible and they aren’t charging for the privilege so had already secured this spot for the flight for the extra room and a bulk head seat. “So we have moved you back a seat”. No! A downgrade!, the seat right behind the one I had secured. Like a gent’ I smiled and accepted the exchange of boarding cards.

As we got onboard I thought ‘what a cruddy plane’. It was small, old and dirty, with staff to match. Actually the staff were not dirty, but let’s put it like this, they were not from Singapore. My seat was still an emergency exit seat so one saving grace and no real hardship other than setting yourself a false expectation and poking yourself in the eye with a premature victory salute. The old guy taking my seat was one of the traveller types that I have come to hate. Up, Down, “can I have an extra Cushion? , Can I have a glass of water?” and definitely taking too much luggage on board. I could also sense he would be an ‘early recliner’, so was waiting for this.

Take-off and ‘Ping’, “You can now switch on your electronic devices and on the plane’s entertainment channel you will find…He starts. My seat buddy had a problem, his TV wouldn’t come out of his seat. The Stewardess eventually came back with a spanner and on her ageing bended knees unscrewed something by my feet. “The pictures not coming through”. She played with the spanners and it came on, but was not fully functional. Next, his seat wouldn’t recline properly, so out came with the spanners again, although I think his bouncing got it back rather than anything that the Stewardess really did. I had a little laugh to myself, then whacked up the volume on the headphones with a little Luke Bryan to settle me into the flight.

A few hours of sleep and we are ready for the short landing into Rarotonga. The pilot warns that it will be short and there will be a lot of engine noise and braking. You see the runway starting at the beach line and he doesn’t waste much time in touching down. Nice job. A very small airport, with a mountain backdrop, and we are taxi’d right to the Arrivals door. There are so few flights that the Hotel staff know the times of arrivals and departures for all the locations. It’s got that South Pacific feeling as soon as you see the staff, full of welcome smiles even though they have to do their immigration and customs bits. It was 7am and they were all alert for the one plane that was going through. We sped through Immigration and Customs, while a man called ‘Jake’ played a Ukelale and sang Rarotongan songs to welcome everyone to the Island. I was to read later that he does 17 welcomes a week and has been doing it for 30 years. As I get to the edge of the arrivals hall an official asks for my Hotel name and then bellows directly at a taxi driver standing just 15 feet away with a big smile. As I hand him my bag, he places a garland of white and yellow flowers around my neck. “Kia Orana!”

It is early on Saturday (funny that by the end of the day I will have had 38 hours of Saturday 18th May plus some time on the flight) and my Hotel isn’t open yet, which had gone through my mind with the usual 2pm check-in times that you normally get. But no problem, he points to the reception and tells me it will be open for the morning and also points to my name on a whiteboard that simply says, ‘Bungalow 4, Dave, UK’, alongside all the other existing guest names. A very intimate welcome even though no-one was there. A welcome fruit breakfast is in my room and a more welcoming 4 poster bed.

I was out cold inside minutes and woke at around 1.30pm. By this stage the reception was closed for the day and it will also be closed all day on sunday. Rarotonga is very laid back. I read a notice on the reception wall, ‘if we are closed you can use the phone in the Bike Shed (10 feet away) and call this number’. I did but an announcement said that I couldn’t use the phone. So it needs to be a possible make-do scenario. The room has a good directory of the local area so I have a first heading of a Bar 50 yards away up the beach, by now it was 2.30pm and I needed a bit of light sustenance.

You will see the pictures in about a week as the Island hasn’t got particularly good WiFi, so just words for a while, but let me paint a picture of Rarotonga and where I am staying. The Island is 32 Kilometres around and has a road that skirts the coast in one big loop. A bus operates ‘roughly’ to an hourly timetable, Clockwise and Anti-clockwise on this road. In the middle are high Mountains (A Volcano) that is covered in deep green rainforest. Every one lives close to the beach. My Bungalow made of Bamboo with an al fresco bathroom to the back and a veranda to the front is 25 feet from the beach and the line of the beach is 25 feet from the water. A reef lies about 100 metres off shore and the massive Ocean waves crash against this, but the water in the Lagoon up to the beach just ripples. After the reef the water then drops to 4500 feet. Basically we are on a high base station of a big mountain that starts at the Ocean’s floor. As I look up and down the beach, there is no one to be seen. The waves roll into the reef every 10 seconds and about 1 in 6 are much bigger than the others, the colours are breathtaking.

As directed I find the Bar which steps right off the beach, The Waterline, a weathered timber building with platforms for Dining and a small Bar. A Waitress is keeping it open as there are no customers, but I am welcomed and manage to order some food 10 minutes before the end of the afternoons allotted time. Something I will need to account for in my timings, some places won’t be open for long periods. As I sit and sip I am eventually joined by the owner, a resident now, but originally from Lymington in Hampshire, but travelled out in the 70’s and we are then joined by a young couple from Cairns in Australia (his Mother was a Londoner and his Partner was from Yorkshire). A pleasant afternoon, but I could feel that jet lag was still in me which is the first time I had had that feeling since leaving the UK. I did need it as I slept through until 10.30am the next morning. Breathing in fresh air is really good for you.

Being Sunday nothing much was going to happen around so I had a late breakfast then wandered down to the Beach to lie out for a while. Every time you look, you see something more in detail, Coral on the beach, Hermit Crabs salsa dancing with the wash of the ocean, Palm trees bowing across my vision. Truly idyllic. I made it until late afternoon before I ventured to the watering hole for refreshment. A few more people in the bar, but I struck up conversation with 3 people about the sunset. I haven’t mentioned the sunsets yet, they are amazing and I only have to walk 25 feet to see them. The people turn out to be from the Foreign Office of the Singapore government on an official trip to Rarotonga. I shared my lovely experience of Singapore with them as well as some of the poorer comparisons, which they were delighted to hear. Remember my comment about driving from Changhi Airport and saying it was like one big garden. That is how they had designed and wanted it to be perceived by visitors.

The Singaporean’s were waiting for the Rarotongan cabinet to arrive, yes, the Prime Minister and his Ministers. They scuttled off as the first of their hosts arrived. To my surprise the head Singaporean, Matthew, introduces the first Rarotongan arrival directly to me. “Tom, this is Dave he is travelling around the world and he is writing a blog about it”. Tom a broad chested Rarotongan with a floral shirt and a single fresh white flow over his right ear, welcomed me. “I’m the Deputy Prime Minister, I hope you are enjoying your stay with us?” He asked when I got in and when I was leaving. We talked briefly about the sunset, which he took as much pride in it as if it were his own creation. They then went off for Dinner to one side with their delegation including the Prime Minister and I decided that with the sun down that this was a time to get a freshen up and a late siesta. Duly freshened, I returned down the shoreline to the light of the crescent moon, which lit up my sand path. A bite to eat and a couple of drinks later it was soon closing time. The Deputy Prime Minister came over again, patted me on the back and shook my hand with a nice salutation. What a country I thought. You try to get a nodding elected Councillor back home interested in something ??

I was one of the last few out of the bar, not that it was a long drinking session, but it seemed to wrap up around 10.30pm and I talked with Chris the owner and two Australians, about Australia.

Heading back down the beach to the bungalow, although the moon was partly out, I stopped to look at the stars. It was a clear night and the longer you looked the more appeared. A couple of weeks ago when I went to Phillip Island to see the little Penguins in Victoria, the stars on show that night were amazing but I forget whether I wrote about it in my blog. That night I saw clouds of stars, so my hope is for seeing the same here.

So that’s my introduction to Rarotonga. This is going to be a place that I hopefully get chance to get my new Camera into action, but time to chill’ and I do need to think a bit about the future and what I would like it to hold for me.