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I flew out of Rarotonga last night to head for Los Angeles. Jake serenaded the leavers from paradise island from his elevated stage, strumming away on his Ukelele. It was funny earlier in the day to see a sign at the side of the road “Ukelele For Sale” (had someone given up on the dream?)

In the last couple of days I have experienced what really happens when you bring together the right natural ingredients and got a sense of what Show the Island can put on.

Let’s start with a wedding at the property. I think that there were only 9 guests in total staying at the Magic Reef Bungalows. In the bright morning sunshine there was an early bustle going on by the staff to prepare the beach, the decking and the walkways to the beach. Grace who manages the place pointed to the Bungalow facing mine, which was hidden by large tropical flowers and fruit trees, shouted to me that ‘Glen and Chelsea’ were getting married today at 5pm. They are a young quiet couple from Canada. They were alone for their big occasion, so there wasn’t the usual parental and sibling guidance that you usually get. The Staff draped the furniture in white and there was a wedding arch constructed on the beach of Palm Leaves, coloured with tropical flowers. A coral rock edged path led to the arch and there were multicolour tropical flowers scattered on the short path from their bundalow to the beach. The Minister arrived in his Island flowered shirt with a smile that had been practiced many hundred times before. “I have the best job on the Island” he said.

On cue the couple arrive to some music and were soon face to face with the background of the lowering sun on the water. The rest of the ‘guests’ watched, clapped then joined them in a toast. What a way to do it, she was stunning and even though it was a beach, the white dress blended in perfectly with the sand and the sea.

So where do we go now…Tradition! This Island is all about history, culture and tradition, which they are actively trying to keep alive. I could not have left without visiting one of their sacred villages for a ‘Polynesian Evening’. A small bus picked me up just after the allotted time (they all work on Coconut Time) and we did a short roll around the Island Road to pick up other guests. We didn’t have far to travel because quite frankly the Island is so small anyway, but we did head inland for a mile up a steep road. There are 3 tribes on the Island that have historically beaten each other to death and eaten each other since 500AD. Very much linked to Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand culture with the way they talk and guesture.

The talk started in the dimming light for the 40 of so guests who were separated into two groups, Vaka’s, representing the boats of their forefathers who left the land in search of other Islands. A food offering was made to the ancestors and then we were led to a bamboo gate to start the evening, all with a lot of chanting and spear pointing. We were walked into the Large bamboo hut, which had open views of the coast from its high point to two sides and there was a stage in front of a third Vaka, which was made up of locals celebrating a birthday. But it was a special birthday. One of the decendants of the original King, made a push in 1980 to open up the area to visitors and to keep the Rarotongan culture alive. Although passed on now, his wife was celebrating her 80th birthday, a real privilege for us and quite unusual. After the celebration to ‘Mama’, we got on with the show.

They told the story of the Islands with Song, hoola dancing and of course drums. The drums set the tempo for the whole evening and I had the beat in my head even when getting on the plane 24 hours later. The drums from slow banging bass with a big wooden pestle, to the fast high pitched wooden clicking and lots of range in between bashed away a beat for the chanting and singing. The dancing by the boys and girls was hypnotic. I know it’s not PC to be watching the rear ends of young girls swinging and shaking it for all their worth, but the hip movement to the beat was amazing. The show in the evening light was colourful, full of movement and with meaning, but I was pleased when the Missionaries came and got the girls to wear longer grass skirts…Praise the lord! A very memorable evening!

So the final show that this Island has to offer is the Sea. I thought I might have a chance with a higher tide on the Saturday that I was to leave, but the heavens opened up, mist shrouded the mountains and a grey blanket came over the Island…for a while. It did break long enough to get about 2 hours of snorkelling and to try harder at getting the fish into the frame of my camera. With the rain and wind and a high tide, I was being pushed back and forth, but the fish were out in their numbers. The moment that I explained in the last post happened again. You stop, you hang in the water and then you are surrounded by hundreds of fish.

As you will see from the photo’s I did manage to hit the button at the right time a few times.

So that’s about it for Rarotonga, I am in the hands of a better air crew and plane to go with Air New Zealand off to the USA and my Watch gains 3 more hours. It didn’t go off without a final hitch. The ground crew at Rarotonga loaded the Business Class food containers to the back of the plane and the Economy to the front, then managed to break the hoist, so for 15 minutes there was a relay of trollies up and down the plane. Added weigh to one of their local sayings …”Who Cares!”.

So next time I open my eyes, I will be going to touch down in the last of the former colonies, the USA. I believe another cultural shift is coming and jet lag, so bring it on!

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…while lying on your back or your front in Rarotonga.

It’s 10 o’clock in the morning and I am laid back on a sun lounger peering out to sea. The tide is going out and the lagoon is a shimmering shallow of clear water. The sands to the water are etched with last nights trade routes of the hermit crabs like perfectly ploughed lanes. To watch them drag their homes across the sand is like a young child dragging their responsibility of luggage at an airport. It’s awkward but the crab is unlikely to abandon its duty.

The ocean appears mild and then as I go to write a huge wave crashes into the reef. The palms are bowing to the sands and wafting the shade across my face. Sometimes doing nothing can be so simple, but so complex to achieve that simplicity.

My bit of the beach is really crowded today. The crowd including myself has reached 7 people. Everyone has their own palm privacy and we are spread across the manicured frontage of the property. And everyone has a different perspective both physically and theoretical. I don’t know what they are thinking, but as I peer, the loungers are pointed in different directions and some people are reading, some have their eyes closed and surprisingly I haven’t heard anyone speak. Salutations are waves and those in couples appear to act like some kind of Torville and Dean display by getting into their positions without any fuss or correction. As I tilt my head back, I interweave the backs of fingers with each other and press them up against my face to block out everything around me other than the Palms and the Blue sky above my head. It gives you the feeling of a castaway, but with a motivation to stay not to be rescued.

I do miss not having someone to share these moments. A picture and a few words will help convey what this is like, but there is so much raw beauty that the best way to appreciate its depth would be to just be here. It’s a bit like a kaleidascope, as you twist and turn the picture changes and your emotions turn again and your thoughts change again.

So to my Rarotongan challenge…on my list of things to do on your back…

1. observe nature and the elements just passing by!

When you have this context, the next few come naturally…

2. Thought. What do I want do when I grow up? This is becoming a more regular thought as I turn the corner of the world trip. I had this discussion with a friend in Sydney over a bowl of sloppy long thick noodles. We set out in life to do something and without time to stand and stare you start diluting what you value. It can be your job or your pastimes, but things, often good things, come up to change your direction. Before you know it your aspiration buoy is out of sight, your boat is drifting to a new line and eventual you forget what and who you wanted to be. Living in a fast world you are continually driven into new ports and your compass is replaced by Guides who tell you which direction to head.

So here I am lying in paradise, the only distraction is a bit of Country Music in my ears, so my chance to get out the compass and set a new course for a new destination. Without distraction you can also cogitate too, so assessing what would it need to make it happen, assess the chance of you completing the journey and balancing this with serandipity, because if you find something you want, events will also happen to assist you. Louis Pasteur once wrote “chance favours the prepared mind” and I believe in fate as long as you honestly believe the event is really on your path to fulfilment and not just another nice thing to distract you.

No. 3 Solving life’s problems. As you know I tweet on Behaviours, Values and Culture (although I have been pretty delinquent over the last month!), I try to avoid ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ as it’s a complex subject and gets you into areas of pre-defined thought and prejudices etc. I would like to see a common set of beliefs that this precious old world could share. So here I am in conference, on my back, with myself, and I am putting up observations, ideas and then seeing why the world doesn’t stand together on some stuff. It’s a bit like having a large piece of paper and putting down a problem in the centre then arguing with yourself. The hardest bit is tracking your thought as it is very easy to drift in the warm breeze into …

No. 4 Sleep…

When you are on the next overnight flight, observe the following things that the airline will do for you…a bit of stodgey food, a glass of alcohol, the cabin warms up, they give you a blanket and they put some entertainment on a screen that is hard to focus. Your sleep senses are thinking Hibernate, the airline is thinking Anaesthetise. So, you are on your back with a warm tropical breeze blanket, your eyes are being mesmerised by slow moving natural events and you have probably just eaten a little breakfast/lunch. I also find that reading or writing my blog sends me off too. I guess you have the same dozing sense when reading them too!

But good sleep is great for the body.

See there are loads of things to do on your back…

Let’s flip over… to things to do here lying on your front. My mind is focussed on…

Yes, you have it!…Snorkelling

Yesterday I had my introduction to a larger lagoon a few miles away down the coast road and used my Snorkelling equipment for the first time. Tides are important for what you see but the lagoon pool I would be doing it in is like a bowl circled by a reef that is about 400 to 500 metres in circumference. I dropped my bags off at a Dive Centre and headed out with the basics. Not having a waterproof watch is a bit of a disadvantage as you really can’t work out how long you are in the water. I managed to guage an hour by luck than judgement, but I could have stayed all afternoon. My only fear was that being baked in the UV potent light could be painful. The centre closes at 5pm and they advise you not to leave things on the beach as the local dogs have a tendency to trot off with items. But let me get straight into the Snorkelling…Wow!

From knee deep you start to see fish. Small and golden like the colour of the sand, with their eyes focussed on you. I start to click my camera and then stand up for a replay. My aim isn’t quite right yet, so I am getting 12 megapixels of nothing but a sandy bottom. The camera has got a screen and has the usual zoom lens but the optics are so different between what you see through the goggles and what gets captured. Within 5 minutes of leg flippering (I can’t think of the right verb), I am at a nice 6 to 7 foot depth which seems to be the deepest in the lagoon. This is were the aquarium really starts and your eyes are taken by one fish after another, within 1 to 2 feet in front of you (and behind). Sorry I have gone back to Imperial measures as it is quicker to say. At one point My bouyancy was balanced so my head was just underwater and I was vertical. I stayed still and the fish came to me. It really was one of those moments. I tried my hardest to capture it, but it is going to take a few photo attempts I think.

The colours and the varieties just kept coming. A few large silver ones and some black and white ones like the ‘Nemo’ fish that would swim into the shelter of coral as I got to within a few feet (a metre). Yellow, Blue, Tiger, Black ….Thin, fat, ugly, pretty, it’s all here.

The dive centre had said to watch out for Moray Eels, which are rather large and have big teeth so I tried not to get too close to any holes or lower shelves without having a reccy first. When the final selection of pictures comes I hope I can do it some justice. I do have some video footage but so far it looks like it has been taken by a 3 year old on a bouncy castle.

The tide times are working against me a bit this week. I would need to be out very early to catch high tide or it is coming in later afternoon as the light is fading. Each day it steps a bit later, so shallow water it may have to be. The challenge with shallow water is just that as the swirls of the current push you back and forth the opportunity to nudge into a ball of coral is that much greater. Today’s snorkel did just that. As I paddled slowly between two rocks I was swept into some coral and caught my shin and toe. Some great white shark off the horn of South Africa has probably smelled the blood in the water and is on its way. Coral is as brittle as glass and sharp and you will usually come off second best.

I will put a few sample pictures up now to tease, but more will come when I get to the USA.

So, lots of alternative things to do on your back and front that you may not have been think of in your primary thought. And as you can deduce standing up in Rarotonga is a secondary effort and one left for the important task of walking to or from a place where you need to lie down!

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.