Last day in Rarotonga

Back to good ol' NZ tonight really late at night.

So the night of the Cross-Island walk we went to this Progressive Dinner, where we ate at one family's house for appetizers, then another for the main course, and a final family's house for dessert. All of the food was good and tasty and I quite enjoyed it. The guy at the first house showed us his garden, which had all kinds of fruit and vegetables, including starfruit, papayas, hot peppers (I tried one and it nearly burnt my mouth. I feel sory and impressed by the guy who ate a whole one), and pinapples (which apparently grow out of the ground). All in all, a good evening.

The next morning, we had a lecture on the Cook Islands economy. It's not doing well, because there are so few people, so many people just leave for New Zealand, and there's so little land. The country survives entirely on tourism, which is also not doing so well, because it's mostly New Zealanders, who are apparently a lot more frugal than Americans.

After that we went to a nearby school. The kids danced for us, and then we were split up into groups. I don't know what the girls did, but us guys were taught by the kids how to play their drums. It took me awhile to pick up the rhythym, but it was fun. after that were visits to the classrooms and a light lunch. one of the teachers then asked the group if we wanted to play with the 1st years. I jumped at the chance. We played duck duck goose, which the kids seemed to really enjoy. When one of the kids picked me as the goose, he (I suppose expecting that I would be a lot faster than him) took off, running offaround one of the school buildngs. My group eneded up playing a lot of different games, most of which were quickly discarded as the kids got more rambunctious.

Then we went on a tour of the small plantations around the island. and small is the key word here: most of the places we saw were probably less than an acre. We saw noni (a fruit which smells and tastes like bleu cheese, and which is added to some health drinks), coconuts, bananas, papayas, and rock melons. I even got to help plant a new banana tree! Except for the part where I fell in a hidden hole over by the rock melon patch, it all went well.

THat night we went back to our hotel and had a talk with Nan Hauser, who's an American/Swiss/Bahamanian whale researcher who lives here. She showed us some of the footage she'd gotten from her studies of humpback whales, including times when whales almost destroyed her boats and interesting whale songs. She really was a cool lady. Many of my fellow IESers want to come back here to be her research assistants.

We went with Nan to this cool restaurant called Cafe Ariki. I ended up sitting with a good mix of people, and we talked all night about all kinds of geeky stuff. I was a little disappointed in my chicken snitzel, but all in all it was a good night. We closed it out with coconut ice cream that Eunice had bought for us.

Today we went to another school. We helped the kids clean up garbage and overturn possible mosquito breeding grounds, as well as remove some plants. It was actually kind of fun, although tiring. Then the kids had snack time (we didn't, which made me sad), then playtime. after playtime we had harder work, where we split up into two groups. Unfortunately I arrived and went with the wrong group, the one that was clearing the beach of weeds and rocks, as opposed to the one that was organizing raffle tickets inside in the shade.It was even harder work, but we accomplished a lot. After that the principal showed us how to hook coconuts out of a tree and we got to try our hand at husking them. I didn't get to go for very long, but i ended up being better than I expected.

Now it's free time. I think I shall meander about town and then go back to the hotel to rest and pack my stuff. I'll update my blog again when I get back to New Zealand.