Friday 24th August

Rarotonga,
Cook Islands

21 12.295 S
159 47.091 W

Happy Birthday Paul Michael, hope you have a great day.

Well the decision to stay certainly took on meaning today, we awoke to rain and grey skies. A couple more boats had arrived overnight and needed help to tie up to the dock so Gerry was out there in his wet weather gear being a Good Samaritan. These boats arrived with the same stories of bad weather on the way and they too had had a couple of bad days on the trip across from Bora Bora – I seems that everyone we speak to has had a tough time doing that particular passage, I’m glad that we weren’t the only ones. We went ashore and used the dock showers to save the water on the boat and then went to the nearby coffee shop for a decent cup of coffee. Gerry said that he thought we would be here until at least Monday or Tuesday so we would hire a car tomorrow and redo the tour of the island incase we had missed anything, and besides which all the shops, bars and cafes are a decent walk away – no fun if it was going to continue to rain for the next 3 days. It continued to rain all day and we made a hasty retreat to the boat to check the lines were secure and that the beds were safe to sleep in (Ok so everyone had a nap) The biggest problem is that with the weather turning horrible there are no places to go and see and nothing to do that we have found so we just read more and relaxed on the boat. We dug out the map of the island along with the tourist guide and marked off all the places of interest to make sure that we don’t miss any of them after picking up the car tomorrow. Dinner was again on the boat – we bar b qued up some thick fillets that we had bought in Bora Bora, they were delicious. Again we gave in to the movie watching and if you haven’t seen The Ninth Gate – don’t bother, it was a Roman Polanski movie staring Johnny Depp and it would be a waste of hard earned cash to pay to see it, thank goodness we didn’t pay to see it! We retired to bed with the wind howling around the boat, the lines jerking backwards and forwards and the rain pounding on the deck – who cares we were al safe, warm and dry inside!