Made bacon and eggs for breakfast, so good! I ended up buying a bunch of items I don’t usually buy back at home, bacon, bread and burger rings were a nice holiday treat.
After breakfast, I went for a walk to checkout the beach, it took about 10 seconds to get there - it was right at my doorstep and completely deserted, it was like a entirely private beach!
I went back to the office and got some more information about tours and scooter hire. Rangi organised for the hire company to come pick me up so I could pick up a scooter, so I relaxed by the pool until my they arrived.
I hired a scooter for 7 days, it cost me $100 and got a one day temporary
license. This would give me enough time to go to the police station to do the
test. I rode into town and it felt really nice riding a bike in the sun taking
in the island views.
When I got to the police station to do the test, they had already finished for
the day, so I booked in for 11:30 tomorrow and rode back to the hotel.
Along the way I stopped at the bakery for a salad roll and the fresh bread was
really good! No diets on holiday!
I packed some things and rode over to Muri beach, which was about the same
distance from the hotel to Avarua, except in the other direction.
Just as I reached the end of Muri my scooter started playing up and wouldn’t
accelerate. I waited on the side of the road for a little and eventually it got
enough power to take me back to the Muri township. Even on the way back there it
was losing power intermittently. I parked it and went for a walk down the beach.
I got back and it seemed ok, but I was worried it wouldn’t get me back to the
other side of the island to get home and by then it’ll be dark! It’ll be even
worse if it starts raining and if it continues playing up, I may not be able to
make it to the police station by 11:30 to… ironically… get my licence.
The night market area was still being setup, so I just wandered around town and
ended up walking up the shore line again. There are a lot of really nice looking
hotels around there!
By the time I got back to the night market there were people everywhere and a
massive choice of foods!
Almost every stall sold food, fruit smoothies and desserts. The desserts in
particular looked very impressive because they were all hand made: cakes, ice
cream and baked goods.
I ended up getting “island BBQ”, which had (cold) rice, a beetroot potato salad,
“chop suey” (which I think are noodles made from taro), rakau (or “Rarotonga
spinach” which is taro leaves soaked in coconut milk), two sausages and two
chops.
While I was eating I ended up speaking to a lady who was originally from New Zealand, but was in Rarotonga with her family raising money for her daughter’s school. The stall she worked at accepted coin donations and “rented” out cutlery and plates - this was way easier to eat chops with compared to the plastic fork I got from the food stall and pretty cool way to raise money for kids!
When I had finished I ordered a coconut and banana smoothie. The guy cut open a
massive coconut, poured the water into a blender, cut a couple of bananas into
it, blended it up, then put it all back into the coconut.
I chatting to him while he was doing it, his daughter is supposedly quite a
popular yoga teacher who’s fairly well known around the island. Her classes are
normally $80, but he said I can join in ad-hoc for $30 and gave me the details
for the class. The only problem is it’s at 7:30am and on the other side on the
island from my hotel! …Maybe.
After speaking to some tourists from the UK and finishing my coconut to the best
of my ability (it was huge!) I gave the guy the coconut back (he feeds them to
his chickens) and jumped on the scooter to go home.
It seemed to start ok, so I put on a jumper and headed home. I was trying to
take it easy going back, the cold ocean wind went straight through my jumper and
T-shirt and there were bugs hitting me. I put down the visor which made
visibility at night worse, but it meant I didn’t have to squint and eventually
made it to the hotel. Just as a started slowing down for the driveway of the
hotel, the power died! I ended up pushing it into the hotel!
This was actually the most ideal situation! I’m glad it died in front of the hotel and not down the road, but it also makes me nervous to take out for a ride right around the island, which I want to do!
I’ll hopefully get my license tomorrow and then probably take it back! For now I’m just going to relax at the hotel and read a book.