My flight from Melbourne airport was delayed, but luckily my stop over in
Auckland was really long.
While I received my boarding pass for departing Melbourne, I didn’t get one for
Auckland and because it was just a transfer I had about 5-6 hours to find the
transfer desk to get my next boarding pass.
It turns out I actually had to get my next boarding gate from the departure
gate, which was a little strange. So I just waited for a few hours until the
gate was ready, got my boarding pass from them and boarded soon after.
The airport at Rarotonga is tiny! We were welcomed by a guy playing some nice island themed music on his Ukulele as we got our bags from the carousel.
It was dark and the weather was pretty humid and it was very lightly raining,
but everything was wet so it must have been raining quite a bit before we
arrived.
Once I had collected my bags, there was someone there to greet all the guests
and help them find their way to their accommodation. In other destinations I’ve
been to, these people are generally pushy and try to get you to take their
taxi over everyone else’s, but here this person is genuinely there to help
everyone. At first I was a little defensive, but then she directed me to the
my driver that the hotel had organised to pick me up.
There was some confusion about dates as my original booking was one day out
because I forgot about crossing the international dateline. At first the driver
said my accommodation wasn’t until the next day, which had me a little worried
but then I checked the email conversation (which was still cached on my phone,
luckily) and explained the situation. After a call to the hotel everything was
sorted out, they gave me a flower necklace and I waited in the van for a few
more people.
Before long the van took us around the island dropping people off as he went.
He was doing 70kmph in a 50kmph zone and check engine light on, but I get the
impression things are quite relaxed around here.
Along the way we went passed some road signs that read “jet blast zone” and
“stop when jets take off” which was pretty interesting. Goes to show how small
this place is.
I arrived at the hotel and the driver introduced me to Rangi, one of the hotel
staff. She said we could organise the booking formalities in the morning and
showed me to my bungalow as it was 2:45am!
Rangi (pronounced rung-y) was nice, she said it was chilly outside but coming
from Melbourne the weather seemed pretty nice and I was still sweating from the
humidity!
The bungalow was actually pretty big compared to most hotels I usually stay in.
I took a couple of quick snaps, dumped my stuff and went to bed.
There were gecko’s around the hotel and as I was trying to get to sleep I heard a fairly loud sound as something moved across the wall which scared me bit! It turns out it was just another gecko, but it stayed hidden for the rest of the time.
Here is a photo (taken at a later date) that shows the hotel a bit clearer.
