On The Banana Pancake Trail

In Rarotonga, Cook Islands

We knew roughly three things about Rarotonga before the plain touched down. It was sunny. It was small. It was in the middle of nowhere.

What we didn’t know was how lush and green it would really be. Tim turned to me and said, “um, I think we’re on the island from Lost.” It looked absolutely wild. And in a way, to a couple of Americans it is. This is a place where to walk 30 feet to the beach we pass goats and chickens.

Rarotonga is a friendly place as well, with only 8,000 locals and about the same number in tourists. It’s so friendly in fact that we couldn’t seem to use up our bus pass because people kept offering to drive us where we were going.

Everyone in our absolutely cozy guesthouse had different ways of spending their days, whether it was driving along the road and jumping out every few feet to test the snorkeling, trekking across the island, or just hanging out in a cafe, but really the best thing to do in Rarotonga is nothing at all – and we couldn’t be more excited to try that out.

One of the days Tim and I took some of the free bikes the guesthouse offered and rode to a waterfall. As we rode along with the view of the beach to just the left of us, I thought to myself, “today I am just traveling along a beach rode with my husband to check out a waterfall, and that’s the only thing in the world we have to do.” There’s something poetic about that.

We went out in town at night a few times. Even on Friday (the night for going out!) that bars were laid back. We went to see a friend of a friend’s band play and when we arrived it was 10 people sitting around the table having a sing-along. Which is wonderful. But the best thing we did was sit on the porch outside our guesthouse with our lovely housemates and a beer and let the evening pass away talking about whatever topic under the sun popped up that night.

“We are the strivingest people who have ever
lived. We are ambitious, time-starved,
competitive, distracted. We move at full velocity,
yet constantly fear we are not doing enough.
although we live longer than any humans before
us, our lives feel shorter, restless, breathless…”
-Elizabeth Gilbert