After the revolution of the day before, Alissa gets to set the agenda for today. And it’s going to be busy…
Up and into it as the Punanga Nui Markets run until 12 on Saturday mornings at the edge of Avarua. A day of that thick, heavy tropical heat is on us so the ride in to town generates a thirst easily. The markets are huge for the island, so busy, so many options but it’s hard to turn down a coconut when you need to hydrate. Delicious and cheap. I can’t think of anything that can do more for you when you’ve sweated out all of the onboard water.
We get stuck in to the locals food out at the back of the markets, Max ends up with a huge plate of rice and barbecued meat and Alissa eats her weight in ika mata. It’s really vibrant and upbeat. A great place to spend the morning to start the day on the right foot.
Cycling out of Avarua towards the west I see the turn off to the hospital which we were told had a great look out point over the west of the island. It’s probably not a problem in cars but on the bikes, it’s a hard drag up a steep hill to the hospital. From there you’ve got a 4wd track which carries on up into the trees for another 600 steep metres before popping out at the lookout. It’s a great spot, you can see all the way down the western side of the island. Wholly worth the effort. Flying back down the hill is great on mountain bikes (don’t forget the cable stretched over the track half way down) and pretty soon we are on our way back to the Aroa Bay Marine Reserve.
Alissa and I are straight back in the water and we follow a long and lazy dive path all the way around on the western side of the Rarotongan. It’s a perfect day for swimming and the marine reserve delivers: so much to see, its positively teeming with life. Schools of hundreds of fish sail by, large trevallys and a couple of moray eels. And all in that crystal clear tropical water that instagram posts are made of. It’s honestly hard to imagine a better location for diving a tropical reef, especially if you’re looking to do it safely with children. It’s all internal in the lagoon so there’s no deep water drop off, no heavy currents in channels. Genuinely an amazing place, I can’t recommend it enough.
Everyone is starting to feel it a bit by 4 o’clock so we set sail on our bikes back for home. Tom is so exhausted he nods off part way home and scares himself. Eventually we get back and decide to try and have dinner at ‘Vili’s Noisy Rooster’ at the end of our road. It appears to be a local KFC pretender with fried chicken, potato and gravy and chips etc. After spending all of our hard cash at the markets this morning we attempt to buy with card but no luck, cash only. Dejected, we head next door to the little supermarket to go regular shopping for dinner where we can use a card only to find: rejected again! The whole island’s internet is down dragging the eftpos system down with it. Cashless, we have no option but to return our goods and head back home to cobble together a dinner out of what we’ve got lying around at the house. Lesson learned, cash is king.
