Tropical - Cook Islands

[Stephen1]

Thank you for sharing your trip with us. Its great to see other parts of the world in a personal sense. 

[Ianab]

Thank you for sharing your trip with us. Its great to see other parts of the world in a personal sense.

Yeah, Cook Islands is a pretty special place. Like it's a mostly tourist destination, without (so far) the commercialisation that a lot of places have. There are some pretty fancy resorts, but they are small, low key and expensive. There are also backpacker style, and everything in between. But once you walk out onto the main road, they are all treated the same. You are there with the locals, and as long as you are friendly with them, they will look after you. 
It helps that the NZ Maori settlers that first arrived in NZ (~1300 AD) were from the Cook Islands. So there is that language  cross over.  Kia Orana ( Hello / welcome / best wishes) in the Cook's is basically Kia Ora in NZ Maori, just ~700 years of language and culture drift. 
And of course Lil knows almost everyone, so we randomly met up with several old friends that just happened to be on the Island at the same time. And the tour guide on the Aitutaki trip was most impressed that Lil knew the story of Tara, who was the explorer from that Island that legend says our province (Taranaki) was named by. Lil's family are all Irish immigrants, but mine trace back to the first English / Maori days, and by marriage that counts as local. She knows more Maori than me, but I have the family tree.