Well, our holiday is done and dusted.
Amazing that you can wake up in one country, have breakfast by the beach, then drive to a big building, do lots of queuing and waiting and paperwork, then do several more hours of eating and drinking and watching movies on a small screen, followed by more queuing, until you end up back in your own house. Flying is a wonderful thing – if only they could fix that whole “the planet is on fire” thing.
I would highly recommend Rarotonga as a winter holiday destination. It’s all so easy for a kiwi, it feels like small town New Zealand except warmer. Having said that, I do have friends who don’t want to prop up an anti gay establishment, and it’s true that male homosexuality is illegal there (although this is not enforced). I blame my ancestors for spreading the word 200 years ago. Christian missionaries and their overweening interest in how people dress and their sex lives! They were certainly extremely successful getting their message across in the Cook Islands. There are churches and religious signs everywhere. Not that it was all easy sailing by any means. One of their first missionaries got killed and eaten on some island nearby. Anyway, it’s lucky for lesbians that the Church seemed to have no idea that gay women were even a thing. I must say I was much heartened by the number of rainbow flags we saw all over the island. There was talk of law reform a couple of years ago, my guess is it will happen eventually.
On another topic entirely, and I know I haven’t even been home 24 hours yet – but I’m glad I don’t live somewhere where you need air conditioning. You can cope with cold by dressing warmly and heating your house (hooray for central heating and insulation!) but it’s harder to combat the heat.