Quit Dreaming and Go Somewhere

Have someone DRIVE Your car for you periodically if you leave for a long trip.

I have to have almost $400 of work on my car because the front brakes are entirely rusted and worn out as well as the rotors, probably from ice and rust while it sat there for 4 months.

This is the worst day ever.

Being back doesn’t feel that weird. I was able to fall right back into the routines and the left that I left. I’m even temping at a place I temped right before I left.

One thing that was weird was money. I had some change in my hand and the quarters felt SO small! It was weird! Quarters always seemed big before, but after being in these other countries, I guess their huge pieces of change made the US change feel small. That was odd. It felt so tiny!

Another thing. Of course when you get back, you love to talk about your trip to people, but you don’t want to bring it up and just start blabbering. And when someone is nice enough to ask you about your trip, they just say, “How was your trip?” or, “Tell me about Thailand.” And then it is hard because those questions are so broad that you don’t even know what to say. That’s one good thing about having traveled with Jim, because we’ll always have each other.

And that’s another thing. My mom kept saying she couldn’t believe Jim and I didn’t kill each other after being together basically 24 hours a day for 4 months. I think it is great too that we did awesome. Of course there were times we argued but that is totally normal. If anything, the trip proves we work good together!

This trip didn’t change my life or anything like that. It didn’t “open my eyes to new cultures” like you might think. I’ve traveled before so that happened to me years ago. I think it’s a one-time thing. All it is is a great memory, good stories, and knowledge about things, people, food, and places that I didn’t have before. Life is about growing your body of knowledge isn’t it? And I don’t mean like book-knowledge, but any kind. For example, now I know that clams will dig themselves back into the sand if you pull them out. And, most importantly, never use Chinese ginger for Thai cooking. You use Thai ginger.

My mom took me to see my grandma when I was home in Michigan. She is about 86 but her mind is still sharp and she is funny!

She had some small weight velcroed around her ankle and my mom asked what it was for. She said it was to even out her walking because one leg doesn’t work as well as the other. Ha!

Then she asked where I’d just come from, and when I said The Cook Islands, she pulled out an Atlas and said she hadn’t been able to find it in there. So I opened the Atlas, intending to look it up, and she says, “Turn to page 120.” I did, and there was a paper in there to mark the map of New Zealand! My grandma had been following my trip in here Atlas and even remembered the page number of a map! I thought that was neat.

No one in our family is extremely close and I’m definitely not close to my grandparents. Since my grandparents had so many kids, they have a gazillion grandkids so I figure they don’t care what I do, really.

Then later Grandma told my mom that mom’s older sister Delores had really raised her and Grandma hadn’t done a thing. Then grandma said, “Oh! One time, you had trouble breathing, so I brought you something. That was the only time.” Ha ha!! And she wasn’t even trying to be funny.

I was surprised though, by how much she knew about my trip and she thought it was really cool. My mom told me she was ahead of her time. Once her and her boyfriend (well, they were in their 60s) drove all the way to Alaska. Go grandma!

I got to Detroit and met my excited mom who was waiting for me.

We drove the 2 hours to home, and it didn’t feel that weird to be there. It was nice and relaxing, though. My parents loved the tropical shirts I got them.

Yeee hawww!! What is a coon dog anyway?

I went thru boxes of old clothes that were still around and found and wore my overalls. I thought about how Jim would laugh at me and not be seen in public with me wearing those! And, to top it off, I wore them to Ponderosa!

My mom made waffles in the morning, which I love. She also had strawberries and sour cream with sugar in it (which is surprisingly delicious!) and it was SO GOOD!!!

On the 1 hour slow ferry over, I slept the whole time.

When we arrived, it was beautiful, like Rarotonga with the lush mountains. Again we wandered around looking for an info desk, and still, NOTHING. There were places where you could get rental cars and tickets on the ferry, but that was it. Finally, in frustration, I said let’s walk to the airport because there is supposed to be an info desk.

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(Yeah, I know I didn’t spell that right or with the correct accents or whatever….)

Like I said, we got to Tahiti at around 2:30 AM.

It is weird to me that one dot in the Pacific Ocean sounds like Kiwis (New Zealanders) and another sounds like the French! We weren’t mentally prepared for another language, since it had been months since we’d had to deal with it.

Anyway, it would have been nice to have a bed to sleep in in Tahiti, but combined with the fact that it is super expensive, we decided to rough it out and sleep on the floor. There were a bunch of other people trying it too. Jim said it was like a commune. I didn’t even know he took this picture.

I had no idea a floor was SO hard to sleep on!! Ouch!

Beforehand, we tried to find an info desk but there was nothing. I even asked a shop owner guy in French and he thought I actually spoke French. That was cool. But he said there was no information. So travel tip: Don’t arrive in Tahiti without a hotel, transportation and all that good stuff. But it makes sense, how many people who don’t have package vacations already show up in Tahiti??

So I tried to sleep but I don’t know if I did. I think Jim stayed up the whole time. At around 5:30 AM we got up and put the luggage in storage. We looked for more information and the situation was getting more difficult. Finally we went outside and hopped on a cruddy little bus to the center of town. On first glance, it was not a nice place! You think Tahiti and you think beautiful paradise…well, Papeete was dirty and even seedy in areas!! As the sun rose, we could see the mountains of Tahiti and in the distance over the water, the peaks of Moorea.

The info center there was still closed and everything else was, too. Fortunately, the offices for the ferries were there. So we bought a ferry ticket to Moorea!

The next day was our flight back to Rarotonga. We saw Theresa there again and her brother-in-law from Aitutaki was there too, a nice guy.

Then a weird thing happened.
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Today we got picked up from our hotel to go on the Kia Orana cruise. The captain was named “Captain Fantastic” and he was great. Our boat was small and only had 7 people. Most of the other cruise boats were pretty big and slow. Ours was fast! In our group was Dieter from Hamburg, a weirdo who spoke English but it never made any sense.

First our boat took us way out in the gorgeous blue crystal clear water to a shallow area to snorkel. We could actually jump right out into the sand and black and white fish swam right by us. We put on our gear and Jim helped me get in the water like always, but it wasn’t that hard this time since the water was warm and clear. I wasn’t as scared. And after about a minute, I didn’t need to hold onto him and I floated around on my own. It was one of those special moments from our trip–snorkeling on my own in that insanely clear and warm water. [sigh]

We swam (I float, I wear a lifejacket.) to big chunks of rock with coral. There weren’t that many fish but the water was SO CLEAR that it was like air. Like a swimming pool! We saw a strange fish orange/yellow fish with a long tail and a weird roundish-thing before the tail.

Me feeding fish!!
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The next day we went to this bar/restaurant on the beach called Samade. It was a very cool place with perfect island decor and everything is all on the beach in the sand. It was on the stunning lagoon and you could even see the silver fish swimming by in the water occasionally. Samade seemed like the best place to hang out in Aitutaki, even though the food wasn’t very good.

View from Samade bar. Beauuutiful!

So we went back to our hotel and got the shower stuff and came back to the resort and had a nice shower!

Then we went back to the hotel (on the scooter.. only took about 5 minutes) and cooked our last Uncle Bens individual rice pack with some frozen stir fry mix and sauce and it was practically gourmet.

We walked to a bar called the Coconut Crusher because it had a big sign that said, “Open Sunday Nite” but it was closed, and it was a Sunday Nite. That’s one thing about these places, if you want to go anywhere, you have to call and make reservations because sometimes they aren’t even open unless people call to say they are coming.

It was a beautiful night to see the stars, though.
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BEST thing: The lagoon in Aitutaki and the lagoon cruise we took. The water was crystal clear and warm.

WORST thing: Piles of trash burning all the time. You can see the columns of smoke. Waste removal is a big problem in the island so people just burn their trash, including things that give off toxic fumes.

Oh, I almost forgot… the SEA CUCUMBERS that literally cover every inch of ocean near the beaches!! UGh!

Food: Island food is tasty and interesting. There is kumara, taro root, paw paw (papaya), and they have a dessert of baked banana with milk that is good. Also omnipresent is a dark green thick sauce-like thing that looks like it is made with spinach. They also have food that is cooked underground like in New Zealand. As far as western or other types of food, there is plenty and they are also some very nice and reasonably priced restaurants there. Food from the supermarket is mostly imported from NZ so it is quiet expensive. You can get freshly baked bread and goods that are great, tho.

Cost: Raro and Aitutaki weren’t cheap, but they weren’t expensive. Hmm.

Favorite Place Visited: Since we only visited two places… Aitutaki.

Most Overrated: Maybe snorkeling on Rarotonga. Whenever we tried to go, the water was a little murky and you couldn’t see much. Also it rained several times so we couldn’t snorkel.

Most Underrated: Hard to say. Maybe the food…I don’t know.

What I’ll Miss the Most:Snorkeling on the lagoon cruise on Aitutaki. Perfectly clear, warm water. White sand and shallow enough to touch the ground before we snorkeled off the boat. [sigh]