Although I don't know why I bother to put what day it is in the titles anymore, I'm on island time! The days don't matter! What wasn't on island time however was the scuba dive I had signed up for, and that started promptly at 8. I am the only one in my family that can scuba dive so was doing this alone. I woke up disoriented, I had been dreaming about Peru and couldn't figure out why there was a loud rooster in my bedroom back in Cusco for the longest time. But then I opened my eyes and realized that I was in Rarotonga, the Cook Islands, and that there was a rooster literally beneath our open window cock-a-doodle-doing directly into our room. That was awful. But it wasn't just one rooster, oh no, there was a whole dissonant choir of off-key roosters out there this morning, a side effect of the hundreds and hundreds of stray roosters that roam this island freely.
Here's one such rooster walking along the road like he owns the place
I was predictably the last one there. being late is my most prominent characteristic, so everyone else on the dive had to awkwardly wait while I suited up and got all my gear together, ugh.
The view from the boat was breathtaking. If this isn't paradise I don't know what is.
Me excited to go scuba diving. I cringe at how red my face is and how white the rest of me, but that's what happens when you spend a month in the high Andes of Peru in the winter and have to cover up the whole time!
The trip was anticlimactic though, I still had a small cold from the kids in the kindergarten where I volunteered in Peru and so I had enormous trouble equalizing, or dealing with the pressure of the water on my ears, and so I could only go down for one of the two dives which was incredibly sad as Rarotonga is one of the best places to dive in all the world. The first dive was totally worth it though, beautiful reefs, fish of all colors, and even a sea turtle attacking a jellyfish! That was the highlight.
I of course couldn't take my own photos but here's a photo of what it looked like that I found online. It was kind of weird though, like what is there to eat on a jellyfish?
Another photo from online of the Rarotonga reefs
There were tons of fun people on my dive and even a free diver who saw a three meter long hammerhead shark on the second dive that I didn't do, I'm not sure if I'm sad or glad that I didn't see it...
During the dive I meet a guy named AJ who's from Auckland, New Zealand and he's six foot nine! He's the tallest person I've ever met! Anyway so I was talking to him and telling him how sad I was that our family didn't have a scooter and so he kindly offered to take me on a scooter ride later on, and I eagerly agreed. I thought it would be a fun, friendly kind of event.
Here we are on the boat
Later in the afternoon, AJ came over and took me on his scooter up to this inland waterfall and then for a hike.
The 'waterfall' that has dried up because of the lack of rain recently.
