Next Country*: The Cook Islands

*Well, strictly speaking the Cook Islands aren’t a country. According to the United Nations, at least.

Residents of the Cook Islands have a New Zealand passport and use New Zealand dollars as well as local currency.

The island I’m off to is called Rarotonga, the largest of the 15 islands that form the Cook Islands.

Sat on 67.2 sq km of land, it is only just bigger than New York’s borough of Manhattan (59.1 km²).

Despite being roughly of equal size, over 100 x more people live in the borough of Manhattan (1.665 million in 2017) than do on the island of Rarotonga (14,153 in 2006).

I have 5 days planned in Rarotonga before 2 days on the neighbouring island of Aitutaki, a short hop, skip and jump away on a 50 minute flight.

Sadly for me, the weather forecast suggests nothing but rain and tropical storms all week, so it may not be the sunny beaches I had anticipated when booking.

I’ll do my best to keep you, my fellow Steemian, updated, but internet access is likely to be poor.

Apparently the islands have had an internet cutout for the last 2 weeks so who knows whether I’ll be able to post.

If I can’t, at least I’ll be on a beautiful tropical island, eh? Could be worse, even if it does rain.

Peace,

//]:# (!steemitworldmap -21.201939 lat -159.808933 long d3scr)

Franck / @goodwithtravels

Posted using Partiko iOS