When my daughter told me that she and her husband were leaving Australia and moving to the Cook Islands, I admit I burst into tears. How much further away could this daughter go? Well, now I know how far – and trust me, it’s far!
I gave them time to settle in before I booked a seat on a 14-hour direct Johannesburg-to-Sydney Qantas flight, then a 7½-hour Jetstar flight to Rarotonga. I left Sydney at 9pm on a Tuesday night, and arrived at 7am on the same Tuesday.
The Cook Islands group is situated in the South Pacific, below the equator and more or less on the same longitude as Hawaii. The 15 islands are spread over about 2 million km2 of ocean, and are divvied up into the Northern and the Southern Group. Most are very small: some are atolls, some are uninhabited, and the total population is about 15500. My daughter and her husband live on the largest island in the Southern Group, Rarotonga. It is blessed with rich volcanic soils and has the largest population, about 10500, made up of mainly Cook Islanders and a small number of foreigners.
