Rarotonga : Islands out of the stream

You’ve simply got to like a place where you can’t put up a building any taller than a coconut tree, the jail will rent you a couple of prisoners to weed your taro patch, and when you die you can get buried in your own front yard.

Many world maps don’t even show the Cook Islands, and it’s really not surprising that they’re often ignored by cartographers. These 15 or so little hunks of property in the South Pacific are all but lost within the 850,000 square watery miles enclosed by the national boundaries.

But the Cooks can be found.

Air New Zealand for example, gets here from the United States by flying to Tahiti, hanging a half-left, then flying on for another 700 or so miles.

The Cook Islands are so tiny that the biggest one, Rarotonga, which accounts for more than a quarter of the country’s real estate, has only 25 square miles of dry land.

The near invisibility of the place might help explain why it’s all but ignored by tourists. Indeed, vacationing here seems to carry a smug panache of exclusivity.

The Cooks are used to being passed by. It took more than 2 1/4 centuries from discovery by the Spanish in 1595 until some British came ashore to stay a while.

William Bligh sailed right on through the Cooks, and a few weeks later, when his Bounty mutineers visited Rarotonga, they didn’t tarry. The famed sailor James Cook, for whom the nation is named, didn’t linger either. In fact, nobody came to settle until 1823. The islanders seem to have benefited from that neglect. So, too, do visitors.

Rarotonga has all the basic accouterments associated with the universal perception of an island retreat: palm trees, reefs, beaches, abrupt volcanic wedges, flowering trees and trade winds.

What it doesn’t have are mobs of people wearing name tags, kiosks hawking contrived attractions and tour buses belching diesel fumes and hissing compressed air. There are no RVs; camping is not allowed, going topless is a no-no and tipping is not expected.

The Cooks are in the backwaters of the South Pacific, and its people remain basically unsullied by the outside world.

There’s very much an unaffected naturalness to the population. Rarely will you find the polyester Polynesians, who often seem to fog the atmosphere of other lost islands of paradise.

If you’re after glitz and glitter and sophisticated evidence of a tourist industry, well, nothing’s cookin’ in the Cooks. The half a dozen places selling souvenirs are sufficiently modest that you have to look for them.

And blessed be the no-taller-than-a-coconut-tree rule. Most hotels are so screened from the road that you have to be right in front of one to know it’s there.

The nine-hole golf course has what surely must be some of the world’s goofiest hazards, such as playing through guy wires, antennas and other odd communications gear.

But locals think it’s an improvement over the days before the airstrip expanded in the mid-1970s to handle the big jets. Back then, players had to be shooed off the runway so the DC-3s could land.

The people welcome the money that tourism brings, but they aren’t all that greedy about getting any extra. Plans were nixed recently for a large hotel to supplement the 600 or so rooms of various types already available.

The fear of outsiders fouling up the folkways is understandable. Population of the Cooks is just shy of 20,000, and about half of those live on Rarotonga.

Islander Exam Wichman is a good example of just how substantial a subsistence economy can be. Wichman has 300 banana trees. “My family uses maybe one, two bunches a month. We feed the rest to the pigs,” he said.

The porkers also eat the papaya and avocado he grows, although some of the latter go into the kitchen to butter toast. People raise seven varieties of potatoes, two kinds of taro and arrowroot.

“Every family owns land--it can’t be sold, but it’s divvied up from generation to generation among the heirs--and most have lots of coconut palms,” Wichman said. “One tree produces about a hundred nuts a year, the lion’s share of that crop going to the chickens.

“The lagoons are full of fish, and the unlucky whale that beaches itself while trying to rub its barnacles off on the reef also provides an occasional blubbery tidbit for the pot.”

Given that cornucopia of calories, it’s not surprising that Cook islanders are somewhat hefty of build and of very easy disposition. The atmosphere has less a distinctive beat than it does the easy ebb and flow of the tides that ripple the reef-embraced beaches.

Those grains of sand are all around Rarotonga, and if the weather’s bad on one side of the island, all you have to do is move over to the other.

Traveling the island via bus, car or moped isn’t all that arduous: the entire circle of asphalt is about 20 miles, maybe 22 if you count the extra distance required to go around the potholes.

The Pacific Resort is at the island’s best beach, Muri, a lovely crescent of contentment more than a mile long. Against the horizon are four little motus , tiny isles in the lagoon, all of which can be reached by dinghies rented from the Rarotongan Sailing Club.

But you can even wade out to one of them because the water on that route is no more than four feet deep. And because all the Cooks’ beaches are public property, visitors don’t have to be staying at the Pacific to sample the sands of Muri.

If sunburn sets in, a comfortable place to contemplate life in the Cooks is from the beach-side bar at the sprawling Rarotongan Hotel.

While enjoying the local lager or the islands’ pineapple-based rum, it’s relaxing to watch visitors and fishing islanders stroll atop the reef as the ocean breaks in great 10-foot falls of thunder just inches away from those unconcerned maritime pedestrians. It looks for all the world as if they’re walking on water.

Rarotonga has a fishing fleet for deep-sea anglers, outfitters devoted to snorkeling and scuba diving, and long, lovely walks across the island. Figure three or four hours to get from one side to the other, going along the base of 1,800-foot Te Manga and passing a misty little waterfall.

Another leisurely hike is the 1,000-year-old inland road, linked to the coastal highway by access routes like the spokes of a wheel. On that meander it’s one garden plot after another, with rocks periodically marking old sacred grounds, homes that are typically half-house, half-porch, and great lumpish front-yard graves.

Some of the above-ground memorials seem large enough to house a Honda, and in this land overgrown with hibiscus and plumeria and bougainvillea, it’s oddly disconcerting to see so many of them decorated with plastic floral tributes.

Listen during your walks. Each family has a different call to assemble its chickens. Some rattle pebbles in a can, others bang two rocks together. And then there are the whistlers.

Night life in Rarotonga is casual and uncomplicated. Restaurants will pick you up at your hotel and take you back. The floor shows--Polynesian, of course, but much less hokey than those found in Hawaii and Tahiti--circulate from resort to resort.

The rowdy crowd likes the Banana Court. At night the rock ‘n’ roll band is usually good and the imbibing locals are cordial and conversational.

The “Puppies”--Polynesian yuppies--hang out at the First Club and indulge in dialogue with earnest Peace Corps types and crazed ex-patriate New Zealanders manfully trying to booze themselves all the way to the other side of the International Dateline.

Come Sunday, though, the Cook Islands are buttoned up tighter than a clergyman’s collar. Businesses shutter, Rarotonga’s around-the-island bus service brakes down, and if you want a drink you’ve got to stick to the hotel.

You may want to make the morning service of the Cook Islands Christian Church in the main settlement and national capital of Avarua. The building is two-storied and as solid-looking as the whitewashed coral blocks of which it is made. At the eaves, as if to accent the bleached walls, is the tropical rot of filmy black, downward-moving mildew.

In the yard, little girls in their Sunday best play tag and hide-and-seek around the grave vaults. To the left of the church entrance and atop his grave is a bronze bust of a former prime minister, Albert Henry.

It is an unnerving monument. Henry’s head and shoulders are garlanded with shells. On the cast metal cravat is the tie clip he used, and his nose supports the spectacles he wore to read. Davis’ head is slightly tilted, as if in disapproval of Sunday morning being pierced by the shrieks of children.

Singly and in clusters, families enter the building. Elderly women move with slow, careful-footed dignity. One uses a golf club as a cane, her hand grasping the head of what looks like a four-iron. The men are simply dressed in white shirts and dark ties, but the women are in stately elegant and flamboyant dresses.

Atop their heads are wide-brimmed hats of rito , the leaves of pandanus trees so finely woven and so supple that they resemble linen.

The service is of industrial-strength oratory, mostly in the local Maori tongue and supported by achingly sweet a capella singing. The voices are in such easy harmony that a visitor cannot help but be moved by the down-home innocence and unalloyed simplicity of it all.

From December through March, with two weeks’ advance purchase, you can fly Air New Zealand round trip from Los Angeles to Rarotonga for $1,050. In April, October and November the rate is $925; May through September it’s $850. Flights include stopovers in Honolulu and Fiji.

For an additional $100 you can eliminate the advance-purchase requirement and make a stop in Tahiti as well as Honolulu and Fiji.

Notable hotels on the beach in Rarotonga: the Rarotongan ($83 to $110 U.S.), Pacific Resort ($72-$85) and Edgewater ($45-$59). You can book those hotels through Air New Zealand.

Housing is also available at lower rates across the road from the beach.

A full American breakfast at the Rarotongan is about $12 U.S. If you order the most expensive appetizer and main course at the excellent Vaima cafe, the bill will be less than $20.

Must reading is the succinct, comprehensive and often droll “Cook Islands--A Guide” by Norman and Ngaire Douglas. It’s available from Book Passages, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera, Calif. 94925, phone toll-free (800) 321-9785. The book costs about $15, including shipping. It’s the only one you’ll need.

Air New Zealand can arrange transportation and accommodations as well as daylong excursions or tours of up to a week to remote atolls, less developed than Rarotonga.

For more information on travel to Rarotonga, contact Air New Zealand at Airport Boulevard, Suite 1020, Los Angeles 90045-5499, phone toll-free (800) 262-1234.