Honeymoon Travel Log - Day 1

Day 1

Erin dropped us off at the Airport Bus of Bakersfield at 4:30 pm on 7/5 to start the long journey to Rarotonga and our honeymoon. After a 2 and a half hour bus ride, a 4 hour wait at LAX, and a 9 hour flight across the pacific we finally arrived at the Rarotonga International Airport.

We landed at 6:00 am Cook Islands time (3 hrs behind pacific time). The airport was relatively small, it reminded me a lot of the small terminal in Houghton in that it was small, had one runway, and other than the 767 we flew in on, there wer mostly small planes at the airport. Once we claimed our baggage and cleared customs, we got onto the bus and headed to our hotel/resort.

Little did we know, we had our room reserved for that day, but did not have an early check-in arragnged, so we were told we'd have to wait until 2:00 pm to check in. We arrived at 7:00 am. This was a bit of an inconvienience, but the Rarotongan staff gave us a breakfast voucher so that we could eat and stored our extra baggage, so that left us free to eat, walk the beach and check out the sunrise.

We checked back at the desk at 11:00 am and they had a room ready for us, AND had upgraded us twice to a beachfront room. Good Karma! The first thing we did was to take a shower and a nice long nap. Once we got up we toured around the rest of the resort and went to dinner. We had two options for dinner. There was a three course a la carte option at the bar and grill, or a buffet and theme dinner. Intrigued by what a theme dinner would be we decided to check it out.

It turns out that every night at the resort the theme dinner involved some kind of show and buffet dinner. This night was an island "cabaret" show. Basically men and women dancing with some singing and drum playing. Nice way to cap our first day on the island...