Festival Time!

The week long Te Maeva Nui festival celebrating Cook Islands independence started on Friday with a parade through the main street of Rarotonga.  42 floats participated, including our entry from the Ministry of Education.  Our theme was early childhood education laying the foundations for child development and learning.  Geore and I took our places on the float and waited for the parade to start... and we waited, and waited...and waited!  Apparently the Prime Ministers speech took 40 minutes and held the whole thing up, and rumour has it the Tourism float truck broke down!?  We met at the starting point at 10am and didn't get underway until a little after 12pm.  And then got stalled and sat in the hot sun for ages!

Waiting for the Parade to start.  And waiting...and waiting...

Entertaining themselves waiting for the parade to start

George did exceptionally well lasting until about 1pm, being entertained by the music and reading the books on board the float, but it all got to much for him eventually and I had to go and find mum and continue the parade on my own.  My colleagues well superb also, getting into the spirit and showing great patience.

The strain is beginning to show on George

At this stage I should point out that I wasn't feeling my usual 100% anyway so sitting out in the hot midday sun, usually an activity reserved for mad dogs and Englishmen, wasn't doing me any good at all!  The previous night Janine and I had gone to visit friends visiting from NZ and I had had 'a few' drinks - perhaps one too many! - But given that I hadn't seen these friends for 20 odd years there was a lot to catch up on so 4 hours flew by in the blink of an eye.  It was a wonderul time!  Now, anyone who knows me knows I don't drink much at all so I was suffering on Friday.  So you can see how sitting out in the sun on a truck with lots of ever increasingly grumpy kids and the din of a festival droning on in the background was doing nothing to ease my already present headache!  As the parade inched down the street I ducked into the supermarket for Nurofen and bottled water and that saw me through!

But evetually the parade found it's legs and we progressed down the mainstreet and completed the route several hours later than scheduled and a great time was had by all.  How great it was to get home and relax.  Not suprisingly I crashed at about 7.30 and arose around 9.30 in time to watch the All Blacks thash the Springboks - so all's well that end's well I guess!

The end of a busy, and tiring, day!

As for the parade itself, well here are some photos from the day:

All vantage points taken!

"What's the holdup?"

Loving every minute!

Dancing girls

Vaka

The cops keeping an eye on proceedings

The Police Float - nice!

"Don't fall!"

Our float, me bringing up the rear...

The colourful Philipino float

The things you see!

They really do ask a lot from their scooters!

Traffic, and driving,  in the islands is always a source of either amusement, amazement, annoyance, or angst.  Never a dull moment...
There is '1680' (his license plate number), an old papa who drives at 20 kms everywhere he goes and causes what may possibly resemble a traffic jam.  He is world famous on the island and often times people have been late for an appointment, citing "Caught behind 1680!"  Enough said.
There is also the sight of two men on a scooter complete with weed eaters, hedge trimmers, or towing a lawn mower behind them.  The stories go on...
Here are several pictures I've managed to capture whilst driving recently.

Never too small to ride.  Sometimes they tie them on with
sarongs.  Often they're also asked to do the turning hand signals.

A home kill no doubt...and headed for a feast somewhere.
This will feed a family for months!

"Bring Back Bike" or "I want to ride my motorbike, I want to ride my bike..."

Having now lived in a country where the scooter is the preferred mode of transport for enough months to form an opinion, and having travelled extensively throughout other countries that think similarly, I believe New Zealand has got it all wrong when it comes to their attitude towards motorbikes/scooters.  Or should I say the authorities have it all wrong.  What the government actually needs to do is encourage more people to use that mode of transport not penalise them by way of higher registration/ACC costs. 

Or what about a compromise where bikes up to 100cc are actually cheaper to register than cars.  Or a toll system that charges cars but not bikes to enter the city.  Why?  Well, less clogged roads, easier parking, environmentally friendly, helping families with lowering cost of living expenses, to name but a few.  Can you imagine Takapuna, Onewa Road area, or the Petone foreshore if there were more bikes and less cars, and less face it, a lot of those cars only ever have one passenger anyway.  And I know that the accident rate for motorbikes is higher, or that they always come off sencond best, but lessening the number of cars on the road could help to ease this, as well as more education and improved roadways.



Don't tell me you can't carpool on a bike. 
Although I think the old guy on the back just jumped on at
the last minute to get in the photo and ask for bakshees!
No, wait, he's just been caught in the act of pick-pocketing that
guys wallet!



It was announced last week, as I was writing this, that ACC levies are being reduced in some areas because they were back in the black.  Those areas did not include reducing car & bike registrations.  There was then a piece on tv about a motorcyclist highlighting the actions of many bikers who refuse to register their bikes and ride around on forged number plates.  And at around $600 to register a larger bike I can understand that...$600!  Good God!

Are we there yet? But wait...there's more! 
Eight is definitely enough!
Count them...8!  That's one less Mazda Bongo on the roads.
So $600 divided by 8 equals $75...That's still a months wages
each, or 1000 Nikes!

And while one may claim it isn't fair to compare Rarotonga, where I enjoy scootering bliss, to NZ, because of the increased road users, try telling the people in the two photos above.  They're from India and China respectively, countries that each have over a billion people each. 

Bloody Tourists Part 3

The 'company car'

2 colleagues and I were out in the work van visiting schools and we had slowed to pull out of a side road onto the main ring road when a couple of tourists on a scooter started gesturing at us.  One was pointing to our right rear tyre and indicating via sign language that it was flat.  So I got out to have a look.  I scoffed when I saw it and promptly got back into the van.
"Jeez" I said, "We're not even riding on the rim yet!"  We chortled a loud belly laugh.
"Man, I drove half away around the island on my rim" Exclaimed Danielle, my colleague.
The tourists were giving us a funny look, and I'm sure we made a fine sight all laughing amongst ourselves in the van.
"Next they're going to tell us we have no tread left on the tyres!"  The hilarity continued.
When we had collected ourselves sufficiently to drive on we pulled out with a wave, and a hearty "You're in the islands now!"

The 'plush' interior

To fully understand the humour of the situation you have to see our work van, so I've provided some pictures here:

Bloody tourists.

To reiterate the point, Janine took our car for a warrant this afternoon.  $10 later, and being told that he'll "only check the lights and breaks because we only sold it to you 6 months ago" we drove off warrant issued and our front bumper duly reattached free of charge (it was sort of hanging off on the right hand side).  Gotta love it!

"Carpet? Who needs carpet?"

A big of a do-upper...
if such things actually existed here on the Rock!