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!
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| Waiting for the Parade to start. And waiting...and waiting... |
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| 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.
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| 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!
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| The end of a busy, and tiring, day! |
As for the parade itself, well here are some photos from the day:
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| All vantage points taken! |
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| "What's the holdup?" |
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| Loving every minute! |
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| Dancing girls |
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| Vaka |
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| The cops keeping an eye on proceedings |
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| The Police Float - nice! |
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| "Don't fall!" |
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| Our float, me bringing up the rear... |
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| The colourful Philipino float |
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