We've been on the islands for just a few days and I can tell this is going to be a blast! Getting our travel legs back will take another few days, but so far everything has gone pretty smooth.

The flights here were long and uneventful, except for the stop in Pepeete, Tahiti which I didn't know we had until we were at the airport in LA. Our tickets said we had 1 stop, but I had assumed it was in Hawaii. Tahiti was a bit odd. They made us de-plane, go through security, and then wait in the departure lounge while they cleaned the airplane. Seems to me we could have just been allowed to sleep since it was 4:00 in the morning.

When we arrived in Rarotonga there was a van waiting to take us to our new home. Unfortunately, when we got there we were dropped off and told to wait for the owner, who showed up about an hour later, said he forgot the registration book and left again until 11:00 a.m., nearly 3 hours later. Ah yes, Island Time! Takes some getting used to, but once you do it's great.

We spend the first few days getting long-term housing and transportation (a cool little moped for $10/day). The island is 32 km around (20+ miles) and it takes about an hour and a half by moped. Yesterday I hiked across it and it took about 3-1/2 hours. It rained the whole time so I'll have to do it again so I can take photos.

Today we discovered the best, and only, WiFi access on the island. It's actually pretty cool. You don't purchase time, you purchase transfer volume. In other words, every web page you visit counts against a limit of data moved. Emails use more than pages, and web uploads, well ...we'll work it out!

Not everything has gone perfect. I arrived to find out my job at the dive shop didn't exist, but I am talking to the other shops on the island and something will come up. If not, I'm on vacation so it really won't be a big deal. I was hoping to get a lot of diving in for free, but I may have to wait until the next stop. Another hiccup in the planning was when we went to the bank to use our ATM cards and were told our accounts had been closed:) Sometimes things get lost in the translation, but it sure startled us. Seems the banks computers don't want to talk to our bank at home. We'll get it straightened out in a few days. Fortunately we had brought some travelers checks and US cash with us just in case something like this happened. So far a few of the little details have paid off for us. Let's hope that's the case the rest of the way.

One other thing we have done that was pretty fun was to go watch the 'Raratonga Idol' competition last night. Yes ... it's the same concept as 'American Idol'. Last night was an early round and it was a hoot! The hiking guide's wife is one of the judges and so we're gong to try and get front row seats next week so we can have a chance to get on local TV here.

That's about it for now. Since we have purchased air time for the wireless, look for updates every few days, or as things happen

Happy trails,

Eric