The next day after I arrived brought a little bit more excitement to my stay in the Cook Islands. The morning was spent eating breakfast and talking with my new found friends. While talks of 4 hour games of Gin Rummy floated around the table, I decided to take that time to work my way towards the airport to check out the fire department. My friend Helen and I took a bus into "town" to do some shopping for the night to come. While she was taking the last bus of the day back to
Vara's, I started walking further down the road, thumbs outstretched with the hopes that I could hitch a ride to the airport. Disappointingly, it was a good while before I was able to get a ride. The road around the island, however, is pretty close to the beach. The walk was beautiful. It took me by the pier, by a lot of pretty good reef breaks, and by some breathtaking views of the mountains within the interior of the island. About 2 km into my walk, A guy who I happend to have been sitting next to on the flight over to Rarotonga pulled over with his sister and her son and offered me a ride. Small world, I know! The funny (and sorta sad) thing about the ride was that I only had another 1/2 kilometer to go.
The fire station was right next to the Air Traffic Control tower. The station at the airport is actually the sole station for the entire island. Amazingly, they had some pretty new and nice apparatus.
The station held, one engine, one heavy aircraft crash-truck, one medium aircraft crash-truck, a 26-foot boat, and a few different trailers. The guys there were absolutely great! I introduced myself and we all hit off right away. One of their driver/operators, a Cook Island Maori by the name of Ray, put me to work right away helping him inspect one of the vehicles. We then hopped in and drove across and to the end of the runway.
I got some hero shots in front of their front-line engine at the end of the runway by the sea, a small tour of their small station, and an agreement that I would come back with an Antarctic Fire Department T-Shirt for a Cook Islands Fire Department T-Shirt. Easy peasy. As I started to walk back towards town, Ray and the guys took pity upon me, picked me up in their utility vehicle, and gave me a ride back to
Vara's some 20 km away. That's brotherhood right there!
When I came back, I met up with the group again only to hang out and get dinner one last time before I flew to Auckland later on that night. We each bought a couple 6-packs and ushered in the night out by the beach on our porch. I only knew them for 48 hours but I had already began to miss them as time came to pack and eventually depart for the airport at 2330 hrs. I checked in (only to have to be escorted back into the check-in office so I could print my itinerary out that proved that I had a flight
leaving New Zealand), swapped my T-Shirt at the firehouse and said goodbye to those guys, then waited for 2 hours in the courtyard for our plane to land. While waiting, I got a little present dropped on my head form a roosting bird well above my head. Little did I know that the bird crap on my head would bring anything but luck over the next couple of days....
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