3 Unique Rarotonga Tours (Epic Things To Do!) | Cook Islands Ep. 6 of 7

0:00 [Music] it's our second to last video in this cook island series and we wanted to mix things up a little and our 12 top things to do in rarotonga video we shared some of the best things to do this is island life after all so lacking an amazing accommodation exploring the island snorkeling visiting the night markets tasting the food and touring the lagoon are all musts but that's not it rarotonga has some lesser known and more cultural experiences too so for this video we hunted out three unique tours to show a different side to the island we're taking you to meet three local families i'm careful i'm the biggest boss of this home

0:48 james bond style diving underwater to see turtles and cruising at sunset with fire [Applause] [Music] so this one's gonna be awesome i'm about to do a sea scooter turtle tour so that's out in the lagoon with those james bond like sea scooters you can dive under the water there's three different speeds you get down and the two kinds of the two species of turtles that they have here in rarotonga fish rays all of that jazz i'm out there seeing it the thing is early start it's obviously

1:34 tidal based and everything i had to get up at six so you can get here it's almost seven o'clock so this is where we're going to be doing it you can see out through there the color of the water changes that's the sort of channel that i think all the turtles hang out in but then because we've got the guides obviously we've got the safety of them looking after us but also the um the sea scooters we can we don't have any problems going in and out boosting up and down through there so we've got to pick these up and run our way we've already shown how epic the snorkeling is around rarotonga and you can get out and see a lot of that yourself for free but this ariki adventures sea scooter safari was my personal highlight of the entire trip it's the best of everything in one because the sea scooters make it way less work than snorkeling you can deep dive way down which i love and you can

2:20 cover so much more distance in a shorter time like most tours it starts slowly with a standard safety chats i have got some life jackets here so if you need a little bit more buoyancy and practicing the sea scooter controls before heading out deeper into the lagoon instantly you're surrounded by fish then cruising around right at the bottom in the darkest deepest spot we saw a group of rey's cruising along together and then within a few minutes we'd already spotted the first turtle and he was just chilling on the bottom as well i was amped right off the bat and i wanted to duck dive down and get up close and go have a look at this guy and the crew just kind of pointed and kept moving and i quickly realized why that's

3:07 because that was the first of maybe 15 to 20 turtles we were gonna spot and there was no reason to go crazy because there was so much more time and so many more we'd get closer to [Music] there's a real calm to just gliding through the water with the only sound that you can hear coming from the electric scooters and maybe you'll get this but maybe you won't for me personally there's something almost emotional or humbling or spiritual maybe about seeing turtles

3:53 in the wild so i could have stayed out there all day long cruising around to restaurants shops and markets is a fun way to chat with the people of the island and try some food but it still doesn't really show the true lifestyle of the cook islands so we went on a progressive dinner tour as a way to leave the resort life behind visit some local villages and genuinely experience life through a local's eyes and better yet taste their home cooking i really love this tour and getting to meet three different families and being welcomed into their homes what is that it's good we met such beautiful and welcoming

4:38 families sitting down to hear their stories learn their culture and see their arts even set our material just put the pattern on anywhere i mean any style and then you spray paint on a beautiful day spray paint and then just hang it in the sun that's it and of course the food so this is our kamata i marinate it with lemon but firstly with sea water and this is the taro i was talking about the one i planted and harvested and then we have the purple salad we have the mania arrowroot and we have the banana salad over here it's really something seeing people in their element

5:23 is loving well i wasn't meeting stacy in the dogs [Music] i was just meaning just seeing these these ladies here just like working so hard and she's harvesting all the all of the taro all the coconuts by herself husband passed away but this is something that she does to kind of keep the culture and the it's just crazy we've got the sun sitting in the background we're sitting here with our ikamata taro our with arrowroot as well and just getting to see what life is really like really like not the resort lifestyle the real life it's all about these little and the local food yeah and always somebody on the ukulele jamming away [Music]

6:25 [Laughter] with one of the three meals down it was on to the next house to meet the sweetest host welcome especially to our home we are so glad that you are able to come to our home and be a family to us tonight and we hope that you enjoy your time with us eating your main course here with us i'm carfo i'm the biggest boss of this home [Music] they start remembering and complaining [Music] it's customary in the islands of the

7:10 pacific whatever we do we start with a little prayer and i know you won't mind i won't pray with lord i just say our grace for our faults and we can do it [Music] octopus stir fry so many chicken dishes and all sorts of coconut treats as well the last stop was a buffet of desserts [Music] especially everybody uh welcome and welcome to our home

7:55 hey boss lady hurry up some kiwi favorites like pavlova a bunch of island cakes ice creams fruit and coffee and there's never a ukulele far away [Music] hopefully you can tell from watching just how special this night was it's rare to get the opportunity to really see how life is in destinations like rarotonga that are known for the resort lifestyle and i really loved meeting all of these amazing people [Music]

8:45 the next thing we're doing by itself is not necessarily all that unique stand-up paddle boarding which is very common out here on the lagoon because of the nice conditions but this one is on a night time fire show tour with kites up and the reason it is different is obviously it's the night time element but apparently from what we've been told their stand up paddle boards have led lights on the underside so not only oh there we go perfect timing there's a couple of dudes out there right now so not only do you get to go out and as you're paddling and you get to see the sunset then there's led lights so you can kind of see everything that's going on underneath you at the same time once you've caught sunset and all that and then i think we go and park up onto an island and there's a fire show and all sorts so just a little bit different definitely more unique than the typical just grab a paddleboard and go for a bit of a wander

9:31 might have been raining but we've got some beautiful conditions for it bit of tropical rain never hurt anybody well it seems like it's hurt everybody else who was on the beach everyone's left but we've got our subs out with the lights on underneath you should be able to see them soon when it gets dark rainbow inn it's a beautiful still night this is gonna be awesome oh that's why no one took that one [Applause] we've already mentioned in other videos but raro has such a nice and calm lagoon it makes these kind of tours absolutely perfect you don't need to be an expert paddleboarder either for most people it was their first time so it was fairly chill with a few casualties obviously but at least it's warm oh no man oh no that's all right it's very

10:16 chill-like it's such a slow calm pace i'm really liking it there's no stress no panic it's quite cool because if you're not into the whole paddle boarding thing or you're not sure about it they also have kayaks as well which is what i'm in because we have a lot of camera gear so one of us needed to be in it but it's actually a really nice kayak it's real leisurely because the um the paddle boarders are just learning what to do and it's just such a nice kind of leisurely pace you don't have to worry about falling out but it's actually like it's actually a very cruisy way of doing it it looks fun it's super fun did you have fun yeah i enjoyed that that's my first proper stand up paddle boarding session i would say now we get to do the fire show for you guys that don't know this is koro midi so this is one of four motus that we have here in uh raitonga

11:01 uh the multi over there is called going hunting for coconut crabs i actually didn't know that this was part of the talk no i didn't actually i made pete up there has got the torch he said for us to say hello [Music] these things are going to be huge to find them there's stuff like this just like in a tree with a hole like that okay because they like to climb up and chill inside one of those all right and then sometimes they'll crawl up into the tree this one's empty so this is probably where she goes oh i'll say it's probably like 20 times smaller than a coconut crab so we're basically looking for cats and dogs yeah

11:47 pretty much but these fellas they've got quite big nippers oh this guy's pretty new i think he just found the shell this is a prime racer we got here come on buddy we got a race to win i think we should call him henry the crab henry the hermit henry the hermit crab so where's your bets who bought cash is [Music] all right it's a little bit hot like it's hard my hero [Music]

12:37 [Applause] there you go did we forget to mention that i was actually part of the fire show yeah not really i mean that alone feels cool so i'll take there [Applause] can

13:23 and then we cruised back in the dark with our led lights shining in front of us really cool random unique experience with so many different elements all in one but there you have it that's three unique things to do in rarotonga three things that we really loved and we're almost at the end of this cook island series we've got one last video with a ridiculously early start maybe we're crazy doing that on our final day but getting up before the sunrise to climb a mountain in the dark using ropes to catch our final sunrise and the cook islands i think it's going to be worth it and then we're going to the punanganui markets the weekend only special markets to visit before finishing up this whole cook island series with a sun set this time at the best restaurant in rarotonga

14:16 [Music] you