The beckoning beach
May. 5th, 2021 01:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
msconductSo far so good with New Zealand's travel bubble with Australia: there have been some hiccups, but we haven't ended up with any community Covid cases. (Yet.) And on May 17, we'll be opening up a travel bubble with the Cook Islands. They've been talking about this for endless months, and I'm not sure what the holdup was, but the delay has hit the Cooks like a hurricane as the only flights there come via New Zealand and their all-important tourist industry is dead on its feet. They've managed to avoid Covid, which is fantastic, but nevertheless I feel so sorry for them.
Despite that, I don't think I'll be jumping on the plane. Considering the islands of the South Pacific are New Zealand's near neighbours (by our standards, that is. The Cooks are a 3 hour 45 minute flight away which by our reckoning means they're on our doorstep), it's a bit disgraceful that I've been to hardly any of them. Rarotonga, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga... nope. In fact the only one I've been to is Tahiti and that was only because I was on my way to Antarctica and the plane to Chile left from Tahiti.
Of course, I do have reasons. It's weird how people in different places view things: I've met a lot of Americans to whom a South Pacific island like Fiji is the definition of heaven. Nah. Not me. It doesn't help that lolling around by the pool just isn't my bag, man. In Tahiti I was booked on the way home for five days and left after two before I fell into a coma from boredom. And I'm more of a snow person than a sun person, too. More importantly, though, I tend to think of the islands as overrun with terrifying insects and ghastly tropical diseases. And poisonous sea snakes. And packs of vicious stray dogs. (Sorry if I'm ruining anybody's dream here.) On the other hand, while many other people would rather do shots with Satan than go to IKEA, because we don't have any here I think of it as basically Disneyland. It all depends where you're looking at it from.
Fortunately, the Cooks aren't relying on me to kickstart their tourism. Apparently online searches for holidays to Raro have gone up 4,000% since the bubble was announced. I hope they enjoy their stonefish stings and dengue fever. I'll be staying put and dreaming of snow. And Billy bookcases.
Despite that, I don't think I'll be jumping on the plane. Considering the islands of the South Pacific are New Zealand's near neighbours (by our standards, that is. The Cooks are a 3 hour 45 minute flight away which by our reckoning means they're on our doorstep), it's a bit disgraceful that I've been to hardly any of them. Rarotonga, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga... nope. In fact the only one I've been to is Tahiti and that was only because I was on my way to Antarctica and the plane to Chile left from Tahiti.
Of course, I do have reasons. It's weird how people in different places view things: I've met a lot of Americans to whom a South Pacific island like Fiji is the definition of heaven. Nah. Not me. It doesn't help that lolling around by the pool just isn't my bag, man. In Tahiti I was booked on the way home for five days and left after two before I fell into a coma from boredom. And I'm more of a snow person than a sun person, too. More importantly, though, I tend to think of the islands as overrun with terrifying insects and ghastly tropical diseases. And poisonous sea snakes. And packs of vicious stray dogs. (Sorry if I'm ruining anybody's dream here.) On the other hand, while many other people would rather do shots with Satan than go to IKEA, because we don't have any here I think of it as basically Disneyland. It all depends where you're looking at it from.
Fortunately, the Cooks aren't relying on me to kickstart their tourism. Apparently online searches for holidays to Raro have gone up 4,000% since the bubble was announced. I hope they enjoy their stonefish stings and dengue fever. I'll be staying put and dreaming of snow. And Billy bookcases.
