Stayz Cook Islands

. Your perfect accommodation is in Muswellbrook near Stayz. Cook Islands Tourist Office.

Guidebook to the Cook Islands

After 30 years Craig Tansley returned to Mitiaro and finds his reminiscences of untroubled times and heart-warming conviviality unchanged." When you fly to the Cook Islands by air, you will probably be packaged like a motherfucker; with cookies, lollipops and chips, toiletpaper, children's games, cosmetic products, electronic items - even pets, sometime caged.

Usually not more than three kilos of carry-on baggage on Air Rarotonga's 10-seater Cessna, but then the Cook Islands regulations never counted much. I can hardly tell where her huge stomach ends and the food supply for the next party begins, because the older French lady who checks in behind me is so full of lollis, choco bars, pieces of maize and sprite tins.

The smell of chilipani, sweeter than sweets in the unheard-of moisture of a Rarotonga afternoons. Our last four-day trip to Mitiaro Isle. Apart from Air Rarotonga's inter-island twice a week services, there is only occasionally a utility vessel ready to sail the small quay of the islands - more a sliding boating platform, hardly big enough for a tender than a dock - to ensure that the 170 inhabitants of the islands do not die of starvation or that Mitiaro's five vehicles do not drive empty.

I have enough food to support an entire force, even though there is none in the Cook Islands. However, it is my other goods that are much more valuable: two Rarotonga baby boxes with the smoothest lavatory paper and two bordeaux-coloured boxes. Today I am the queen ("Ariki") of Mitiaro, Mii O'Brien's mail.

A 45-minute journey to Mitiaro - a 45-minute journey northeast of Rarotonga across an ink-filled, terribly empty sea - has no female airline mistress. But the older French woman from Polynesia is sharing her lollipop with the airline's guests, even with her sprite, right out of the can. As we see Mitiaro - no more than a minute shallow spot in the sea - she begins to whine.

"I' m going home to my own little town, boy," she says. The bikes meet the whitish-coloured runway; it is as curling as a golfer balls, liters of sprite flying into the sky, a kid screaming like the Polynyesian cocks that woke me up at the crack of dawn, and I' m back almost 30 years after my last sojourn.

We had a flight from our house in Rarotonga and although most of the locals were goverment people, we were perhaps the first few who landed on the isle. We had seen Gretch the night before on the only videoplayer on the Isle. When we leave the ship, we should know that the Cook Islands are 15 small islands stretching across an area of the Pacific Ocean that is bigger than the Pacific Ocean of West Europe - about 2 million sqkm.

Less than 13,000 residents are living here, about 8,000 of them on Rarotonga, the main city, and almost 2,000 on Aitutaki, the most trendy tourist resort on the islands - and only about 3,000 on the other 13 islands. While there were many more, the Cook Islanders have an open entry with New Zealand and Australia and more than 100,000 have their papaya band-aids there for their lives.

At Mitiaro the total number of inhabitants has fallen to 170 - especially those who will be leaving unavoidably and the older people who are returning home because Polynesians prefer to be laid to rest in their front gardens. Out of the 170 Polynesians on Mitiaro, at least 50 are at the airfield this mornings. I am the first visitor in a months and as I drive across the asphalt to the small, blind airfield, the kids are giggling and waving, the infants are staring out of their mother's hip and the old women are throwing mother-of-pearl chains from Francipani around my throat.

Passing a rough, whitish and coralline highway that surrounds the entire archipelago, we pass blooming flaming flames, blood-red against the South Pacific sky's color. Then there are these things that are distinctively Polynesian: farrows walking through the front gardens; hens and small kids strolling in the streets; small orphanages.

Beyond her I sense the Polyynesian banquet for my coming. On Mitiaro my day always starts with a bath between the corals and ends with a star-studded walnut pole. In between I ride my motorcycle, ride around the islands, visit sights.

There are two uniquely fresh waters ponds full of itki - fresh waters and underground basins where the stalactite falls into the cold state. It is my intent to circumnavigate the entire archipelago non-stop - a 30-minute trip - but I never do. My first morning Pua asks if I want him to take me to the highest point on Mitiaro.

Prodigal swine, I will begin many talks about Mitiaro. "She is about 60 and has grown up on Mitiaro. I' m asking if the whole thing has really moved. "Later, the only Caucasian man on the street is stopping me. In Mitiaro we do not have the waters of the lagoon for which other Cook Islands are renowned, but we go over corals and find a hole in the cliff that is as big as a pump.

It is the Cook Islands that have made the archipelago world-famous, especially Aitutaki, with its giant triangle with empty moto islands and pristine sands. The US TV show Survivor has unavoidably explored these two. However, no advertising could have changed Aitutaki or one of the Cook Islands.

Rarotonga, the principal isle - with its distinctive hilly interiors and lakes that are similar to Tahiti's Bora Bora and Moorea, but without the touristic clarion - is the same as in my early 70s years. I have a 44 year old Rarotonga family.

" Also on Mitiaro there' s practically no movement of the clock. On Mitiaro, four and a half day goes by too fast, which is strange considering that there are no shops, cafés or pubs and no other travelers. I am sometimes reminiscent of the unfortunate fact that Mitiaros populations are shrinking ("What can we do to stop youngsters?

" Aunt Mii asks rhetorically: "Go cry at the airfield? Most of the time the isle seems as imaginative as I have remembered it as a kid. When 100 proud, powerful Polyynesian parts ascend in the anthem, I hope that if there is a sky, God will let all these in.

Aunt Mii sits on the bench and looks proud of her folk, that Polish laugh on her face. Raratonga from Sydney and Melbourne for about $530 with an exchange of planes in Auckland. Auckland will be served by Virgin Blue from both towns for about $439.

Air Rarotonga will fly to Mitiaro for about $NZ239 ($190). Aunt Mii' s Mitiaro Homestay has accommodation for family, couple or single and all food for $NZ90 per head per day. Travel by kind permission of Cook Islands Tourism and Air New Zealand.