Rarontonga is the major island of the Cook Islands. Rarotonga's main city and also the capital of the Cooks is Avarua.
The Cook Islands are Polynesian. The people speak Maori. A language which is relevated to the original language of the New Zealands and also to the Polynesian at Hawaii and Tahiti..

The area covered by the Cook Islands has a surface which is as big as India; 1,9 million square kilometer. But the Cooks have a land area of only 240 square kilometers. The rest is one and all ocean. The distance between the most northern and most southern island, Penrhyn and Mangaia, is 1.400 kilometer.
The number of inhabitants in this archipelago is comparable with a small city in New Zealand; about 18.000 inhabitants.

The Cook Islands have a own government. Originally the islands belong to New Zealand, since 1965 they are internally self-governing. At the flag of the Cook Islands stands the Britisch Union Jack. It refers to the Britisch Protectorate in 1888. Each star on the flag symbolizes one of the Cook Isles. The archipel is seperated into two groups: a northern and a southern group. Of all 15 isles only three are unhabitated; Manuae, Takutea and Suwarrow. Look at the map. Suwarrow is the smallest of all Cook islands. It has a total land area of 0,4 square kilometer.

The flag of the Cook Islands.

In this archipel are all forms of ocean islands are represent. The northen islands are mainly coral lagoon atolls and the southern islands are mainly volcanic or raised atolls.

Rarotonga lies in the southern group. It is the youngest island of the Cook's. Rarotonga is high volcanic. the number of inhabitants is just under 10.000, 5.000 of them live in the main town and capital Avarua. Avarua lies in the middle of the north coast stretch. It is a sleepy, little port, very much the image of a south seas trading centre. In former days the number of inhabitabts on the island, of all islands, was much higher. Many Rarotongans left the island to work on another island in the Pacific. Mainly people choosed to go to Tahiti. Still people leave the island to go working somewhere else. Most of them are going to New Zealand.

Rarotonga is extravagantly beautiful. Sure its one of the most beautiful islands in Polynesia. It is spectacularly mountainous and lushy green. The interior is rugged, virtually unpopulated and untouched. The narrow valleys and steep hills are simply too preciptious and overgrown for easy settlement. In contrast the coastal region is fertile, evenly populated and as neat, clean and 'pretty' as some sort of South Pacific Switzerland. The highest mountain on Rarotonga Te Manga with a height of 653 meter. This top has the heighest point in the archipelago.

The green overgrown hills and valleys.

Thanks to the average temperature of 23,9 degrees celcius and an average annual rainfall of 204 cm, big parts of the island are overgrown by.
The island is so clean you might think somebody zips round the island every morning making sure the roads have all been swept clean and the flowers are all neatly arranged and waterded.

The lagoon within Rarotonga's outer reef is narrow around most of the island but it widens out around the south side where the beaches are also best. Muri Lagoon, fringed by three sand cays and one volcanic islet, is the widest part of the lagoon althouhg even here it is very shallow. The land area of the island is 67 square kilometer and only 32 kilometer around. Around the whole island is a coastal road. Archeologists have discovered the road is more than a thousand years old.

Muri Lagoon, fringed by three sand cays and one volcanic islet.

The most important export articles are banana's, citrus fruit and copra. The most important income is the sale of postage stamps and tourism Since 1973 there is an international airport which is very stimulating for the tourism.

Rarotonga, the island.

Rarotonga, mountainous and lushly green

A brief history of the Cook Islands

The Spanish explorers Alvaro de Mendana and Pedro de Quiros, where the first European who sighted one of the islands. In 1595 they sailed through the Northern Group and stopped at Pukapuka. Look at the map in his expeditions of 1773 and 1777, Captain James Cook explored much of the group although he never sighted the largest island, Rarotonga. That honour was left to the mutineers on the Bounty. They touched upon Rarotonga in 1789. The mutiny actually took place after the Bounty sailed from Aitutaki.
Cook dubbed the group the Hervey Islands. Later, a Russian cartographer renamed them, with an equal lack of inspiration, the Cook Islands. It was not until the islands were annexed by New Zealand that the whole southern and northern group were known by one name.

Soon after the first discoveries the first missionaries followed. The Reverend John Williams made his first appearance at the island of Aitutaki in 1821. He left two Polynesian 'teachers' behind and when he returned two years later they had made remarkable progress.
The missionaries did not only bring a new religion, they brought with them peace and they hoped to end cannibalism. As well they brought diseases, which destroyed the traditions of the inhabitants. They thought the diseases were a message to believe the new religion. So they exchanged their old religion and tradition for Christianity.
When the first missionaries landed on Rarotonga in 1823 there lived 6000 to 7000 people. In one year 1000 people died. In 1854 the population was 2500 and in 1867 it was 1850 inhabitants. It was not only the cause of the diseases, also many people moved to Tahiti and New Zealand. At the end of the 19th century the population raised.

Despite their considerable influence via the missionaries the Britisch did not formally take control of the Cook Islands untill 1888. In that year the Cooks were declared a Britisch protectorate. In 1888 the Cooks were annexed as Britisch Protectorate. In the late 1890s the question of wether the islands should be associated with Britain or New Zealand was batted back and forth. Finally in 1900 Rarotonga and the other main southern islands were annexed to New Zealand and the net was widened to encompass all the southern and northern islands in 1901.
During the Second World War the United States made use of the islands by building airstrips. In 1965 the islands were decolonised and became internally self-governing but foreign policy and defence were left to New Zealand.

A short summary: Native period: before 1888 Britisch period: 1888-1900 New Zealand period: 1900-1965 The Cook Islands: 1965- _

James Cook