In order to study the states and territories of Polynesia, I chartered a yacht, Julietta, and organized yet another ethnographic expedition: PacificEthnoExp.

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PacificEthnoExp. Part I. The Cook Islands

August 10–13, 2013

The country’s most populated island is Rarotonga. Even if you drive really, really slowly, you can circle it twice in an hour. Public transportation consists of two bus routes. One is called Clockwise and the other, accordingly, Anti-Clockwise.

The buses stop at hut-like bus shelters.

The fours with curved diagonals came here from New Zealand.

Drivers collect many years’ worth of vehicle license stickers on their windshields.

Like in Niue, if you want to rent a car in the Cook Islands, you have to get a local driver’s license. To do this, you need to take your current license to the police station and pay a fee of 23 New Zealand dollars. They’ll take your photo and issue you a license in a matter of minutes.

The Cook Islands have post boxes; they’re rectangular and white.

A local payphone.

The «No Smoking» signs next to various public institutions are incredibly ornate, in the most detailed and beautiful way.

The island’s recycling program outlines five different types of waste but never offers more than two separate disposal bins. In reality, the only thing they want to collect here is aluminum cans.

A trash can.

A garbage truck in paradise.

Run this way in case of a tsunami (see Sri Lanka, Anguilla, Guam, Phuket, etc. for comparison).

Fire valve hatches of some kind.

A hydrant.

The center of the capital.

People traditionally bury their relatives right in their yard (like in Tuvalu or Micronesia).

This is an expensive hotel, so every room has an individual air conditioner. The outdoor AC units are positioned at such a height that even someone of average stature is likely to hit their head on them. To mitigate this, the bottom of every unit has been thoughtfully encased in a foam frame painted the same color as the railing. You can whack your head to your heart’s content—we’ve thought of everything here.

The road to the laundromat.

In order to offer the public at least a few exciting moments, the government of the Cook Islands issues currency of unusual form and content. Receiving change in triangular dollars at the store is completely normal. There are also coins featuring Hollywood stars, Orthodox icons, lots of coins with inscriptions in Russian («Gzhel,» «Love and faithfulness forever,» etc.), a Terminator 2 coin, and so on.

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I spent half a day trying to get a signal on our Thuraya satellite modem, with no success. Then I took a more careful look at their coverage map. And realized that there was simply no way we’d be able to get a connection until the very end of the expedition. We’ll have to spend our time at sea looking at the stars and put up scheduled posts during our overnight stays on land.

Our yacht was already moored at the port by the time we arrived. We’ll be making our way across the Pacific Ocean aboard Julietta for the next three weeks.

Grocery shopping, loading in, getting briefed, looking around, first night on board.