Hewey the weather God decided to stomp on our little sojourn in paradise and turned the weather around. It rained most of the night and a rather large swell picked up so rather than looking out at a lagoon type beach protected by a reef, we saw more of a churned surface with waves crashing over the reef. Still spectacular in it's own right but not at all conducive to the gentle swimming and snorkelling we did yesterday. Still, the rain held off in the morning and gave us time in the morning to visit the Raro markets that are on every Saturday morning. Busy little place with your typical souvenir stalls dotted amongst some really interesting local food vendors. Much of it we were happy to leave to the locals, but some interesting stuff nonetheless. The highlight for us was a music and dance display put on by a local troupe of performers. All backed by a Cook Island drum band, these kids put on a great show and well worth the admission price of "put some money in the bucket at the front of the stage if you would like". 
  On the way back home stopped at a little roadside hamburger stall and feeling peckish I went to the top of the menu board and ordered what they called the Palace burger . It was the tallest hamburger I have ever tried to eat. Please check out the photo. It was hard work, but I did get through it. With the benefit of hindsight, ordering chips on the side was fairly redundant. 
 Back at the resort and we ran into a couple Tina and James, from the wedding party we met the day before. Not long into the conversation we find out they live in Five Dock, and he, a rather large Samoan chap, finished his professional rugby career after contracts with about four Sydney first grade clubs, at the Dirty Reds. Small world. Turned out that that on top of that Tina works for the manager of a number of NRL players including about 5 West's Tigers. Nice couple, and we seem to run into them a few times, although on an island this small, hardly surprising. Emails were exchanged and maybe a catch up at the H's is in the cards when we get back.
  The other interesting person we ran into was a local who was a bit of a celebrity around here. He was a member of the fledgling Rarotonga formula one racing team. The story goes that in his wild youth, Jimmy "Whoosh Whoosh" Aituro, was clocked by the local constabulary doing 68 km's an hour along the road adjacent to Muri beach, an unheard of speed. He was about to be banned from driving for life for such reckless disregard for life and limb when a local mechanic decided to take him under his wing. "Someone on this island who has shown that his body can take the rigours of travelling at such a speed, must either have a death wish or has unearthly talents" he said. His training is apparently continuing and in the hope that one day Bernie Eccleston drops onto the island, he occasionally gets the roads closed to the public so he can hone his skills and regularly does the standing quarter mile at 62 kilometres an hour. I wished him good luck and told him to keep pushing the envelope. Speak to you tomorrow.