Our trip began with  five relaxing days in beautiful Rarotonga (aka the Cook Islands) where we chilled in a guesthouse on the South (quiet) side of the island. The residence had two fine dogs, five rooms and a shared kitchen and common room but after the first day we were left with only the dogs for company. The dogs were keen to accompany whenever we walked out to the beach and they would go swimming and fishing. The owner would bring us fresh bread, papayas and mangos each day. We hired 'push' bikes and rode around to various beaches and up through the hills that form the spine of the island.

There was only one 30k ring road around the island. No Starbucks and no McDonalds but the slowest, most unreliable internet I've ever experienced - a latency of 350ms to San Francisco, bandwidth of 20KB and every five minutes it would drop the connection completely for about a minute! Needless to say I didn't get much work done there which was just as well.