Los Angeles

I got the overnight flight from Rarotonga to Los Angeles on the 23rd May and was fortunate to be able to sleep for most of it. Immigration at LAX seemed to take longer than the flight. I got my first impressions of LA on the drive to the hotel, they love concrete, wide roads, big cars and fast food, so nothing i didn't already know already. I then had three pretty full on days exploring the city.

Day 1: walked from Playa del Rey to Venice, Venice Board walk and onto Santa Monica which it turns out is a fair old way!!!

Day 2: hollywood and downtown: was unimpressed with Hollywood but then i'm not really into the celebrity culture so most of it was lost on me.

Day 3: Universal studios: this was a lot of fun if uber-touristy!!

I've found it easy enough to get around to the main areas with out a car using public transport but its so easy to see why obesity and poor health are such problems here - the number of fast food joints is mind boggling (and cheap) meanwhile fruit and vegetables seem to be few and far between.

Rarotonga, Cook Islands

My Round-the-world ticket included a stop in Rarotonga in the Cook islands so i allowed myself 4 days to relax before i hit America. It was a very wise move as the Cook Islands are superb. Roughly 4 hours west of NZ and 9.5 hours east of LA by plane they are a small group of islands in the middle of no where, i stayed on the largest of the islands - Rarotonga. It was in a word paradise, the quintessential tropical island, small island surrounded by a reef so the water was still and turquoise, white sand, palm trees etc etc. I stayed in a really nice backpackers, the first 2 nights slightly further away from the beach up a hill where it was really quiet but moved down to the beachside section for the last night. Both places had swimming pools. and the beach was amazing. I spent most the time exploring the island on a scooter with some other people i met, snorkling (not a lot of coral but the fish were amazing), swimming, lying on the beach. On the last day i did the bush walk across the island which was a nice change from the beach and got me into the rainforest and up into the 'mountains' where the views were amazing. One of the evenings we went out to an 'island night' where a local dance group puts on a show of island dancing and music which was superb fun.
I didn't really have a chance to get out to any of the other islands but i didn't really need to as i had such a good time on Rarotonga.