Hotels near Rarotonga International Airport - RAR, Avarua

Avarua is pretty small with a Mall and few shops, supermarket, pharmacy, hardware stores etc. lots of take away and restaurant and a bit of night life, quiet, little traffic, nice people. Prices for clothing and souvenirs are high, I did not buy anything... The Saturday market is quite big with produce, clothing, etc. In Rarotonga on Sunday everything is closed (you cannot buy alcohol) although you can get take away and there are minimarkets open 24 hours ! Also hotels restaurants are open. It is cheaper to eat out compare to buy food and cook in. Food is good, wine prices acceptable. Not a big selection of food thou depending on the ships who bring the food in. It is a small island you must remember.

Some lovely snorkeling, the turtle tour with Aqua Oz Turtle Man was a huge highlight for us. Saw a lot of Green Turtles and this was superb with the whole family. Shame the reef seems to be damaged and the local hotels don't even stock reef safe suncream, we did find some in Muri but disappointing to see that locals are not promoting reef care. People are standing all over the reef. Cook Islands should invest in providing more reef care information to tourists. Also quite a lot of litter around, which is a shame as it is a beautiful island. We stayed for 10 days with kids this was probably 3 days too long. As adults alone we would have found some extra activities like cycling around the whole island and the cross island hike.

The island seems to be recovering from the Covid lockdown. There were more tourist businesses than we remember from ten years ago but some great ones have gone. Still a very peaceful place to spend a week and the island never seemed busy even though it was NZ school holidays. Vaima’s is still a great beach restaurant and I had my best meal of the holiday (fish curry) there. Fantastic ika mata everywhere I went, plus great tuna steaks and sashimi. Snorkelling with turtles was a treat and worth doing but do book before you arrive on the island if you can. The Round Rarotonga Road Race was a great event if you’re a runner, as was the cross island “Nutters Run”. Also the Hash House Harriers running group was very friendly. Renting a car from Raro Cars was cheap and made everything easy.

Staying on the island is a memory il never forget iv waited 19 years to finally be able to travel an this was first on my bucket list my accomodation was immaculate the people amazing the culture is very alive there an it’s beautiful my husband was so happy to visit his mother land visit his grandads grave an home some of his dads family half brothers an cousins, made this trip worth waiting for ❤️Doing activities the Ariki adventure tours koka eating at amazing places those are all added bonuses we loved seeing the turtles eagle rays giant travelly the clamps those are my highlights But seeing the cousin climb the coconut tree an get us fresh coconuts 🥥 that was the best having an abundance of different varieties of fruits water melon mango pineapple coconuts papaya I can’t wait to come back 💜

We had a great stay here. We had a car, which meant that we could make the most of the whole island of Rarotonga, which was great. It was better to go about 5 minutes drive down the road to go snorkeling, so we drove every day and if we hadn't had a vehicle it would have been a bit more restrictive. We got around the

Absolute gem. After our last few trips to Bali and Lombok dealing with noise/traffic/pollution, we wanted a more authentic holiday location and felt we would be stuck in a resort all week if we went to Fiji. Rarotonga isn't a tourist hotspot yet and that suited us perfectly. People were friendly, transport was simple enough and it's a beautiful island with a proud culture on display. There are limitations based on the location, so no fresh milk and limited produce options, but for what they have they do great and being able to walk off the beach almost anywhere on the island and snorkel in clear and clean water with amazing sea life on display was well worth it. If you want cheap and nasty go to Bali, but if you want to experience local culture and life in the Pacific then I would highly recommend Raro.