Narita Syndrome.: The Cook islands.

As of late I have found myself thinking about warmer weather and a simpler life, cause really working for a corporation and slaping on that tie every morning can really get to you. So in my free time I have acquired as much info on the most obscure places I can think of. In this quest I have fallen in love with a group of islands in the south pacific called the"Cooks Islands".

Named after the famous British explorer captain James Cook, the Cook islands are protected by New Zealand and have diplomatic relations with the EU. Comprising of roughly 18,700 strong, the islands are currently facing a mass migration of its people, mainly Polynesian, to New Zealand.

With a negative population rate since the early 80's the islands have been faced with economic problems that fishing rights (1.8 million sq km of Ocean) and tourism cant solve. The Islands tried giving tax breaks to companies to stay in the islands but it resulted in the islands becoming a haven for off shore banking and money laundering...Thus in 2002, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Financial Action Task Force put the Cook Islands, among others, on a blacklist.

Now can someone tell me how this solves a countries problems? How does restricitons on trade and monetary flow help this nation? The council offerd no aid, but rather let it widely known that the islands where a "haven" for criminal activity. The nations Debt was 141 million NZ in 1996, and with greater imports then exports over the last decade hasnt helped this problem.

To place this in context, the islands had a population of 21 k in 1971, at which point only 3 percent of the island was made up of European's. Now the islands population is made up of 7 percent European immigrants, with a total cap of 18,7000. The demands of tourism (90,000 visitors last year) on the environment has raised many issues, as western influence has had a negative impact on drinking water and garbage control.

Most westerners would generally overlook the problem garbage control would posses as we generally just place ours on the curb and then let someone else deal with it. The problem for the cook islands is that every year the garbage problem gets worse, placing greater strains on the natural resource the locals so greatly depend on. The picture above is from a dump on the capital island of Rarotonga, which is the biggest dump in the islands. Really think about it, locals have always just lived off the land, meaning, no candy wrappers, no plastic containers, no cardboard boxes and certainly no dasni bottles. All the sudden some daryl places a glad bag on his curb, and the whole game changes for these islands. Its not the fault solely of the westerns, as everything these days come packaged and it would be far from a safe bet to assume Tammy and Jon are solely to blame for this pandemic.

I usually hate to ask people to think about things, as it usually means i didn't have the grammatical flare to really paint the Van Gogh of literary pictures. Who can I kid though? i'm lucky If I can form coherent sentences that don't sound like they were written in crayon. For now, just think about growing up there, in the sun and the FUN, not really wealthy, but by no means living in poverty. Then think of the feeling of watching your small paradise suffer from the effects of pollution brought on by the tourism industry. Its one of the main industries, so you know the economy cant stand losing it, and there is a 25 percent chance you work in that industry as well. This vicious cycle of dependency never really gets solved until shit hits the fan, I.E the water tax uprising in Bolivia.

Its really sad finding out that a place you admire for its beauty is possibly becoming less versace and more wal mart as time goes on. Now my voyage to these Islands is in a moral court. I know if I were to visit I could just be happy on the beach, in a hammock, swimming and fishing and enjoying whatever fruit and/or seafood I could muster up. Id really wouldn't need the luxury of a resort, as to me at least, is just an extension of western living. I wouldn't want to fly 18 hours just to eat better in a warmer climate, but rather truly experience something new. Try to broaden those horizons, become a more rounded individual. How much culture can one soak up being waited on hand and foot by the locals, I'd imagine just as much one would get from watching an hour of Mind of Menica.

I truly do find these atolls to be nothing short of breathtaking, and I know that one day I will visit and bum around the beach like M McConaughey, and never want to come back.