13* 15 S 163* 06 W
We arrived at Suwarrow (Suvarov) at 10 am on Friday after a good 93 hour passage from Bora Bora. This is one of the most northerly parts of the Cook Islands, which were discovered by, guess who?
The Cooks are officially a self governing commonwealth of New Zealand. The local people are Polynesian, with a strong amount of Maori influence. It would be easy to pass through this part of the Pacific and never see the Cooks. The combined surface area of the 15 islands is 93 sq. miles - however, they are scattered over 750,000 sq. miles of ocean!
Surwarrow is an atol, much like we visited in the Tuamotus. The lagoon has only one navigable pass to enter and the surounding reef is 11 miles across. This is by far the most remote place we have visitied. There are no villages or communities - only two park rangers that live in a small shack on one of the larger motus and a few cruising boats. The rangers are responsible for the protection of the atol, which is a National Park, as well as enforcing the environmental policies and doing immigration and customs procedures for visiting boats.
Shortly after we had anchored near the 7 other sailboats near the 'park headquarters', two very large smiling Maori guys approached in their little aluminum fishing boat. James and Appi welcomed us and came aboard to do the formalities and tell us about their atol. These guys are stationed here from April - November and only have what they brought with them. There are no reprovisioning boats or additional supplies. Most of what they eat comes from the sea or from the visiting boats. They do have a small generator to provide some lights at night, but they do not have enough gasoline to run it. They explained that their original provisioning called for 300 gallons of gas for the entire season to run their boat and generator, however, they were only sent 60 total gallons! They were very grateful for the 10 gallons we were able to add to their supply.
Within an hour of our arrival, it was clear to us that this was going to be a special place.
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