A Great 'Work' Day

Today, July 29th, Scott left to take the Aitutaki coral atoll day tour while I found out about getting online at the Telecom Center and finding a place to live and work.

In Avarua, at the Telecom Center, I was helped by an angel.....Tangi.

From Tangi, I learned that to get online from a phone connection it would cost $25NZ to register and $9NZ/hour to be online. There are two computers set up in the TeleCom outer office being used by travelers to get online for email at a cost of $1.75NZ per 5 minutes. [Right now it costs $.55US to buy $1.00NZ]

To get a phone line into my unit would cost $50NZ and a charge of $14.75NZ per month plus 20 cents per local call. It would take three working days to get a line put in. That all sounded ok to me, so I said, "Let's go with that." She asked me where I would be staying and I answered: "The Kii Kii."

"At the Kii Kii?......Oh, too bad. A lady wanted to get a line in, but since the hurricane all phone lines must be under ground so a trench would have to be dug....very expensive...." (The Kii Kii has a switchboard which is incompatible with my setup).

I said that there must be an inexpensive place somewhere on Rarotonga with a phone line to it that I could rent and get online through. She nodded her head because she knew of one near the Kii Kii. She made a phone call spoke some Rarotongan then said to me that I was to call Jessie Sword (pronounced Gee-see) the next morning after 9 am and gave me the number saying that it's two bedrooms and will cost $100NZ per week with a $200NZ bond (deposit). It's between the Club Raro and the Kii Kii, but on the other side of the road. It's called "Punamaia (pronounced poo-na-my-ya.)

[The bottom line about this place is that I am going to change my itinerary and not go to New Zealand until September. I will obtain a separate roundtrip ticket to Honolulu in a week or two to go back to Kaua'i and pay my bills for another month, and maybe get my Epson 700 printer and a bunch of ink and ink-jet paper to bring back with me to do what I plan to do here. I will rent this unit by the month or lease by the year......It will cost less than $250US per month!]

Here are some photos in and around my future Punamaia computer station and studio:

That's the main 'highway' around the island on the northeast side looking in the direction of Avarua.

It has a U-shaped driveway...enter on the right and leave on this half. That's my apartment...the lower one.

A closer look.

The view from my door. The ocean is just beyond those trees.....but, it's not a swimming area. It's a reef like out from the Kii Kii.

Let's go inside before I move in.

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And the views out the back door.

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My workstation.

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