Intern: Best for Last

By
Maeva Carr
Photography By
Craig Owen and Zhang Da Qiang

Kia Orana and Happy New Year! My name is Maeva, I am the latest addition to the Cook Islands Tourism team and the 3rd intern that will be contributing to this blog. Through my posts I hope to give some insight on what it is like to live and work in our beautiful paradise!

I am a third year university student currently studying towards a Bachelor of Commerce at the University of Auckland majoring in marketing and management. I grew up in Rarotonga and have been fortunate over the past few years of study to come home every summer, unwind, tan up, eat well (all students will know the joys of returning home to enjoy real cooking by mum and Christmas ham!) and take a break from the busyness of Auckland and  settle back into ‘island life”. I started my internship at Cook Islands Tourism a week before Christmas which was the best time to start working! In my first week I got to indulge in delicious treats from local businesses spreading the Christmas spirit.

One month into working at Cook Islands Tourism I have learnt so much! I have learnt how to manage and work the backend of a website, I have learnt how to use the Adobe creative suite, expanding my photography skills from choosing filters on Instagram and I have been in a number of presentations about TripAdvisor and other businesses seeing the insides of how they work and gather data. The staff are amazing they have been nothing but helpful and welcoming since day one.

This summer my family decided to spice up the usual summer of eat, swim, sleep, repeat and do some activities. On Boxing Day we decided to hike up Te Kou - Raro’s second highest mountain! It was an extremely strenuous hike, made up of 10+ ropes to help hikers climb up and really tested our limits! The view at the top was well worth the struggle, I recommend this for any tourist or local who enjoy hikes and are somewhat fit, it took our group of thirteen six hours to go up and down. I also recommend finding a guide to join you!

Another activity our family partook in were the famous Raro Buggy Tours. We’ve seen and heard the buggies zoom past our house for the last few years so we finally decided to do it! This was a great day of muddy fun, we zoomed around the island on the buggies, went through the Sheraton (abandoned hotel) and finished off with a cool swim at the waterfall to wash off all the mud! The tour was also comprised of a delicious lunch and some fun at the new driving range in Vaimaanga, which I proved to be terrible at!

 Thanks for reading! Have a safe weekend (TGIF!) and tune into our blog next week for Tayla’s post.