Forgotten World (80): Cook Islands
The Cook Islands has one of the tiniest poulations of any country in the world with just 18,700 citizens.This South Pacific Ocean nation consists of 15 small islands spread over 2.2 million square kilometres of ocean (roughly the size of India), divided into two distinct groups: the Southern Cook Islands and the Northern Cook Islands of coral atolls.
It is a self-governing parliamentary democracy in free association with New Zealand which is responsible for its defence. Unusually the Cook Islands are not part of the United Nations. Tourism is the country’s number one industry, far ahead of offshore banking, pearls, marine and fruit exports.
May 11th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
We visited Rarotonga in 2001 for a few days when returning from a holiday in Australia/New Zealand. It was a beautiful place and not yet spoilt by tourism.
There’s plenty of info about Rarotonga and the rest of the Cook Islands at the http://www.ck (yes, that’s the URL) website, and I particularly like the history (and photos) of Palmerston island.