Post #767794 by Club Nouméa on Wed, Aug 24, 2016 1:46 AM

Tiki Bars and Hotels

In Rarotonga, in this sector you find the good, the bad and the ugly. Usually it is not the quality of the tikis that is a problem, but rather how they are presented; the context they are displayed in. But then again, not always...

The tikis featured in the sign for Te Manava Luxury Spa & Villas on the tourist strip of Muri Beach offer an interesting case in point. Nicely cast in concrete, cleverly designed, but not at all authentic. There is nothing Rarotongan about them; in fact there is nothing Polynesian about them either - they are more like a 21st-century stab at some ethno-neutral form of primitivism that falls flat on its face.

So there you have the ugly...

Then there is the bad. Let's define the word "bad". In the Rarotongan hotels sector, for me it is tikis that look perfectly alright, and are completely authentic, but that are presented in a sterile, bleached setting that is more reminiscent of the antiseptic whitewashed buildings of the London Missionary Society than anything else.

One example is Club Raro Resort, on the north coast of Rarotonga, in the Pue district:

This establishment was opened by Sir Geoffrey Henry, the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands, in 1994, and doubtless is a perfectly nice place to stay, but it just doesn't look right.

The entrance is enticing:

And the carvings are great - I would love to have this fella outside my front door:

But the sterile whitewashed walls inside are overwhelming and unsettling:

It just ain't in a real tiki style. Where's the tapa? Where's the bamboo? I was wearing sunglasses when I took that photo and I still felt dazzled by the white glare in that foyer. There are other hotels like this in Rarotonga too - they showcase some great tiki carvings, but they are ruined by the horrible white walls everywhere.

Continuing with the bad category, we move on to The Hula Bar, at the Islander Hotel, across the road from Rarotonga's airport:

A hole-in-the wall bar in Rarotonga? A darkened room filled with tiki carvings in a Hawaiian style? My hopes were raised by this set-up but...

This completely misleading signage simply led me into a back corridor connecting the various rooms in the hotel...

Eventually I got to the restaurant and bar area, but the decor was underwhelming. These were the only tikis visible on the premises:

The interior decor was all very chi-chi and millennial - it looked like some trendy restaurant in Ponsonby or Palo Alto rather than like a Hawaiian joint. I was hoping for more of the bar area outside, but it was all too bare and spartan to have the desired effect, with the spindly little trees and the view over a particularly rocky section of the reef not helping to create a lush tropical setting:

Maybe some redemption would be found in the cocktails? Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I ordered a Mai Tai:

Which turned out to be one of the worst Mai Tais I have ever had. It is the sort of Mai Tai you order at a beer bar that offers a few cocktails on its menu but doesn't know how to make cocktails. Then I realised that was precisely what the Hula Bar was: a beer bar.

Various tourist guides list The Hula Bar as one of the top bars in Rarotonga - they are wrong: any tiki cognoscenti visiting Rarotonga who fancy a good tropical cocktail in a Polynesian setting would do best to give it a miss altogether.

So where do you go for a Mai Tai in Rarotonga? Well I'll leave that for another instalment, as although the establishment concerned is undoubtedly the best restaurant and bar on the island, it isn't a tiki establishment.

If you want a Hawaiian-style joint though, run by a Hawaiian, you need to head over to the southern coast, on Aro'a Beach:

It is a short walk through the hotel units to the Shipwreck Hut Beach Bar, which has been voted by various on-line and off-line publications as one of the best beachside bars in the world:

They have at least two tikis, including this ku, so it qualifies as a tiki bar too:

I went to this place for my birthday and was not disappointed. The bar's decor is quite eclectic, featuring various odds and ends from the mainland USA and Alaska as well as Hawaii.

I was dismayed by the speed and approximate mixing involved, but I was served a perfectly drinkable Mai Tai in a jam jar, which I had with a plate of very tasty Butter Chicken:

After dinner, out came the ukuleles, which ended up with me accompanying one of the bar ladies from Aitutaki singing Danny Whitten's "I Don't Want To Talk About It". I kept telling myself this was alright as it was written by a member of Crazy Horse and Rod Stewart's cover of it was purely coincidental.

But as good as the Shipwreck Bar was, the best is yet to come. About 20 minutes walk from there is The Rarotongan:

Tiki torches! Now we're talking....But wait, there's more...

The entrance is guarded by two prodigiously-endowed Tangaroas.

Inside, the walls are lined with carvings, spears and artworks.

The place just looks right - the architecture hits all the right buttons:

And there are tikis everywhere, all of them Rarotongan:

The Rarotongan was built in 1977 and was Rarotonga's first major resort. What I liked about the place was its effort to reflect the island's culture and history, as shown by the bar:

Captain Andy Thomson, born in 1887, was from Long Island and, as a ship's hand on a Boston barque, first reached Rarotonga when he was 15, where he fell in love with a local woman and settled, eventually becoming a ship's captain at the helm of his own schooner, carrying passengers and cargoes to the various atolls in the Cook Islands and further afield to destinations as far away as Tahiti and New Zealand. His home was on the site purchased to build the Rarotongan resort in the 1970s, and has been preserved as a historic monument. He is also honoured with a photo behind the bar:

The bar itself is guarded by several nice tiki carvings:

The cocktails on offer were modern-style tropical cocktails. The one above was called a Polynesian Passion, and I also had a Rarotongan Sunset, which was very tasty. If you want the classics, feel free to ask the bar staff, as they know their stuff.

The bar's link with Captain Andy, apart from the fact it was built on his land, was that he liked his tropical cocktails and had a reputation as an entertaining host, with a network of friends that included Robert Dean Frisbie, the American writer, and Tom Neale, a New Zealander who survived naval service in World War 2 and ended up spending 16 years living in isolation on the remote island of Suwarrow.

I rate Captain Andy's Bar as the top tiki destination on Rarotonga:

Our next instalment includes a Rarotongan feast on Ariki Day...

---

The earliest known tiki mug: "Ruru and Weku", designed by Harry Hargreaves of Crown Lynn, New Zealand, 1949.

[ Edited by: Club Nouméa 2016-08-24 02:26 ]