Attractions & Natural Wonders · Cook Islands
The Cook Islands: Seven Attractions and Natural Wonders
A lagoon so shallow that visitors wade between islets, a jungle ridge walk under a rock needle, and a Sunday morning of powerful hymn-singing in church
By Globeway Editorial · 30 September 2026
Fifteen islands, fifteen thousand people
The Cook Islands are a self-governing nation in free association with New Zealand — fifteen small islands spread over about two million square kilometres of ocean, with a resident population of around 15,000 and far more Cook Islanders living in New Zealand and Australia. The culture is Polynesian and strongly Christian; Sundays are for church and rest. English and Cook Islands Māori are both spoken, and the currency is the New Zealand dollar.
Almost all visitors land on Rarotonga, the main island, and many add Aitutaki for its lagoon. The seven below cover both, plus the "quiet" island of Atiu. It is warm year-round; May to October is the drier, cooler season.
1. The Aitutaki lagoon
Aitutaki, a short flight north of Rarotonga, is built around one of the most beautiful lagoons anywhere — a wide, shallow sheet of pale blue water inside a roughly triangular barrier reef, so clear and calm that lagoon cruises spend the day drifting between uninhabited motu, snorkelling over giant clams, and stopping to wade ashore on Tapuaetai ("One Foot Island"), a sandy islet about 570 metres long with a beach and a few palms.
The main island is small, low-key, and largely given over to a handful of resorts and family-run bungalows.
2. Muri Lagoon, Rarotonga
Muri, on Rarotonga's southeast corner, is the island's best stretch of lagoon — a wide, shallow, protected pool with small islets that visitors wade or kayak to, and the main base for snorkelling, paddleboarding, and glass-bottom-boat trips. Water quality has been a serious concern — in 2015 the government declared the lagoon's environmental condition a national disaster — so it is worth checking locally before swimming.
Muri is also a major tourist hub, accounting for about a quarter of the tourist beds used on Rarotonga.
3. The Cross-Island Track and Te Rua Manga
Rarotonga's interior is a wall of jungle-covered volcanic peaks, and the classic walk cuts right across it: a track from the Avatiu valley on the north coast up to the base of Te Rua Manga — a 413-metre rock spike — then a steep, often muddy descent past the Wigmore's (Papua) Falls to the south coast.
It is the island's best-known hike, best with a guide in the wet season; many walkers go only to the base of the spire and return the same way.
4. Avarua and the Punanga Nui market
Avarua, the low-rise capital on the north coast, is really just a strip of shops, churches, and cafés — but on Saturday mornings the waterfront Punanga Nui market fills with produce, black pearls, carving, printed pareu cloth, ukulele players, and food stalls. It is the social event of the week and the best place to buy local.
Around town: the National Museum and library, the Cook Islands Christian Church, and the wreck of the SS Maitai, which struck the reef in 1916.
5. Titikaveka and the south-coast beaches
The south coast of Rarotonga has some of the best beaches — Titikaveka among them — with a sheltered lagoon where the water is usually calm. The whole island is only 32 kilometres around, ringed by a coastal road, so it is easy to sample several beaches by scooter or the island bus (which runs "clockwise" and "anti-clockwise").
Sundays, many businesses close and the churches fill with famously powerful harmony singing that visitors are welcome to hear.
6. The outer motu of Aitutaki
Beyond One Foot Island, the Aitutaki lagoon has a string of other uninhabited motu that day cruises visit — Maina, with the sandbar in front of it known as "Honeymoon Island" — and the reef edge where the pale lagoon meets the deep ocean blue. Seabirds here include red-tailed and white-tailed tropicbirds, frigatebirds and noddies.
The lagoon is shallow enough that at low tide it is possible to wade a long way from shore.
7. Atiu
Atiu, in the southern group, is the most rewarding of the "other" islands: a raised coral platform ringed by a band of sharp fossil-reef limestone (makatea) full of caves — some with the nests of the kopeka, or Atiu swiftlet, found nowhere else, which navigates in the dark by echolocation. It also grows a well-regarded coffee, revived in 1984 by the German economist Juergen Manske-Eimke, and it keeps the tradition of the tumunu, a communal bush-beer drinking circle that began as a secret society when missionaries banned alcohol.
It has a handful of guesthouses and an airport with flights from Rarotonga.
The Cook Islands are a small, gentle destination: a week on Rarotonga with two or three nights on Aitutaki is the standard trip, with Atiu added for travellers who want somewhere quieter still.