Crystal-clear water, snow-white beaches, dense tropical forests, and even fertile soil… The Cook Islands have always attracted visitors. The settlers came and began to displace the locals. There were always conflicts. But the Cook Islands were an exception. There, the settlement was rather peaceful. The missionaries offered the locals to follow the way of their life, their faith, their architecture, but the locals did not accept that and leave everything on its places.

The village of Arorangi is the opposite of the locals’ lives. Looking at it, you could think that everything is very unusual. Beautiful white buildings, a nice church – everything is good. But the locals decided to keep their traditions.

But the village is a good opportunity to see how the first missionary settlement looked like. These places are rather rare. Besides, the village of Arorangi is located in such a picturesque place, that you should visit it at least for its landscape.

Coming to the white sand of Cook Island, after a few meters you can see a completely white church. This is the main sight of the settlement. It was built in 1849. There is buried the first Christian preacher. All the other houses in the village are as modest as the church, small and bright.

When the missionaries built this village, they wanted to make it a model settlement, which would become an example for all the locals, but it did not happen. To use the area they made a big ethnographic open-air museum. 

It may sound unusual, but in that Christian village, you can get closer to the ancient culture of the islands. After the sightseeing tour, the big large number of new facts, mental activity is replaced by a physical one. You can learn how to dance the traditional dances of the Maori people, know how the locals handled the wood and cured people.