Oh, the Cook Islands

There’s something about the tropics that stirs something deep inside me. It’s not just the whole
Blue Lagoon thing, but something about the actual distance from the
rest of the world that is such an allure. And fewer places are as distant as the
Cook Islands. The 15
atolls and islands that make up the Cooks, which are named for 18th century explorer Capt. James Cook,  are strung
across 850,000 square miles of ocean midway between South America and Australia. This story in
the LA Times does a
fine job capturing the exoticness and the history of the islands, and there is even a video portion worth a watch.