The Finest Marae in the Cook Islands - A Visit to Highland Paradise

‍Posted by Ross Holmes, owner of Kia Orana Villas & Spa, Rarotonga

There's a valley above Arorangi, on the western side of Rarotonga, that most visitors never see. Drive past the coast road's resorts and cafés, take the inland turning that climbs up through the bush, and after a few minutes you arrive somewhere that looks at first like nothing in particular — a patch of cleared land, a few buildings, a car park.

What you're standing on is the entrance to the Maungaroa Cultural Landscape. Nestled 509 metres above sea level in the rugged interior of Rarotonga, Maungaroa was once home to the last village settlement on the island, belonging to the Tinomana Ariki tribe of Puaikura. The valley contains nearly a hundred marae and paepae, the remains of pre-European settlement clusters dating back as early as the year 1300, abandoned in the early 1800s after the island's conversion to Christianity, and lost to the bush for more than a century afterwards.

What's been done with it in the last five decades — quietly, patiently, by one family in particular who refused to let it be forgotten — is, without question, the finest marae in the Cook Islands.

The cultural centre on the site is called Highland Paradise. If you're staying with us on Rarotonga, it's the one cultural experience I will tell you to make time for.

What the place is

Most visitors hear “cultural village” and assume what they're going to get: a buffet, a fire dance, some drumming, photos with a man in a grass skirt, home in time for a swim. There are places like that on Rarotonga, and they have their place in a guest's week.

Highland Paradise is not one of those places.

What the Pirangi family have done — the late Raymond Pirangi Senior began the work in the 1970s, and his daughter Teuira (Tutu) Pirangi, the managing director, continues it — is reclaim and restore the marae and the village around it. Hundreds of acres of ancestral land, hidden under the bush for over a hundred years, were slowly brought back. Raymond Senior engaged archaeologists from the Auckland Institute and Museum and the University of Sydney. He spent decades on what was, at the time, a private family obsession. Today, the site is recognised internationally — but in those years, it was just one man, then one family, refusing to accept that the village should be forgotten.

This kind of reclamation is rare. Almost everywhere else on Rarotonga, the original marae have been lost — overgrown, paved over, broken up for building stone, or simply forgotten as the families who held them moved down to the coast. The handful that remain visible are mostly low piles of weathered basalt, beautiful but illegible to anyone without a guide. ‍

What Raymond Senior began, and what Tutu has continued for over forty years, was different. They didn't just preserve what stones were visible. They reclaimed the whole site — the ceremonial layout, the meaning of each section, the names of the chiefs who once gathered there, the stories the marae was built to hold. They reclaimed it as a working cultural site, not a museum piece. The work has taken over fifty years to get this far, and it isn't finished.

On the road to UNESCO World Heritage status

In January 2026, the Cook Islands government submitted the completed Nomination Dossier for the Maungaroa Cultural Landscape to UNESCO. If successful, it will be the first UNESCO World Heritage site in the Cook Islands.

The application is led by the National Environment Service and Tauranga Vananga — the Ministry of Cultural Development, with the endorsement of the 7 Rangatira (who are the landowners) of Maungaroa. International World Heritage expert Dr Anita Smith of La Trobe University has guided the technical work, funded by the Government of Australia. The Cook Islands National Commission for UNESCO, traditional leaders of the Tinomana Ariki tribe, the Maungaroa community, and a dedicated World Heritage Steering Committee have all contributed. The Cook Islands has been a signatory to the World Heritage Convention since 2009; this is the country's first nomination.

The decision is expected from the World Heritage Committee by mid-2027.

What makes the site exceptional, in UNESCO's assessment, is what cultural landscape specialists call “Outstanding Universal Value.” Maungaroa is the largest cultural landscape in the Cook Islands. It contains four well-preserved settlement clusters representing pre-European Eastern Polynesian social structure, intricate inland road systems, evidence of taro cultivation along the streams, and the only known natural traditional fortress in the Cook Islands. Oral history records a battle here so violent that the blood of the slain turned the water in the river red — giving the nearby stream its name, Vaiakura, “red water.”

To stand on this ground tonight, with the World Heritage application on UNESCO's desk in Paris, is to stand on something that the international cultural community is being asked to formally recognise as part of humanity's heritage. The Pirangi family did not do this work for the recognition. But the recognition, when it comes, will be earned.

Ka'ara — Drums of Our Forefathers

The Pirangi family run their evening cultural experience three nights a week — Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 6.00pm to 9.30pm. They call it Ka'ara — Drums of Our Forefathers. A guide meets you at the entrance and walks you through the marae before the light goes. You learn what each section is for, who used it, and what the stones mean. You'll hear stories that aren't in any guidebook, because they're not written down anywhere; they live in the family's memory.

After the marae tour comes the umu — the traditional underground oven, where meat and root vegetables and fish are slow-cooked over hot stones, wrapped in leaves, the way Cook Islanders have cooked for as long as anyone remembers. The food is then served on long tables under the open sky, with the lights of Arorangi below and the dark mass of the inland mountains rising behind.

Then the dancing. The Tinomana tribe's descendants perform the traditional dances — drum dances, action songs, the chants and pe'e. The drumming, in particular, is something you'll feel in your chest. It's not a tourist show. It's a family performing the dances their ancestors performed on the same ground.

The Village Day Tour

If you'd rather a daytime visit — quieter, more educational, more time to take in the detail — Highland Paradise runs a Village Day Tour on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10.00am to 1.00pm.

The day tour is a walking journey through the village settlement itself. The Pirangis' experienced guides take you through stories of tribal warfare and Polynesian navigation, and into the parts of everyday village life that the evening show doesn't have time to cover: traditional weaving demonstrated by people who actually weave, drumming explained by people who actually drum. The tour includes a visit to the new Museum & Cultural Learning Centre on the site and finishes with a traditional umu lunch.‍ ‍

If you have a week on Rarotonga and a genuine interest in Cook Islands culture, doing both the day tour and the sunset show is the right way to do it. They're complementary, not duplicative. The day tour gives you the substance; the evening show gives you the spectacle.

The food, and why it matters

A small point that may sound trivial but isn't: the food at Highland Paradise is genuinely Cook Islands food, made with local produce, cooked the traditional way. Many of the cultural-village dinners on Rarotonga aren't. They serve buffet food that you could get in a hotel anywhere in the Pacific — sweet-and-sour chicken, fried rice, a small token of taro or ika mata for colour.

The Pirangi family insist on the real thing. The umu is a real umu. The ika mata is made the way it should be made. The taro is from the gardens. This is part of what I mean when I say Highland Paradise is the most authentic cultural experience on Rarotonga: the authenticity goes all the way down, including into what's on the plate.

How to go

The Ka'ara — Drums of Our Forefathers sunset show runs Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings, 6.00pm to 9.30pm. The Village Day Tour runs on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, 10.00am to 1.00pm. Both should be booked in advance, especially in peak season — the family caps numbers to preserve the experience for those who do attend.

Highland Paradise is on Facebook and on the web at highlandparadise.co.ck. The team will arrange transport from accommodation around the island.

Tutu welcomes anyone who comes with respect and curiosity. If you go, say hello to her from Janet and me.

Ross Holmes is the owner, with his wife Janet, of Kia Orana Villas & Spa in Atupa, Rarotonga.‍ ‍