About this guide
Cook Islands Open answers one question for visitors: what can I do right now? It lists cafés, restaurants, tours, shops and services across the Cook Islands with their opening hours, and can sort them by distance from you.
Tārekareka is Cook Islands Māori for fun or playful, which is what we hope your day turns out to be. This guide lives at tarekareka.com and is run by Cook Islands Tourism.
Where the hours come from
- The list of operators comes from cookislands.travel, the official Cook Islands Tourism website.
- Every week an automated reader visits each operator's own website and records the opening hours it states there.
- If a website has no hours, the operator's Google Business Profile is used instead.
- Cook Islands Tourism staff can correct any entry by hand; corrections always take priority.
Hours can change without notice, especially on public holidays, Sundays and in the off-season. Every place has a Was this right? question at the bottom of its page: tap No to send a correction. We check each report against the operator's own website and Cook Islands Tourism staff review the rest. No name or email is asked for.
Your location
Location and compass are only used on your phone to sort the list and are never sent to our servers. We use Cloudflare Web Analytics to count visits: it sets no cookies and does not identify or follow you.
Offline
Once loaded, the list keeps working with a poor or no connection. Add this page to your home screen for quick access.
Common questions
What's open in the Cook Islands right now?
The home page lists every café, restaurant, tour, shop and service on Rarotonga that is open at this minute, in Cook Islands time, and can sort them by distance from you. Switch islands for Aitutaki and the outer islands.
What's open on Sunday in Rarotonga?
Sunday is the quiet day: most shops and many cafés close. See what's open on Sunday in Rarotonga for the places whose published hours include Sunday, with their Sunday times.
I'm bored in Rarotonga. What can I do today?
Try things to do in Rarotonga: lagoon cruises, hikes, cultural shows, snorkelling and tours with the days and times each one runs. For right now, use the home page with the "Things to do" filter.
What's open tonight in Rarotonga?
See what's open tonight in Rarotonga for restaurants, bars and shows with evening hours, or choose "Tonight" on the home page for this evening's live list.
Is anything open on public holidays?
Some places open as usual, some close, and many don't say. On a public holiday the guide marks each place's hours as confirmed, closed or unknown for the day, so call ahead when it says unknown.
What time do shops close in Rarotonga?
It varies: supermarkets and the larger shops trade into the early evening on weekdays, smaller shops close mid-afternoon, Saturday afternoons are short and Sunday is mostly closed. Shops and markets in Rarotonga lists each one's hours.
For developers and AI assistants
The full list is available as JSON at /api/index and as a live query at /api/open?island=Rarotonga&when=now (also today, tonight, all; add lat and lng for distances). A plain-text summary for language models is at /llms.txt, with every place and its hours at /llms-full.txt. Please credit the operator and this site, and remember that hours change.