When your tour guide gets out of the car in the middle of nowhere holding a machete there are several thoughts likely to flit across your mind.

For me, it was:

S*&! is this guy going to murder us??

AND

Jeepers creepers, this hike might be wild and hard core.

Thankfully, the latter thought was the correct one.

Here I was on honeymoon with my new hubby in Rarotonga, one of the tropical islands within the Cook Island group in the South Pacific.

And what better way to enjoy your honeymoon than climb a volcano and tick off another in my somewhat failed #40by40 volcano challenge.

The whole of Rarotonga is actually a volcano, formed around 2 million years ago. The original volcanic cone has now been eroded, leaving the forested hills and valleys of the island’s interior.

Our plan was to cross Rarotonga from the north coast to the south coast on the Cross Island Trek, taking in the stunning rock formation known as The Needle.

We had our local guide Bruce to show us the way on this 6km, 3.5-hour trek.

He came prepared with his machete.

He needed it.

Very quickly we walked into tropical rainforest – although I preferred to call it jungle. Ferns, vines, trees all competed for space.

The track was clearly marked though and was sufficiently muddy but Bruce would swipe branches and vines away which had grown into our path.

It was a steep uphill climb over tree roots, the occasional muddy knotted rope positioned to help pull us up the mountainside.

We were lucky it wasn’t more humid, which would have been hard going. As it was, a gentle misty rain drenched us and obscured the views.

The high point, almost right in the centre of the island, was reaching the rock outcrop of The Needle, a slab of vertical rock that protrudes up through the forest standing maybe 20 or 50m above the treetops.

A scramble and a rope pull takes the more adventurous hiker to a vertiginous edge. I chickened out as the rain had made the rock slippery but Mark put to the test how long our marriage would last. He successfully returned to me.

While Mark was contorting himself around wet rock, the rest of us were visited by the local that calls the rock home – a solitary rooster that has lived at the summit for years. He was very inquisitive.

We were soon heading south again down steep, muddy and slippery hills and wading through rivers.

I worried Bruce would cut his leg off with the machete which just dangled from his hand. I tried to stay well clear on the off chance he might slip.

Our return to civilisation culminated in Wigmores Waterfall where tourists splashed and snapped photos.

I was wet, tired and muddy but it was a great experience with some stunning landscapes and another side to island life.