About us

Kia Orana,

An adult only property ensuring peace and quiet located right on the beach on the western side of Rarotonga, nestled amongst mature tropical palms on the edge of the lagoon.

My name is Dennis Hogan, and my wife is Patti Hogan. Together we own and operate Sunhaven Beach Bungalows in Rarotonga, Cook Islands. 

Patti was born to Cook Islands parents in Rarotonga where she was raised and schooled but lived her adult life in Auckland, New Zealand. The third youngest of 14 children, her father was a baker who taught her how to bake bread – the hard way. I was born in, what back then was, the rural periphery of Auckland City in a small Waikato town to Kiwi parents and lived in the farming region until my family moved to Auckland when I was 7 years old. 

We met in Auckland in 1975 and got married in 1977. In 1991 we moved from NZ to Rarotonga to try our luck in her home village of Arorangi on the western shores of Rarotonga. This was supposed to only be for a five-year term before returning to NZ. 

Patti is an accomplished seamstress by trade having run a small lady’s fashion boutique in New Lynn, West Auckland called Dynasty Fashions in the mid to late 80’s. She would watch the popular TV show Dynasty, sketch the dress or jacket one of the leading ladies was wearing, then go and make it the next day and have it on a model in the window first thing a day later. My job was to tape the show and play it back bit by bit so she could do the sketch.  

She doesn’t do any of that nowadays but has made and maintains all the drapes, curtains and bedspreads for Sunhaven. Her hobbies are baking and gardening. She is responsible for all the gardens and landscaping on the property. 

As a young fella, I served a motor mechanics apprenticeship in Mt Albert, West Auckland for a BMC  dealership. I had always been a bit of a petrol head even while at school. In my first year at work, I saved enough of my meagre apprentice wage for a deposit to buy my first car. My pay then was just 7 pounds a week (a year before decimal currency was introduced in NZ). I think I paid 150 pounds for it. It was a trade in by a new car customer and the motor was shot. This then became my first engine reconditioning job which I worked on after hours. I bought and sold a string of cars during those years, most of them needing lots of attention and mechanical repair when I got them, working my way up in brands and models. In 1976 I got into the used car business in Avondale, West Auckland and a year later moved the operation to New Lynn, West Auckland near the Lynnmall shopping complex and ran that for 10 years. This seemed to be the natural progression my life was taking. 

During the late 70’s & 80’s I had become a keen Ford V8 enthusiast and raced a Falcon GT in classic car races at circuits in the north island. I owned two of these classic cars, one of which was a rare 1969 GTHO with racetrack history, having been a Ford Works race car, but had to sell them both when we moved to Rarotonga. I wish I still had that car as it is worth mega bucks today. 

In 2001, I began overseas bicycle touring with a couple of mates accomplishing rides across the USA coast to coast Pacific to Atlantic LA to Boston. Also the Alps of Europe taking in France, Switzerland, Italy and Austria. We also rode in NZ from Picton to Stewart Island via the west coast plus a tour in the upper north island following the Discovery Highway from Auckland to Cape Reinga and back covering both West and East coasts.   

In 1991, the year we arrived in Rarotonga, we built a petrol station complex in Arorangi which comprised of a grocery store, used car tyre sales & service, rental cars, scooters and bicycles. This we ran 7 days a week for almost ten years at times getting ourselves at odds with the local CICC church minister and Paramount Queen of the village for opening on Sundays. For the record, we were the first petrol station, or shop for that matter, to open 7 days a week on Rarotonga. Now there are quite a few scattered around the island, a few even 24/7. 

Included in the complex was a lady’s dress shop, named (can you guess?) yes – Dynasty Fashions from which Patti made and sold ladies wear. If that wasn’t enough, she also added a small Devonshire Tea room. This is where Patti’s famous scones began. And it was here that she made a couple of island shirts for His Royal Highness Prince Edward to wear at official engagements during his 1993 royal visit to the Cook Islands. This came about as one of her customers at the time was the Queens Representatives wife. 

In 1997 we purchased a one-acre property on the beach in Arorangi with a mind to develop a small tourist resort. The vendors were an elderly English couple we knew who were returning to NZ to live. In fact, the lady had been a customer of Patti’s back in NZ. 

The property, which is part of Patti’s family’s land, contained a large beach house and a decent sized swimming pool. The section was in lawns and had at least 50 mature coconut trees placed strategically about the place. We lived in the house enjoying the therapeutic sound of the waves breaking over the reef, breathtaking sunsets and the magical vista of the lagoon and Pacific Ocean. The only thing I didn’t really enjoy was mowing so much lawn as all the trees made it a painful chore. 

In 1993, I secured the role of sole Cook Islands agent for a New Zealand kitset home company. Over the following years, I helped several local families into their new homes. In 1999, through this association and while still running the petrol station, we built four prefabricated bungalows on the property next to the beach house. Three Beachfront Bungalows and one Garden Bungalow, supplied by the New Zealand company. And Sunhaven Beach Bungalows was born, officially opened by the Queens Representative on the 9th of February 2000.  

We soon found that running both businesses was too much work and sold the service station on Christmas Eve 2000 so we could put all our energies and finances into our new venture. 

In 2002 we arrived at the next chapter of our journey. Patti, with her love of feeding people, was yearning to add a café to our new enterprise as she had got so much pleasure doing that in the Devonshire Tea room earlier. Fortunately, we already held a lease on the Main Road section next to Sunhaven road sign and our driveway entrance. We soon had a cottage built for this purpose and after fitting it out, the Brunch Cottage was born. Our guests were very happy to just walk up the drive for their coffee fix, breakfast and/or lunch at their leisure. Other walk-in customers, both local and tourists alike, were soon discovering Patti’s famous scones and people just loved our coffee. We ran the café from August 2002 until December 2011 on top of operating Sunhaven, with Patti doing all the cooking/baking, making coffee and walking up and down the driveway checking on the guest rooms and helping with room service. I figured she was walking at least two kilometres every day doing that. However, as time went by, all this work became too much, and with suitable reliable café staff thin on the ground, we decided to close the cafe. 

By 2003, tourism was picking up and business was good. We had more requests for rooms than we had rooms, so after building a new house at the rear of the property for ourselves to live in, we reconstructed the original beach house into four extra rooms. They became two Beachfront Suites, one Beachfront Studio Suite plus one Beachfront Deluxe Studio. These were in addition to the Beachfront Standard Studio we had earlier added. This now gave us nine rooms in total. 

Sunhaven Beach Bungalows is a family business employing Patti’s family whenever possible plus others to make up the numbers. However, everyone affectionately calls us Uncle and Aunty. While you might not see all of them working on the property, nieces and nephews keep us supplied with fresh tropical fruit from their home gardens for our guests and collect our fallen coconuts to feed their pigs.  

Kia Manuia, Dennis and Patti.