Aitutaki

What a stroke of genius! We booked this ages ago and I’m so glad. Coming in to land on the tiny plane from Rarotonga to Aitutaki I knew we were in for a treat. Crystal clear coral ringed blue waters, coconut fringed white sand beaches etc etc! I didn’t even care that no one turned up at the airport to pick us up as arranged. As the numbers thinned and we became conspicuous as the last people not in uniform outside the tiny airport so many people offered to help. Two different people got on the phone and called our place. Everyone knows everyone else here! No answers, then two separate people offered us lifts. We turned up a little later in the back of one of the airport staffs 4×4′s to find the receptionist of paradise cove very surprised to see us. I’d heard about the legendary “Island Time” used here but a whole year is a slightly different kettle of fish. She’d managed to book us in for December 2009. We all laughed.. it had happened a few times recently.

One other reason to like this place after some of our more strenuous trecks we’ve done (we do seem to pic the hardest ones!) There are no mountains. There is one slight hill though but it’s only 124m high. Great views from up there!

and this was our view from the hut…

We’ve been pretty much cut off from news, and TV just hasn’t figured in daily life since I can remember but there has been the odd occasion (well once so far) where vegging out in front of the TV seemed like a fantasic idea. Can’t do that here though, the TV channel got turned off two months ago. Probably a good place to buy a second hand TV. The shops all shut at 4, nothing’s open on a Sunday, there’s one internet cafe and wifi is the stuff of wizards and witches. Brilliant stuff.

Aitutaki is an atol, the top of an ancient sunken volcano. Aside from the mainland there are loads of smaller islands, mostly uninhabited, formed from other sticky up parts of the volcano. Here’s just a tiny taste of one of the amazing islands we got a boat out to…

If you want they will take you out and leave you on one these for AU$45 each. Pick the right one and you could be only people on it all day.

One of the best swimming/paddling places on the mainland I think was this one by the airport called Ootu beach. It looks out onto the swanky Aitutaki Lagoon Resort and Spa (above setting up a table on the sand bank) but the rest of the island is reassuringly down to earth. Apparently Aitutaki’s lagoon is on the list (or one of the many lists) of the top 100 places to see before you die! The lagoon is so shallow in most places I paddled of to take a look and can confirm it was a real table with real plates and glasses and stuff.