Shipwrecked Island

I made it! Ever since choosing Aitutaki and looking it up on Wikipedia (the source of many a fact I like to blurt out here and there) and finding out this is where both Channel4′s “Shipwrecked” progamme and the “Survivor” programme has been filmed I wanted to find the islands. The plan was to find the islands (known as Shark and Tiger island on Shipwrecked) and canoe over to them.

Tiger Island (taken from shark Island)

I found them (actually called Rapota and Moturakau). You can see them, like all the islands that make up the Aitutaki atol from the main island no problem but it was pretty obvious getting there in a canoe was going to be a big job. Images of me burnt to a crisp dragging myself onto the beach of a stupid TV island flashed before me.

Of course the islands are off limits during filming but how that is enforced I have no idea. If you put your mind to it you could easily get yourself stowed away on one. I’m so sure it must happen, just never gets shown on TV. Apparently one of the past shows shows the TV islanders making it to the mainland and going on a shopping spree in the supermarket so it’s not that difficult.

Shark Island beach with Tiger Island behind

We could easily have missed this but there are 3 or 4 small boats that do trips around the islands and they all have their own routes and all generally pass by the Shipwrecked islands for photo ops but don’t stop. They stop at different islands and it didn’t look like any could get me onto the Shipwrecked islands. There was one boat that could though, “Kia Orana”. The next thing I know… here I am!

some machette grafitti from past islanders.

Silly I know, but hey!