One Foot on the island

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Flying from Fiji to the Cooks is only a straight easterly flight of 3 hours. We stayed for a few hours on Rarotonga the main cook island and then set off to discover Aitutaki, an atoll in the cook island group. life in the cooks was even more relaxed than in Fiji, everyone wearing flowers in their hair and being really smiley. But the cooks were also very much like a tropical New Zealand. The main language beinlg Maori and the locals looking much more like the maori in NZ than like fijians for example.
On Aitutaki we had intended to hire bicycles but they were all out or broken, so we dared to ride a small scooter for the first time in our life and that was good fun (we didn't admit our lack of experience to the rental person though).
Aitutaki has this great lagoon (which means that the water is really shallow and therefore warm and the coral is close, and where there is coral there are fish!) The water around the cooks is amazingly clear and visiblity is fantastic.
We went for a boat trip across the lagoon and stopped at several island (one being the location for the TV series Shipwrecked and Survivor. It was beautiful and the light around those little motu (islets) was magical.
let the pics speak for themselves. We really liked the cooks and can recommend thouroughly to stop there if ever flying to NZ or so. It was really like paradise and travel was soo little stressful and the food was great (lots of fish and fruit)

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Photos

welcome at Rarotonga airport
This man has apparently met most of the international flights to the Cooks in the past 20 years

Etu Moana
meaning blue starfish in maori

Shipwreck
Us not watching much tv at home weren't even aware how famous this island, where we casually had lunch, was

Cricket in the evening sun
it is a seasonal sport but the season never ends...

discovering the island on a scooter
never mind that we had never driven one of these before, it was great fun