Return from Aitutaki

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Howdy peeps,
We got back for the most beautiful place on earth this morning, to something that also resembles a paradise, (life is certainly tuff).
Aitutaki is just superb, it's gorgeous beyond description, the lagoon is this amazing aqua/turqoise colour that is unimaginable and it's so bright that it turns the undersides of the clouds a blue/green colour too. amazing!!. we spent 4 days in this paradise....

Day 1 involved hiring a scooter and touring the island, taking lots of snaps and meeting come of the locals. they're so friendly, they'll stop what they're doing if they see you coming and give you a big wave and call out 'hello' or 'kia orana'. they make you feel so welcome, its fantastic. It's not a very big main island, but it sure is pretty. tons of little isolated areas of beach/lagoon, where you can lie back on the sand in the sun, or under the shade of the coconut palms and sleep/read/relax, whatever. and some inland places to explore, such as their 'marae', which are like old meeting grounds/ceremonial sites, basically mini stonehenges all over the island - it's kind of a hide and seek, cause they can be tricky to find.

Day 2 - 'Bishops cruise' of the lagoon, and here's where I just don't have the vocabulary to describe this perfect place. we went snorkelling for about an hour in the coral inthe bottom corner of the lagoon, the boat moored on a sandbar and as soon as we left it, schools of fish just swarmed around us, so we were standing/sitting in hundreds of fish. the coral is amazing and there are so many beautiful fish and giant clams and it's just gorgeous. We had the best time. Then we continued the cruise to 'one foot island', after passing the 4 islands where they filmed survivor cook islands, for a BBQ fish and and salad lunch. the island takes about 30 minutes to walk around, so we did a bit of exploring and just off this island is EXILE ISLAND. so ben swam/walked over there and we got some photos. Yes, you can walk off exile island - not so special now, but never mind. After 3 hours of lapping up the sunshine, doing more snorkelling, swimming and exploring we made the return trip back to the island. and then chilling out in deckchairs on the beach for the afternoon, under the shade of hte coconut palms. yep paradise.
More evidence that i'm a complete techomoron, I deleted all the photos from our arrival until the end of the cruise from my camera, in an attempt to see how much space I had left on the memory card - moron - so now this week, we have to go back and get some of the photos again. I'm sure when mum and damien come over I'll get some of the cruise photos again, but it's a shame that they're all gone. Never mind - we still have the memories, we just can't share them.

Day 2 finished with Island Night at "puffys" a bar/restaurant next door to Paradise Cove, where we stayed. it was fantastic. authentic cook island buffet dinner with taro, breadfruit, bbq fish, chicken, coconut curry type stews with raw fish, pawpaw, banana, mango etc and then topped off with about 20-30 minutes of traditional island dancing, with all these little kids - ranging from about 4 to 17. they were fantastic and they kind of rotated through a lot of different traditional dances, boys, girls and mixed. excellent entertainment!!! We met this really nice Austrian couple who were trying to teach me some Austrian/German after I'd had a few wines, everyone was laughing, but I had a great time. I even got asked to dance by the cutest little thing you've ever seen. He was about 4 and he came around with one of hte biggger girls and they just asked randoms from the audience to dance, so i did. i'm sure i made a dick of myself, but i had a great time, so i don't care.

Day 3 we got a scooter again and went for some swimming around to a different side of the island, relaxed by the lagoon, under the coconut palms (do you sense a recurring theme????) and had lunch and cocktails at a little bar before more relaxing and coconut palms in the afternoon.

Day 4 was sunday and nothing is open because it's sabbath, so we slept in, swam some more and cruised around the island trying to recapture the pics that i deleted from our first day there. we also climbed to the highest peak on Aitutaki, which is only 124m, but the views are spectacular. we did a bit more island exploring and met these awesome girls (Alice and Kathryn) from Scotland who are staying on Rarotonga until after Christmas doing a volunteer vet thing, like what I'm doing, but with animals. we also met a swedish guy, Martin (no Sven), who came over on the same flight as the girls and we all went out for dinner to Samade on the Beach - the only place open on a sunday night - for another BBQ (BBQ fish is turning into our favourite food) with all the trimmings and lots of cocktails (maybe too many??? - never!!).

Our flight came back to rarotonga at 6:30 this morning and we were getting picked up between 5:30 and 6, so we set the alarm (my phone), which promptly ran out of batteries at 1:30 this morning. Ben makes me fall more in love with him each day, by staying awake all night so that we wouldn't miss our flights and I slept because he knew I had a busy day at the hospital today, so I would need the sleep. He's so exhausted and is asleep right now in fact.

So I rocked up at the hospital ready and willing to start my first day and asked for my boss, Dr. Tikaka, who had some kind of emergency and couldn't help me today, so asked if i can stary tomorrow. so i've got an unexpected day of freedom, which is good, just to unpack from Aitutaki and relax around the house, get my Cook island drivers license (for my scooter - very exciting) and a couple of other things, like husking my first coconut with our German housemate Steven (he doesn't speak very much english, and we don't speak very much german, but we get along well anyway). We're going to Christmas in the Park tonight - which is the Cooks version of Carols in the Domain, with live entertainment and everything, so we're in for a good night.

I think that's about it for now. will make sure and keep updating soon. going into town this afternoon to upload photos, so i don't delete them all again and so you can actually see how beautiful this place really is.

Hope everyone is having a great time, not working too hard.
Miss you all, keep me updated with the happenings in the land of Oz.
Will catch you all soon.
Love Therese
OXOXOXOX

Uni Dudes - Good luck with results - hope you all did well (including me), so I can see you in 4th year next year.
Take it breezy.

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