After three days in Rarotonga it was already time to head to our next island destination and Air Rarotonga brought us safely to beautiful Aitutaki where we would spend the next week in island bliss.

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Our resort was located on Motu Akitua, a small (windy) little islet with magnificent views of the lagoon. Sadly most of the staff seemed to lack the genuine Polynesian friendliness we found almost everywhere else in the Cook Islands and you could really feel that they were ‘just doing their job’. Lucky enough some of the other guests were really nice and happy to chat and we may even visit some of them in New Zealand and Australia next year 😉

Aitutaki Lagoon Resort

island paradise

view from our bungalow

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Apart from plenty of eating, sleeping and reading there was still enough time for:

Snorkelling …

who else is thinking of the ‘jaws’ theme now?

… fishies at our resort

… Crab racing …

lucky #7 paid for our drinks this night 🙂

… ‘wild’life …

fish feeding at the resort

What are you looking at? Keep walking man!

hermit crab – is it safe?

hermit crab – let’s go!

What the heck is THAT?

… Stand up paddle boarding …

… and a scooter trip around the main island. The local street signs were a bit confusing at first (haven’t we seen a slightly different Hollywood sign somewhere else?) but with only 2.000 people living on Aitutaki it wasn’t that difficult to find our way around 😉 Too bad the weather rock was wet and swinging wildly that night – making our scooter ride home a fierce battle with the elements at 40 km/h.

Did we take a wrong turn somewhere?

The almighty weather stone!

A surprise highlight on Aitutaki was Sunday church service in Arutanga with the women all dressed up in their beautifully decorated palm leaf hats and everybody singing – kind of like Whoopie Goldberg in ‘Sister Act’ – loud, enthusiastic and really really good! And after service everybody was invited to a community lunch organised for a high school group visiting from New Zealand. True Polynesian hospitality! Too sad we didn’t bring our camera that day.