Our Family Travel Logs: 2013

A Cook Island Lei farewell!

It was the end of our holiday adventure in The Cook Islands. We had a pretty relaxed time enjoying the untouched beauty of the islands and the amazing snorkelling and generally roughing it a bit getting around like locals which was lots of fun.

Leaving Aitu on the back of the ute going to the run way - no seat belts just hang on!

The compacted coral run way

The locals leave Aitu laden with fresh flower leis and garlands.

The whole village came out to entertain us

The Aitu Villas provide a cultural night which is really entertaining, the local villagers come out to share their singing and dancing and show their beautiful fresh flower adornments. We were encouraged to join in so it was lots of fun.

Alex participating in the coconut juice hair treatment demonstration
- he ended up being given a long haired wig to wear to show the power of the juice for baldies!

'George the Bird Man' and candle lit Caving on Aitu

Tourism is what keeps the islands alive so we were happy to join in on some local ones with 'George the Bird man' who took us plant and bird spotting with his nephew sampling the pickings on a beach picnic at the end and then the Anatakitaki Kopeka bird cave tour which was a challenging walk for the kids but rewarding at the end when you could cool off in the fresh water cave pools by candle light.

Stinky Nori fruit.

Bird man George's tour on the back of a ute

Picking Star Fruit

Refreshing drink from the star fruit

Making food baskets

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Our beach picnic

Lemon juice on coconut and pawpaw yum.

Fresh coconut juice

The beach Captain Cook landed in 1777

Getting our walking sticks to help us walk through the eroded coral

Descending into the cave system

Anatakitaki Caves which have the unique Kopeka birds and fresh water swimming caves

Candle lit swimming in the caves

The coral atoll Island of Aitu

We boarded a small plane to Aitu Island about 45mins from Aitutaki and landed on the crushed coral run way on the small unique island. Aitu is a raised volcanic island surrounded by 6m cliffs of fossilised coral, erosion over millennia created the fertile inner ring of land with a central high plateau where the 500 Aituians live. As the people live in the centre of the island it seemed to be so much more hot and humid that the other islands that we stayed at. The circumventing ring of ancient exposed coral is covered in jungle and is difficult to navigate - jaggard and unstable. We did a tour to a local cave in this difficult terrain to see the Kopeka birds only found in Aitu (small swallow like birds that use sonar like bats to find their way into the caves to nest).

Our host on the island was Roger he came to the island as a PhD student in the 70's to study atmospheric physics and ended up staying marrying a local. He and his wife built the Aitu Villas self sufficient accommodation for tourists which are very charming, Roger organises the village cultural entertainment for guests (which looks like a party for the locals as they thoroughly enjoyed the night of feasting, playing tennis and sharing their music and dance with us too - not just a job).

We had a bit of high drama when we arrived, after only being there in the hut 30 mins Alex was lighting a match to cook lunch when the match flew up and got stuck bizarrely between his eye lids!!! After much flushing with water we asked to see the local Dr for supplies. Luckily the hospital clinic was attended by the islands only Dr and his nurse wife and toddler, sometimes its not manned we heard. The Dr was lovely he was from the Tuvalu Islands also in the Pacific but because of rising sea levels its future is dire so its not so ironic that he has settled on Aitu an island that is rising!