Island Hopping

After a few days of playing on the beaches of Rarotonga, it was time to check out another of the Cook Islands.

So we headed to the local airport to hop on a plane for our 40-minute flight to one of the crown jewels of the Pacific: the island of Aitutaki.

It's a pretty laid-back airport if you hadn't noticed.

Off we go!!!

Good-bye Rarotonga, and

'Kia Orana' Aitutaki!!!

 Aitutaki is a pretty small island. Rarotona is about 6 miles across. Aitutaki is a lot less than that. And Aitutaki has several other small islands around it, sharing a very large, incredibly stunning (just WAIT for the pictures - you won't believe it) lagoon. 

Upon landing at the airport, we received an Island Welcome consisting of leis and a fresh coconut to drink.

Island Princesses.

I've never been happier to look like such a stereotypical tourist.

Mom getting into the island way of life. Easy-Breezy, Beautiful.

Our Home away from Home on Aitutaki. and yes, I hiked the hill behind this place too... pics to follow another time.

The interior with our flowers hanging in place. If you look really closely just to the right of the pointy top of the wall, there is a tiny black dot. That was the only spider I saw there. I kept a watchful eye on it, hoping Tera wouldn't see it. He pretty much came back every other night and just sat up there. Luckily Tera never saw it! Otherwise I probably would have had to go on a bug-kill mission again.... OH I never told you about the wasps at our first place! One day, a whole bunch of wasps decided to camp out at our front door, but I showed them who's boss. They were nothing a dust pan and a team of hungry chickens couldn't handle!!! I would swing and slap them out of the air with the dust pain. As soon as they hit the sand below our balcony, the local wandering chickens would run over and eat them! It was perfect!

Ok, back to Aitutaki: after we got settled in, we checked out our beach, which was sporting a very gray sunset that day: 

It got a little more orange right before it went dark.

This was our little Hut Village at Paradise Cove.

The next morning, it was time to really get to know our beach: 

Tera heading down to check it out in the bright light of day.

Our beach bar/restaurant.

 And this was what our beach looked like there at Paradise Cove, Aitutaki......

So you know how the rest of the day looked:

this is the life....