Cook Islands, Aitutaki: Chased by Whales and a Shark in an Idyllic Paradise

Aitutaki was the second island in the nation of Cook Islands that we visited during the "Pacific Paradise" portion of our around the world trip in 2007. We had previously booked a flight with Air Rarotonga from Rarotonga, another island in Cook Islands, to Aitutaki; the flight left Rarotonga after we had spent six days there. To get to the airport in Rarotonga from the guesthouse where we had been staying, we were offered a free ride from the manager and owner of Aremango Guesthouse, Amanda and Cindy, respectively.

We arrived at the airport a couple of hours early and checked in with plenty of time to spare, so we walked across the street from the airport and had lunch at a small place called Knocker's Kafe. Full English breakfasts were on the menu and we both went for the option, plus fruit smoothies from an organic health food store next door to the cafe. We sat outside at one of the small tables on the porch in front of the cafe, enjoying our gigantic plates of food and the peaceful setting. The day was a gloriously sunny day and we were sad to be leaving Rarotonga on such a nice day, since we had experienced bad weather for most of the past week.

To drink, Matthias cracked open some coconuts and we drank fresh coconut juice from the shells

Everywhere we turned in Cook Islands, we saw chickens roaming roadsides; there was a mixture of hens, cockerels and little chicks. It was at Knocker's Cafe that we found out that chickens like to eat eggs, when we fed some of the ones roaming around the grass by our table. Yes, it was horrible that we fed them some pieces of scrambled eggs, but we figured it would be good to give it a go, since we had previously experimented with something similar with pigs, by feeding pieces of sweet and sour pork to a couple of them that were living at a guesthouse we had stayed in when we visited Chengdu, China, earlier in the year. The pigs (yes, we are talking about animals) wolfed the food down, by the way, just like pigs. After a great lunch and amusing discovery about chicken cannibalistic ways, we headed back across the street to the airport to wait for our flight.

When it was our turn to board the plane, we were faced with a tiny propeller plane and could tell from the start that everything on Aitutaki would be more laid-back and relaxed than our week on Rarotonga, or on the islands in French Polynesia that we had visited for two weeks prior to that. The trip over only took around 45 minutes and we couldn't see anything below because of the thick clouds hovering over that part of the world. Thick clouds and gloomy skies had been central to our trip to Rarotonga and we hoped that the weather would be different in Aitutaki. The weather certainly ended up being better there, but it was on and off, bringing us good luck and bad luck with regards to weather during the activities we chose to do.

When the short flight was complete and we landed in the Aitutaki airport, our arrival was met by a Cook Islander playing traditional music on his ukulele and singing island songs in his Maori language. The airport was the smallest airport either of us had ever seen and it was nice to have been greeted in such a manner. The tiny airport was surprisingly efficient, too; by the time we had met up with Matthias, the owner of the guesthouse we had booked for our week on the island, our bags were delivered on the carousel shortly thereafter.

We read, in one of the island brochures we picked up at the airport, that there is a strong cultural identity in Cook Islands, which has been moulded over centuries, and that traditional culture lives on in the performance of song and dance. Cook Islands dancing is fast and frenzied with lots of hip-swinging, when musicians keep the rhythm on hollowed-out slit drums called pate, and the participants wear colourful costumes made from natural fibres found on the islands. These fibres included kiriau (fibre from the young wild hibiscus tree), tapa (bark cloth), flowers, pandanus leaves and shells, feathers, kaka (fibre from the coconut tree), and rito (old and new coconut leaves). We went to our first Cook Islands "Island Night" on our fourth night on Aitutaki, and we were not disappointed with anything; the music, costumes, dancing and energy were out of this world. It was also great to be offered an all-you-can-eat buffet since we had been cooking the majority of our meals for the past few weeks.

During our time on Aitutaki, we stayed in a beach hut at Matriki's Bungalows on the west coast of the main island. The hut we were given when we arrived there was nestled right on the beach with amazing views and scenery. The west coast was where most of the prime accommodation choices were located, both budget and more expensive places, because of the long, pleasing underdeveloped stretch of white sand beach with fantastic views of the lagoon and ocean beyond. We had found Matriki's on the internet back at the end of December before starting on our year-long trip. Since we had noticed that places to stay on Aitutaki were expensive, especially for backpackers like us, and that there was not too much on offer in the way of budget accommodation, we decided to book a place at Matriki's as early as we could, once we were sure of our dates on the island.

Matriki's was run by a New Zealander, Matthias, who had moved to Aitutaki seven years ago to set up home there. He married a Cook Islander woman named Riki and they had a young son together who was seven years old. You can probably guess one of the main reasons Matthias ended up staying on the island, or at least that's what we thought. During our week's stay at Matriki's, we never saw his wife because she was working on Rarotonga as a masseuse, although Dan saw a woman in the window one time who might have been her, and hopefully wasn't some other woman who shouldn't have been there. Kyle heard a child's voice one afternoon, too, and thought that it may have been that of their son.

There were only two beach bungalows at Matriki's. One of them had a room upstairs and a room downstairs and was set up to house two different groups of guests. The bungalow that we stayed in had only one floor and was a private little hut that we didn't have to share. Inside the bungalow were a large bed with a mosquito net (absolutely necessary!) and a small kitchen area with a gas stove and little refrigerator. Matthias supplied a basic set of pots, pans, cutlery and plates, so we had everything we needed to cook meals during our stay.

Outside the bungalow was the shower; it was actually built next to the outer wall of our hut with a screen made from natural materials like coconut palm leaves and sticks; the itself was also made from natural materials, with a thatch roof made of palm leaves and wood throughout. Whilst taking showers, there was just enough coverage to hide our crown jewels, but the shower area was open enough so that we truly felt one with nature. Often, we could see other guests or Matthias walking around the property during a shower, but they could not see below our heads, which were the only things visible above the screen.

The view whilst taking a shower was of the lagoon and the only bad thing about the experience was the groups of mosquitoes hovering around, waiting to choose prime areas of skin in which to inject their anaesthetic when they attacked. Mosquitoes - the most aggressive Asian Tiger type of the species - were actually a big problem on the island and one way we combated them was by lighting mosquito coils that we bought at the local supermarket down the road from Matriki's. The coils worked quite well and we wished that we would have used them at other times during our trip because mosquitoes had been a problem at many other destinations. One last point about the bungalows that we want to tell you is that washing up the dishes was an unusual experience; there was no sink inside our hut and we had to wash dishes in the shower. Oops! One more thing to say was that the toilet was in a separate enclosure about 30 metres away and it was scary at night with everything so dark and spider webs between the plants on both sides of the walkway leading to the toilet.

The day we chose to do a lagoon tour with Matthias was our fifth day on the island, the day on which we had the worst weather of the entire week. The clouds were so thick and dense that the sun couldn't even partially peek out of them throughout the day. We apologise in advance at the poor lighting in some of our photos from that day trip, but hopefully you can look past the bad weather and skies to see the beauty that surrounded us; we certainly did! During the lagoon tour, we experienced a few new things that we had not come across during our first three weeks in the South Pacific.

We were first taken out of the lagoon through a narrow passageway into the deep ocean water beyond the reef that circled Aitutaki's lagoon. We should mention that Matthias' boat was a small outrigger only capable of transporting four people and a driver, and that our lagoon tour was shared with a friendly couple from Florida, in the United States, named Penny and Dan. The outrigger was man-made and seemed to be put together from any leftover parts that Matthias could find, but we somehow made it through the day without sinking. At some points, the journey was rather frightening, especially knowing how strong the currents were in the passageway, where we saw evidence of an old shipwreck nearby in the lagoon.

We were a little pessimistic about being taken out of the safety of the lagoon on the small boat, but Matthias enjoyed taking his guests out of the lagoon to look for sea turtles and other large wildlife that didn't enter the lagoon. With the weather not being as good as it should have been, there were fairly good sized waves crashing into the reef around the lagoon as the currents ran up against it. We were scared when Matthias stopped his boat outside the reef and told us to jump in the water to look for turtles, but we did it anyway. After a few minutes of snorkelling there - we could see the bottom of the ocean floor, even though it was really deep - Kyle's mask broke and he had to return to the boat. Dan wasn't entirely comfortable about staying out there on his own, but he didn't want to miss the chance to spot something, so he swam over towards Penny and Dan who were also in the water.

When Kyle returned to the outrigger, Matthias gave him another mask to use, but it leaked really badly and was unusable. When Kyle was about to climb onto the boat, Matthias asked him to hold on to the side of the boat whilst he drove it towards the others, who had floated quite a distance away due to the strong currents. Kyle had the underwater digital camera in one hand and had to hold on with his other one while Matthias sped away, and the only thing he could think of was that he would be great shark bait hanging off the boat, being dragged along that way. Dan told Kyle that he hadn't missed anything by snorkelling less in that area, but that he had started panicking because the waves were getting larger and the strength of the currents increasing, pushing him closer to the coral reef. He certainly didn't want to end up being a permanent fixture in the reef like the shipwreck, and was happy to get back on the outrigger with Kyle and Matthias!

Once the four of us were all back on Matthias' boat, we saw a not-so-welcome sight a few feet away. A large shark fin was sticking up out of the water and swimming near our boat. The fin was not marked like the reef sharks' fins that we had seen before or read about. Also, Matthias became really excited because it was only the second time he had spotted a shark swimming around the island. He had taken many people on lagoon tours over the past seven years and also many trips himself or with his family, so we felt privileged to experience the sighting with him. However privileged we felt, though, we were slightly worried because an aggressive shark could have tipped the small outrigger or even munched on us when we were snorkelling in the area!

The shark disappeared soon after we spotted it and then we were in for another surprise. We saw a small head pop out of the water in the distance. The head belonged to a sea turtle, so we can claim to have seen one of those creatures, albeit briefly and only its small head. If only the ocean could speak, it might have said at that point that it had a turtle head poking out (hee hee, inside joke). After the ocean sucked its turtle head back inside, we were in for yet another treat. A large humpback whale decided to emerge out of the water, just as Dan was looking off in the distance. We followed the movements of the whale for several minutes and Matthias drove his boat closer to the area where it had come up for air.

Once Matthias turned off the engine, the whale came up for air again, and it was only a few metres away from our boat! We got a great view of the animal's body and tail as it dove back into the water and submerged itself again, but missed the photo opportunity that time. The next time it emerged from the water, we caught its tail on film and you can see this in the photo album. After a few minutes, we spotted a second whale swimming with the first one, but whether they were friends, relatives, or potential mates, we couldn't tell.

Matthias started heading back inside the coral reef after our whale-spotting adventure was finished, and he sailed us across the beautiful lagoon to one of the marine reserves. The wind had picked up and the direction it was blowing was perfect for a morning's sail out to one of the island motus. The marine reserve was located near two motus, or small islets, called Honeymoon Island and Maina. Snorkelling was excellent in the marine reserve, with clear water and brilliant coral formations, and there was also a section with several giant clams, which were raised in the reserve and added to the existing coral reefs. All that we observed besides the giant clams was a continuous stream of many different kinds of fish.

At one point in the marine reserve, Matthias stopped his outrigger at an area where the sandy lagoon floor dropped off several feet. His boat was anchored in a shallow section of water a couple of feet deep and the water at the drop-off was about fifteen feet deep. There were a few large coral formations with many fish and the water was really calm, so the visibility was amazing. The four of us grew tired and more waterlogged by that point of the day, and were happy to hang up our masks and snorkels to head to Maina Motu for lunch. By the way, we had to take turns using a mask and snorkel because Matthias hadn't brought extras. We suggest that you make sure your boat driver has plenty of snorkelling equipment during any lagoon tour that you take because it was a hassle, and less enjoyable, not being able to snorkel at the same time.

Matthias cooked lunch for us on the deserted and uninhabited motu. During his 30 minutes of cooking, we walked around the island and observed several red-tail tropic birds that made their nests on the island; we saw several baby birds who were stranded in the nest as they grew, waiting for their parents to bring them food and for their wings to grow. There were no mosquitoes on the island, but several of those birds and millions of hermit crabs. The island had a couple of sandbanks that we were able to walk out on during the low tide. If only the sun had come out, it would have made the perfect setting even perfect-er.

Lunch was grilled flying fish, baked kumara (Cook Island sweet potato), baked taro root, fresh bananas, fresh papaya, and rukau, a traditional Cook Islands dish made from cooked leaves of the taro plant and some other herbs. To drink, Matthias cracked open some coconuts and we drank fresh coconut juice from the shells. It was a very unique experience that we both enjoyed quite a bit. Kyle had issues eating the fish off the bones, so passed his to Dan after trying a few bites, but he enjoyed all of the rest of the food. Dan loved the fish and everything else, too, but agreed with Kyle that the baked taro root was his least favourite of all of the items. The rukau was tasty!

Apart from snorkelling during our lagoon trip, we also snorkelled straight from the beach where our bungalow was situated. We only ended up going snorkelling once there, even though we had intended to go a second time to take more photos. Next to the coral formations in the lagoon, we saw a couple of small eels and many fish, some of which were quite large. Purple starfish were everywhere and we soon found out that they were more common than we had thought them to be when we saw our first and only one when snorkelling in Rarotonga the week before. The lagoon at Amuri Beach was shallow enough to stand up in and, as a result, we were able to swim out quite far towards the outer coral reef.

On the Sunday that we were on Aitutaki, we rode bicycles to the main town of Arutanga in order to attend Sunday mass at the large Christian Church there. We had rented bicycles for the week from Matthias and we used them to go anywhere on the island that we needed to go, like the supermarket. Many Cook Islander women attending the service wore finely woven rito hats and most of the congregation sang along to the church hymns in their Maori language. A baptism meant that the mass was twice as long as we expected it to be and the two hours went by very slowly, but at least some music and songs broke up the long sermons. We had no clue what they were singing about, but there was an interesting choice of hymns that morning. Another reason the service was so long was because it was delivered two-fold. First, part of it was spoken in Maori and, second, that part was then repeated in English. This happened over and over and was a painful contribution to the long running time.

One afternoon, we decided to hike to the top of the Maungapu peak, which was right in the middle of the island. At the top, we expected to gain a 360 degree view of the island from all sides. The morning we had decided to do the short 20 minute hike was a beautiful, sunny morning, but as soon as we started uphill, it started clouding over. When we were halfway up, it started pouring down with rain, causing us to have to stop and take refuge under a large banana plant to wait out the storm. When the rain stopped, we continued walking to the peak and slipped and slid all the way, since the ground had turned muddy and slippery from the amount of rain that had fallen in such a short period of time.

We met up with the Irish couple from Dublin that we had met at Aremango Guesthouse in Rarotonga the night before we left; they had come to Aitutaki for a couple of days as well, and decided to do the hike on the same day that we had chosen to do it. We all agreed that the views were superb, but would have been much better had it not been so cloudy after the rain. The weather was typical of our luck in Cook Islands, but at least the short downpour forced the mosquitoes to take shelter, so we didn't have many problems during the hike!

Even though we cooked most of our meals in our bungalow, using the basic self-catering facilities there, we did manage to eat out a little bit. In our bungalow, we ate pretty much the same things that we had eaten at other destinations in the South Pacific we had already visited: scrambled eggs and toast, tuna mayonnaise sandwiches and pasta with mixed vegetables. We did, however, buy a 12-pack of burgers that grilled up quite nicely in a frying pan and were a treat to chop up and dump into a large pot of pasta sauce!

When we ate out, we had the most delicious fish and chips either of us had ever eaten. The fish that was used at Tamanu Beach Resort was parrotfish. Once we got over the fact that the beautiful fish was caught for human consumption, we devoured the plate. One early evening when we had visited Pacific Resort, we were given some free wontons, as it was happy hour at the bar we were hanging out in, writing travel stories; the wontons were served with soy sauce and sweet chilli sauce as dips, and were delicious. We kept the plate near us, so other people who came to the bar after we started eating them would think that they were ours, and they wouldn't eat any. On our last night on the island, we rode a long 5 kilometres on our bicycles, against the wind, to Samade on the Beach Resort. There, we shared a coconut curry wahoo dish that was served with rice, salad and baked kumara. The only other time we ate out during our week on Aitutaki was when we attended "Island Night" at Puffy's Bar, where we enjoyed a variety of local dishes on their all-you-can-eat buffet.

Matthias and Riki had two cats, Tiger Lily and Marmalade. Dogs were banned on the island because it was once believed that they carried leprosy, but cats were okay to have as pets. Of the two animals, Tiger Lily became our friend whereas Marmalade was more of a passer-by. When Tiger Lily wanted - she was very fickle and always had to get her way - she would stop by the bungalow and meow or purr loudly enough for us to take notice. At that point, she either wanted to (a) get some attention and affection, (b) be fed some scraps of food, (c) be let inside the bungalow to chase our live-in geckos, or (d) all of the above. The answer was "d", by the way. She was a great cat, but could get slightly leery if she was through with your attention or affection; there were a few times that she lashed out at us and Kyle had some scratches to prove it. By the way, the cat loved tuna mayonnaise leftovers and gave us the best "puppy dog eyes" we have ever seen on a cat.

At the time of our trip to Aitutaki, they were filming episodes of the British reality TV programme "Shipwrecked" on one of the motus. We kept seeing a group of the crew members at different resorts that we visited during our stay. Apparently, every contestant in the show stayed on Aitutaki even if they were kicked off the island on the TV programme. Anyone getting kicked off before the series ended was given a bungalow at a luxury resort with all of their meals and entertainment paid for until the TV programme's series finished, and we would have definitely tried to get kicked off and live the lap of luxury for a few months, if we had been given the chance to appear on the show, whilst the other contestants worked hard to stay on the island!

With a week of relaxation, we left Aitutaki very refreshed. We said goodbye to the cats and all of the chickens living in the area - the cockerels were excellent alarm clocks each morning - and Matthias drove us to the small airport to catch our flight back to Rarotonga. We had a few more days there before heading to Fiji, our third and last country to explore in the South Pacific. We were happy with the week on Aitutaki, having thoroughly enjoyed the activities we described above, and the downtime we had reading books and watching DVDs. Getting a lot of sleep there was key, too!