island called Aitutaki. It's a small island surrounded by a beautiful blue
lagoon with very shallow waters and few boats. A few years ago the TV series
'Survivor' was filmed here. Anyways, we left Bora Bora on the 30th of June,
and after a bit of a bumpy passage (3 days with 12 to 25 knots of wind and
15 to 20 foot seas), we arrived in the pass of Aitutaki on July 2nd. Because
we arrived at around 6:30 pm, we had to drop the anchor in the most
convenient spot for the night before the sun went totally down. Dosia was
already here, and helped us put down our stern anchor before coming over for
a delicious chili dinner cooked by Mommy. The next day we went ashore to
check in and explore a little. Once we were cleared, Margie and Drew on
Dosia took us to the scooter rental place where we got two mopeds to explore
the island on. Margie and Drew already had a scooter and had explored the
island a little before us, so they gave us the tour of the small island
ending with a yummy dinner at one of the local restaurants. On the fourth of
July we had Dosia, and another boat, Big Air over to Zen for dinner. It was
really fun..we watched some funny parts of a movie that Dosia brought, and
JP, a single hander on Big Air brought over some amazing home-made garlic
bread. The next day (my birthday!) we stayed on the boat the whole day and I
practiced playing my flute that I had gotten as one of my presents. On the
6th, we took a tour around the lagoon with a few other couples from hotels.
The lagoon was so beautiful and there were areas where you could walk in
waist deep water for a really long time. My favorite spot was a big sand bar
in the middle of the lagoon surrounded with deeper water, where we jumped
into off the top of our tour boat. After relaxing on the sand bar for a
little while we went snorkeling in the place where huge oyster shells were
grown..they really were huge. Finally, we went to One Toe..I mean One Foot
Island where we had a delicious lunch of fresh fruits, vegetables and fish.
Finally, we got back on the boat after 3 hours on the island and headed back
to Zen. A few days later, we went to one of the resorts to see the coolest
fire and dance show that I have ever seen. There was a really yummy buffet
with all sorts of traditional foods, and then a crazy fire show with about
10 people swinging around fire on batons. It was amazing. Before the fire,
there was a short dance show and Cole and I were invited to dance.
This was written on July 17th-So after a few more days in Aitutaki, we left
on a 2 night passage to Suwarrow. Suwarrow is an atoll that has not been
touched by man, and is a Cook Island national park. A family of 6 (the
parents have 4 boys ages 8 to 13) are the park rangers of this atoll and
help to preserve the wildlife in Aitutaki. They are really friendly and had
every boat in the anchorage come to their open air home for a potluck dinner
last night. It was really fun, and Cole and I played soccer with the 4 boys
ashore and the 2 boys on the boat Whisper. There are many sharks here, but
there are only black-tips in the anchorage and you don't really have to
worry too much about them. But on the other side of Anchorage Island, the
main motu, the boys feed black-tips, white-tips and grays. It's been raining
all night, but it looks like there is sun now! Being closer to the Equater
than Aitutaki, we are getting 82 degree weather again, which feels really
warm compared to the 75 degrees that we were in only a week ago. Well, I'm
going to go read..bye!
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