Destination Cook Islands

We arrived before we even left - that's the thing about crossing the date line. You feel like a time traveller leaving on a Friday and arriving at the destination on the Thursday with  yesterday's date. 

Thanks to Grandma Gun and Rod for dropping us off.  "What?", you say...who's Grandma Gun? Well, Jef has decided (on our way to the airport) that he wants to be a son of a gun, and "Rod and Gun" rolls straight off the tongue, apparently. Where does he come up with this strange stuff? So yeah, Kien was taught to call them Rod and Gun (or Grandma Gun). *Why me?!*



Boarded our plane, and Kien made himself at home.



It was a pretty rough take off with Kien not liking being restrained. I felt sorry for everyone else in our cabin having to listen to him screaming.  



But once we were up in the air he was mischievous as ever. We settled in for some lunch.



He was more interested in grapes and water - dropping them into the bottle, pouring them out, in, out - until they ended up all over the floor. Thank goodness the crew were so lovely and were not phased at all with the clean up. 



Four hours later and we came in for landing at beautiful Rarotonga.



We landed in fabulous tropical sunshine.





An hour later we were strolling along the sandy shores of Muri Lagoon.  It felt like we were in paradise. 







We walked about a kilometer up Muri Beach where Kien enjoyed splashing around on the sand bank. 







The  beach was so beautiful.



It was late afternoon at this point, and we were quickly losing daylight.  



The very next day we were up at 6:30am local time (meaning 4:30am NZ time) to catch our domestic flight to Aitutaki. It was grey and wet, but very warm. The domestic terminal is really neat; chickens (actually roosters) running everywhere. Roosters - what can I say - they are pretty but if I had a shotgun I could have killed every single one that woke me up every 15 minutes. They don't only crow at dawn, much to my surprise. All night.  ALL NIGHT. Then Kien crawled into my bed at about 1am chatting about the roosters.  He took great delight in explaining the noise a rooster makes, and mimicking every one he heard! I can't say I was amused by this. 

Our flight on the Saab into Aitutaki was delightful despite getting coffee spilt on me half way through the 1 hour flight. 



We arrived on this picturesque little island to rain. A short drive from the airport and we in our hut on the beach, situated on the sand, with palm trees surrounding us. The rain eased and we went for a walk to the local store for supplies. When we got back to our hut the sun was out in its full glory.



I couldn't imagine paradise could get better, but I was wrong. 





We had fish swimming around us in the coral. 





We were like whales for most of the afternoon. We rolled and splashed in the shallows of the lagoon.







It was a perfect beginning for a holiday!