Some pictures from Aitutaki - The Cook Islands. The first two pictures are from a boat trip we took with Matthias, the owner of the tree house. That's his sailing canoe that Elvis is sitting on - we went on a snorkeling trip to the outer reef where we saw eagle rays, giant turtles, giant clams and all other kinds of stuff. The island on the left (Manui Island) is deserted, we stopped there for lunch, Matthias cooked yellow fin tuna over a fire - very nice. Matthias is the type of guy who throws nothing out - he made the tree house, all the furniture, the bathrooms, shower block, he even built his boat. A right CS!
This is our tree house - look carefully and you can see Elvis on the balcony. It was right on the beach, and we could hear the ocean from our room.
The church is the oldest in the Cook Islands - we went on Sunday to hear the singing, which was really beautiful and powerful. The Priest said something to the visitors that you wouldn't hear anywhere else in the world. He said: "It's nice to see so many visitors to our Church - so many white faces in the congregation, you have chosen a good time to visit our island, these days we greet you when once we used to eat you!!" It's true, they did used to practice cannibalism on the Cooks.
The last picture shows the bike we 'borrowed' from Matthias - he didn't know we used it to go around the island though - so don't tell him. You have to have a Cook Islands Driving licence to drive a vehicle on the Cooks, you'll all be pleased to know I passed first time with flying colours, however, you might not be surprised when you hear what the test is. First you hire/borrow/buy a motor vehicle, then you drive the vehicle to the police station, the theory is, if you can drive it to the police station then you can handle a vehicle and the officer promptly issues the licence for a charge of $5 - presumably, if you never make it to the station because you've crashed/drove off a cliff/reversed into a cow - then you you've failed. Why can't it be that easy in England?
Ps all the pictures are from a disposable - the digital wasn't working!
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