I like my car. It's pretty and it's fun and it's done me well for four years (apart from the annoying tax thing where the australian taxation office rewards drivers of leased vehicles to pollute the atmosphere).

Since the end of the tax thing, the pretty little car really hasn't done much other than sit in the garage costing for insurance and registration on the odd chance that I may want to take her drivies.

We really only use her as a weekender. Lately all our weekends have been taken up with lugging around large quantities of shtuff (for the various back yard projects we've been playing with), which won't fit in my car. We've also decided that we're really keen on kayaking, and would like to procure (at some stage in the future) some kayaks. These are also not easily luggable using my car. As such, Chris's car is getting (and will continue to get) much more use than my own.

So it is with heavy (albeit sensible) heart *sob sob* that I relinquish my beautiful vehicle to the highest bidder. I have more pics and info here!

So make an offer!! =)

On Saturday Chris and I returned from a (too short!) holiday to Aitutaki, Cook Islands. Aitutaki is a group of small islands within an atoll about a 40 minute flight from Rarotonga.

The basic itinerary was one night in Rarotonga, 7 nights in Aitutaki, 2 nights in Auckland, then home. So we stayed in the airport for the night in raro after reading the "Sleeping in Airports" guide to Rarotonga (ALL LIES I TELL YA!!!), and the last two nights with my brother and his wife in Auckland.

During our time in Aitutaki, we stayed in Are Tamanu Beach Village Resort. It was really quite lovely and luxurious. Our villa was right on the beach overlooking some amazing snorkelling and kayaking areas, and consisted of a massive deck area with table, chairs and day bed, a lounge room with bar fridge (unstocked with anything except water) bed room and bathroom. The bathroom was huge and had a gigantic shower alcove built with glass brick on the internal wall. It was really quite striking.

There are two sections to the resort. We stayed in the more recently built part, named the Manea suites. By all accounts, this is the nicer section to stay in, although we didn't get a chance to look into the older villas to make the comparison for ourselves. They all looked very nice!

We did, however, get to some of the other resorts around Aitutaki and had a look at some of the rooms for potential future visits. We found the following:

Etu Moana Boutique Beach Villas were built around the same time as where we stayed. It offers cheaper accomodation (around $400 - $500ish per night), and more useful facilities (in my opinion). Like Are Tamanu, these villas had a massive deck, bedroom with king size bed, big shower. But they also had a full kitchen (new and very functional), and running filtered water (whereas we had to run back and forward between the bar to get drinking water for our villa, or wait for it to be restocked in the mornings by the cleaners). Etu Moana also has an outdoor shower attached to each of the villas - totally fenced off and surrounded by lush gardens. These villas were really cool! We would probably stay here next time should we return. The only downfall for Etu Moana is that they do not have a restaurant of their own onsite, whereas Are Tamanu does.

Pacific Resort is the higher end of luxury on the island. These villas range from $700 to $1500ish per night. Looking through the rooms you can definitely see why. The more expensive of the villas had a separate lounge room, bed room, massive robe and the biggest bathroom that I think I have ever seen, where the shower was a gigantic glass wall looking out onto gorgeous lush (and very private) gardens. If I had a few million bucks hanging around, I may just stay here for the shower alone. But I don't, so for now I'll just store it in the ideas box for when we design and build our own house. All villas at Pacific Resort are beach front, however the more expensive ones are high on a hill with far more magnificent views. They have gorgeous decks with day beds and tables and chairs, and stairs heading straight down to the beach. Absolutely stunning. Pacific Resort has two restaurants onsite.

And now for a bit about the what we found on the island apart from the accomodation!

Almost every restaurant has at least one cat. Most have three. We didn't see any at Pacific Resort restaurant (although there were lots of geckos wandering around on the ceiling). The cutest by far was the one at the restaurant where we were staying (he was just a baby!!). The best trained was at Samade Beach Village restaurant (although I can't recommend the food or the waiting staff at Samade). He could stand for long periods on his back legs and beg like a dog. We were told he was also quite a successful fisherman (fishercat??), and if people didn't feed him in the restaurant he just walked down to the beach and started getting his own dinner.

The snorkelling was amazing just a short way out from the beach we steped out to from our villa. It is quite shallow and you could walk out for miles and have the water go no further than up to your shoulders. Beautiful, colourful fish swimming around everywhere in the rocks and coral distributed around the lagoon. There are also snorkelling day trips you can go on where they take you out to the deeper water in the atoll. Here the water goes to around 10m or so in depth, and is teaming with amazing fish and clams (including some giant clams!). Everywhere you are, you are surrounded by fish. Just incredible.

The little islands are called "Motu"s - motu meaning "cut away from" or something to that effect, and named such because they are cut away from the main Aitutaki island. We visited four of these motus during our snorkelling day trip. Very beautiful and un-spoiled. My favourite of these was called "Honeymoon Island". According to our skipper (Captain Fantastic!), this was a sand bar connected to the nearest island until only recently when it started sprouting greenery. It now has beautiful, tall coconut palms and other plants everywhere, and has a huge tern and hermit crab population.

We also met the local high school Information Tecnology teacher, Larry. He's a wonderful man with a very interesting life story with MANY years in the IT industry (starting from punch cards, way back when). It seems that Larry retired and moved to Aitutaki so that he could live in paradise while volunteering at the local school. After our chats with him over dinners and breakfasts at our restaurant, I think he has some very lucky students.

Pictures from our trip are available here. Also, for more (surely amazing) views of Aitutaki, wait until the next Survivor series. When we were there they were preparing for the next series. Some of the smaller islands in the atoll are about to be stricken from the day trips due to filming of the new series. I know we'll be watching just to see this paradise again!