January 31, 2011

Our first full day on Aitutaki was spent in the local island pace. We got to know our bungalow and its surroundings, and the kids spent time on the beach.

After another night of blogging I slept long and missed the opportunity to say good-bye to our British/American friends in the bungalow next door. Helene took this great photo of the girls just before they left:

Iseline was very sad that they had to leave.

The bungalow was spacious and well equipped. We were just next to the beach. Rarotonga had been great, but this was definitely an upgrade. Here is our bungalow:

The patio was great:

And here is the view from it:

Yup, that’s the beach in the background. Let’s move a little closer:

Nice, eh? View to the left:

View to the right:

We had lunch down at the beach. It is now impossible to hide that I have gained too much weight after Argentina. WARNING! Fat belly alert! You have to be over 21 in some states to be allowed to watch this photo:

We did some shopping. I grabbed some shaving foam and was sure I had bought some Gilette foam. Only when we got back did I realize that the brand was a different one:

Made in China. But it worked, and it worked well.

Even though the currency here is the New Zealand dollar, there are specific Cook Island coins that are used interchangeably with the New Zealand ones. Most coins have the same size and color as the NZ ones, just like the different coins you can find from different countries in the Euro zone. However, for some reason, they have decided to make the 2 dollar coin completely and utterly different. Triangular money! Coooool. I have never seen that before. This coin must be a real challenge for vending machine designers:

In the afternoon I went over to a restaurant, after a recommendation from our friends who stayed next door, to get online. I was pleasantly surprised by the speed, it was about the same as on Rarotonga, and about 10 times faster than the line I had used at the airport yesterday. Probably not good enough for remote cardiac surgery, but it would probably do for an appendicitis operation.

I spent almost 5 hours online booking and checking stuff for our stay on the North Island on New Zealand. Helene had already traced out the route and decided number of days in each location using the Lonely Planet guide (eBook version, of course). Now it was my turn to use the net to find good accomodation options and more location info using Tripadvisor and other sources, Being your own travel agency sure takes time, but is definitely worth it. I managed to rent us some very nice spacious private homes in great locations for less than the cost of a cramped hotel room.

We have decided to completely change our itinerary for the rest of the voyage given our experience so far. We will spend 5 weeks on New Zealand, 2 in the north and 3 in the south. Adding an extra week will give us the possibility to stay longer at each place and reduce some of the moving around stress on the kids.

Australia will be cut down from 6 weeks to 4, and we will obviously see fewer places. We will cut Kangaroo island and Adelaide and also spend less time in Sydney and Melbourne. Don’t worry, we will keep our 10 days in Brisbane.

Eirik

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