Honeymoon Happy Snaps.

My God Aitutaki is beautiful. Paradise.

These photos were taken on a vivid colour setting and they STILL don't get close to real life.

Our villa at Etu Moana (AMAZING hotel!)

The tree we loved relaxing under

Lagoon tour fish. So pretty :)

Etu Moana (blue starfish) They were bigger than I thought they would be.

Holding a baby giant clam, so heavy I started sinking!

Adult Giant Clam, crazy colours!

Happy snorkelers!

More photos in one of my facebook albums :)

Honeymoon.

On Thursday night we had a major glitch happen with our honeymoon. The last leg our flying if from Rarotonga to Aitutaki, flying Air Rarotonga. We had scheduled everything pretty well considering there are such limited options for connecting flights from NZ-Rarotonga-Aitutaki

They emailed us saying they had had to bump us from our Aitutaki flight to an earlier flight, the only problem?

Our Air NZ flight didn't touch down until after the new flight had left.

Well, we emailed them back, saying that yes, it was a pretty big inconvenience as we would now have to find accommodation on Rarotonga for the night, cancel a night on Aitutaki [  :'(  ]  and or leave 2 hours after our reception (not ideal!) and spend all of Sunday in airports. Ugh!

So we emailed that to Air Rarotonga, our hotel on Aitutaki giving them a heads up as to what might happen and we researched hotels on Rarotonga and found a couple of options.

The next day Air Rarotonga emailed us back, they hadn't realised that it would mess us around that much so they canceled the whole thing, got us back on our original flight, delayed it by half and hour (in case the Air NZ flight runs late) and generally backflipped.

Which is lovely of them, I don't think a major airline would ever do that. But I think Zac may have some gray hairs now, going through that little 12 hour experience!!

Cyclone Pt 2

Well, the hotel sounds like it is still standing. The manager replied to our email and had to torture us by mentioning that it was sunny outside on the lagoon and some guests were kayaking.

photo from Lonely Planet Images

Nice to know. Thanks. Wish we were there already!

Cyclone.

We heard this week that Aitutaki was hit by Cyclone Pat. Direct hit and 80-90% of houses have been damaged. I always knew the lagoon was in a top spot for cyclones so I've been checking in during cyclone season and I was so sad to see the damage. Apparently the elderly people on the islands said they can't remember a worse storm.

We don't even know if our hotel is okay, we will probably call them this week.

I'm not even worried about the resorts at the moment, I am just hoping that the people are going to be ok (no one died - thank God!) and that their livelihoods would get back on track quickly.

Here are some pictures from the New Zealand Herald.

Here is a video report from TV NZ.

Aitutaki.

So this week we started booking our flights for our honeymoon!

Eep!

Really can't wait, we are so excited about going away together... and we're going REALLY AWAY to the middle of the Pacific, middle of nowhere. We are heading off to the Cook Islands, to a little lagoon called Aitutaki. It's small, it's beautiful and we have a boutique beach-front villa all to ourselves! Looking forward to getting away and having a holiday where there isn't anything to do, other than relax and do the things we love - snorkeling, riding bikes, kayaking, golf and EATING.

Here is where we are going:

Aitutaki lagoon and beach:

Our Villa:

photos via google image and tripadvisor.com