Whitesands Beach Villas Rarotonga

... Air New Zealand has a great product - consistently good service, new planes, nice food. They just need to fix their frequent flyer programme up and we'd be saying hei kona ra (goodbye) to Qantas.

As we descended down towards Moreton Island I even saw two whales just off shore. What a terrific end to the holiday.

Breezed through immigration and customs and we were in the cab at 8am.

Highlights - Air NZ ...

I was in for a surprise today when I stepped off the tender and discovered all the traffic flowing in the opposite direction. I thought we were still visiting French Polynesia and I quickly realized this was not the case. The first native islanders that I heard speaking had a beautiful New Zealand lilt to their voices as well.

Rarotonga boasts beautiful scenery and breathtaking volcanic cliffs covered ...

... so walked right up to the other end of Muri.

Choices were fish, beef, cheese or chicken burgers. Beef or cheese was $12 including chips and coke. Al wanted fish, I was going to get beef. But they were out of fish, out of beef and out of cheese. They actually only had chicken. Suppose we should have been thankful they had chicken. No idea why, but we also ordered two serves of chips, at $5 a serve! The burgers were good but I had about ten chips ...

Went out on the cross Island trek with the varas crew. Great times, awesomes views. Rooster followed me up from half way.Played in the waterfall at the bottom of the trek. Found my lunch spot. Kai Kai burger just up the road. Some went out on a pub crawl, lots of us stayed home, played cards and had a few drinks.

... and happy.

Paradise Found

Wednesday came quickly and Tim offered Nathalie and me his room to store our backpacks as firstly we were only allowed 16 Kgs on the plane to Aitutaki and the fact we were only going for two days meant that I didn’t want to take Brad with me. And boy did he miss out. Aitutaki definitely lived up to its reputation. We flew in over an amazing lagoon dotted with tropical islands (they film survivor, shipwrecked and many ...

... We have got a new set of wheels, a little Yamaha 125cc motorbike in electric blue that we have named ´The Beauty´ and have been seen zooming around the island on, enjoying our second honeymoon, We have been getting ready for the next leg of the journey that will be taking us to LA then up in to Vagues, along to South Lake Tahoe (for some skiing), down into San Fransisco and back along the cost to LA before heading to Central America.

... imagine of a local bus. The bus was several years old and was at one time equipped with air conditioning. The time of the air conditioning was gone and now the windows were raised on the bottom or lowered on the top. Earlier I described the road as a narrow country road. As with some old country roads, this road was full of bumps and had a graveled edge between the road and the rain forest, the front yards of homes, or the beach areas. We bumped and shook our way around the ...

... second youngest in a group of affluent U.S. senior citizens. One lady in our group is 85 years old. It's just sort of funny how this happens. I'm not actually picking on my group, because they happen to be really decent fun people...but they're still old (sorry Mom & Dad :) I won't bore you all with details of orientation, etc. But it turns out that I'm assigned to the most perfect project in the world. Starting tomorrow morning, I'll be working at a school ...

... BEKIJKEN, VISJES BEKIJKEN EN AF EN TOE OOK OPETEN. WE HEBBEN RONDGEKEKEN OM HIER WAT LANGER TE BLIJVEN EN MISSCHIEN WAT TE WERKEN MAAR ZOALS TE VERWACHTEN WAS, IS HET NIET AL TE EENVOUDIG OM HIER TE MOGEN BLIJVEN. DIT ZOU ONS 500 EURO KOSTEN VOOR EEN VISA EN DAT HEBBEN WE DUS NI MEER. SPIJTIG... WANT ALHOEWEL HET HIER MINDER PARADIJSELIJK IS DAN IN FIJI OF DE GILLI EILANDEN IN INDONESIE, VOELEN WE ONS HIER TOCH MEER THUIS. ENJOY THE PICS!

... stomachs are still intact - for us anyway. I think some are not so fortunate. The days seem to fill easily without doing much. We did watch a carver create Nemo out of a huge block of ice - specially frozen and costing almost a $1000. Very clever work. The evening show was a combination of a Juggler, Comedian (Dave Burke) and singer (Davidia) - more great entertainment with even some of the staff joining in. The multi talented cruise director sang with Davidia with very little ...