Aitutaki, as close to a beach paradise as you could have ever dreamed of.

Aitutaki is everything you would imagine a small South Pacific island to be. It is made up of one main island with a few outlying smaller islands scattered around the most beautiful, emerald blue lagoon I have ever seen. We flew there from Rarotonga not knowing what to expect and were so pleasantly surprised when we came in to land in our small propeller engine plane. We flew so low over the lagoon, made up by a coral reef which surrounds the island, that we felt we could see the turtles and native fish through the crystal clear water.

Upon arriving we headed over to the top of the lagoon to Ootu Beach where we had rented a house through Airbnb (Ootu Beach Villas). Most hotels and resorts are on the Western side of the main island open to the ocean so they don’t have access to the amazing blue lagoon waters that Ootu beach does. Our home was very basic, elevated on stilts to avoid flooding and nocturnal visits by the Tupa (a very large local land crab). However, it had the best possible location and provided us with everything we needed including kayaks which we used every day in the lagoon with the kids. Given we spent all day in or around the water, there was no need for a fancy hotel or resort.

Fish was strangely nearly impossible to find in the stores or at the restaurants even though the waters were clearly teaming with good edible fish.

The blue lagoon outside our door. We almost felt it like ours. We were basically the only people staying there all day long.

We rented a scooter the first day and quickly found out that a tour of the entire island only takes 20 minutes or so.

Interesting facts about Itutaki

There is not much of town but all of the basic necessities are covered with the plentiful food shops. No one shop sells everything. This may be a cartel operation by the shop owners to ensure that whenever anybody shops for food they have to stop at three or four shops. One for the bread, one for the fruit, one for the milk, one for the meat and so on.

There is no real pharmacy or anywhere to buy any medicine other than aspirin or paracetamol.

There are no bananas. Strangely, on an island which grows bananas, you had to arrive early to the fruit shop to buy them as they sold out as soon as they arrived.

There is no fish. Likewise, fish was strangely nearly impossible to find in the stores or at the restaurants even though the waters were clearly teaming with good edible fish. We were told that ciguatera fish poisoning, caused by fish being contaminated with toxins from the coral reef due to global warming, was the main reason. The other reason was that the large Asian fishing fleets park just off of international waters and scoop up all of the fish in their 7km long nets leaving very little for the local fishermen to catch. We were fortunate enough to kitesurf one day with a young local fisherman and his girlfriend (the most attractive Polynesians I have seen!) who sells his entire catch to the Koru Café restaurant where we had our best meal of our stay, and also they have a little playground ideal for the children, specially in rainy days.

There is no mechanic in the island, therefore, rental cars are in a terrible bad shape.

There are a few restaurants on the island (some quite expensive ones at resorts such as the Pacific Resort) but all in all there is not a wide selection. They have good Polynesian dance shows.

On rainy days there is not much to do other than stay indoors and play games. And drink Mate, always.