On The Road – way2blue – Aitutaki, Cook Islands [2 of 3]

The first stop was Moturakau, nicknamed ’Survivor Island’ owing to its heyday as one of the locations for the 2006 Survivor TV series.   A bit of the set still remains.  [See previous OTR post for a map.]

Basalt is exposed on the  back side of the island.

The larger lagoon cruise company has a cottage on One Foot Island for serving lunch during their excursions.  Our skipper’s plan was to be in & out of this stop before lunchtime.  Leaving this island we passed two fly fishermen standing in shallow water at the edge of a drop off to deeper water.  Surrounded by infinite water.  Couldn’t get to my camera out in time…

There was a row of young trees behind the cottage, each representing a different Polynesian island  This, the saddest sprout, has a band hanging from the sign which is used for climbing palm trees.  Saw it in action on Rarotonga—’you’ wrap the band around the trunk & loop around each ankle.  Then climb up like an inch worm.  Works amazingly well!  (The Maori who demonstrated the technique climbed a palm tree in ~6 seconds.)

A bird for Albatrossity.  Didn’t want to spook it by getting too close.  But can I say I’m not impressed with the nest-building technique.

Couldn’t get a decent photo of an adult as they kept flying around.  Alas.  They have a couple red streamers trailing from the tail that are about twice their body length.  Very cool.  Our skipper had called them red-tailed terns, but they’re actually red-tailed tropicbirds (Phaethon rubricauda). The adults have an almost all-white plumage with a black mask, and a red bill. Tropicbirds catch fish of course—mainly flying fish and squid—by dive-bombing into the ocean.

I became fascinated by the linear hard ground.

Hard ground ran both alongshore and perpendicular to shore.  No idea how/why it forms.

But it had very cool sea slugs hanging out in the grooves.

Close up of sea slugs.