We love Aitutaki

But we have left it. Back in Rarotonga surviving the 9 hour wait from 6pm to 3am for the flight to NZ and Sydney. Have walked into town from the airport having left our bags with the fire service at the airport - as you do.

Apparently the reason the flights arrive and depart here at night is so we can't see how short the runway is.

Firstly, sorry to everyone who has posted comments to which we have not replied - we have only just found them!

Adi - theres no swimming with dolphins now because the person running it ran his boat onto the reef, with tourists on board, twice, and was stopped from doing it again. I did go to the hospital, twice, for the ear infection but never found a doctor. All the locals were complaining madly about the doctor. Apparently he was from Fiji and was no good! The two really nice elective doctors from London could not pass judgement. I was washing the ear in liquid Savlon once every hour or whenever possible and after 6 days the infection has all but disappeared. The ear is now coated in dried up Savlon. I would have started the emergeny Augmentin if it had got really bad.

Yes, the yacht club at Muri was very good. That is where we hired the windsurfer. Actually that was probably the riskyist thing we have done. The depth of water over the reef was sometimes less than 2ft and if we had fallen off on the reef it could have been serious.

Yes John - thanks very much for the advice to get going with the blog. We have written diaries as well and will make into a good story when we get back.

Maggie - congratulations for being a grandmother again! Delighted that all is well.

We love Aitutaki. The outstanding thing is the friendlyness of the people. If we stopped our moped to look at the map - everyone passing also stopped to help us. In the shops people we friendly quite often advising us not to buy something because it was overripe or something. And it was not just to us - I noticed they were like that between themselves.

Last Sunday we were standing outside the Christian Church of the Cook Islands - and someone came out and invited us in. I couldn't really understand much of what the preacher said - he was not talking plain English and was talking Polynesian half the time. But the hymns sung in Polynesian sounded much better than in English - more uplifting and rythmic somehow. We were walking away afterwards and someone else directed us to the attached schoolroom for refreshments - local produce and concocksions. Everyone seemed to be really happy. There was no collection.

Then the lagoon is just amazing. Even Delia has been snorkelling for long periods. There are giant clams all over the place and the colours of the fish are incredible. I found a 1.5m moray eel hiding down a hole in the coral. We visited some of the desert islands in the lagoon. They were iconic. Perhaps 200m diameter containing coconut palms in all stages of development in the middle surrounded by white sand beach and turquoise sea. BUT with the air temperature at 35C in the shade and 46C otherwise, the sun's heat reflecting of the white sand made the temperature on the beach >50C - it was like a sauna. You could not stay there long. Even the water temperature in the shallows was about 35C like the jacussi at home.

The the sand was sometimes not sand but ground up coral. Coral breaks in a brittle fashion leaving razor sharp edges - impossible to walk on without shoes.

The islands were inhabited by red billed turns. A spectacular white bird about the size of a rook. They would fly out beyond the reef to fish and get attacked by frigate birds on the way back and made to drop their fish which the frigate birds would often catch before the fish reached the water. Frigate birds are very big but with a pefect swing wing design giving them superior manouvreability.

Our host Fred twice went fishing and caught Tuna and Wahoo - a big thing with teeth like a Barracuda. Fred is also a very good cook so twice we have dinned in style.

It was just as well. When we arrived the 'supermarket' had very little food in it, and the petrol station had run out of petrol but the the cargo boat had just arrived. It took several days to unload and unpack the containers. There is something quaint about everything depending on the arrival of a cargo boat. Then signs were appearing evrywhere like "Just in Stock - nails, envelopes, matches ladders, wheely bins".

Lots more to say but time running out.