Day 4: Aitutaki to Rarotonga

Sad face: It was time to leave Aitutaki--and Etu Moana--for Rarotonga. We bid farewell to the couples we'd met and the really nice staff.

At least it was sunny, so we could get some good arial Aitutaki views from the plane:

Looking at these photos, I am again sad. It's rare that I want to go back to a place after having been there. But I want to go to here. Again.

And here we are approaching Rarotonga (this is about a 40 minute flight):

See? Mountains.

We had a taxi pick us up and take us to our next place, which was a bungalow on the beach in Rarotonga. This place was on a better beach, but we liked Etu Moana a lot better. For one thing, the manager/owner forgot we were coming, so no one was there to give us a key, etc., like had been planned. We lucked out and found someone to call her--luckily she was just down the road, but still. But whatever, we got in, we were still on vacation, and we overlooked this:

This is a puppy who hung out with us on the beach sometimes. She was so sweet. And friendly! And soft! A good girl.

Here she is right before we named her "Paw Paw."

We walked around, stopped at a sandwich/smoothie place, and looked at the mountains:

We decided to rent a scooter to get around Rarotonga. We almost did not, after seeing a guy return his scooter for a car after seeing his REALLY HORRIBLE ROAD RASH. But I am so, so glad we did. It was so.much.fun. Here is the cool lady getting Justin acquainted with it:

They make you do a road test first, and then give you a temporary. Technically you are supposed to then go to the police station and get a license, but they said we could just roll with the temporary since we were there only a day or two. Here's bad-ass Justin doing his road test:

Scooter licenses are rad:

We went to the grocery store. Because food shopping in foreign countries is so fun. A surprising number of gluten-free items (though we did not purchase any):

Also: an abundance of yeast spreads. Can someone explain--again--their reason for existing? to me?

Other weird items:

I also thought this sign was funny. Who knew kitsch was hot and not just, well, kitschy?

Some of Avarua (i.e., "town").

We ended up getting dinner at The Flame Tree, which was over a lagoon, which had a really lazy eel that we could see. The photos of it didn't really turn out, so here is Justin instead:

We scooted back to the bungalow. Have I mentioned how fun scooting was?