Islands Mag Cook Islands Aitutaki Travel Review

Like a dancer in the firelight (opposite), Aitutaki Lagoon shifts and shimmers without changing.

S t o r y / p h o t o s / j a d d av e n p o r t

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then /now/ Once a fuel stop on the Coral Route in a bygone era of luxury air travel, Aitutaki is now a heaven all its own

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The runway of clear water where Tasman Empire Airway’s flying boats once landed hasn’t changed much since big jets changed air travel.

skimming at 200 miles per /aitutaki hour over the wind-scrolled South Pacific, I spot the bright turquoise then/ lagoon from five miles out, glowing in the

noon sun like an opal on a jeweler’s velvet tray. I make my way forward, passing Brigitte Bardot coiled like a mink in 4A and the Duke himself snoring two rows ahead of her. He tied one on last night at Aggie Grey’s bar in Samoa. That’s why we’re running late. When John Wayne shouts for a full round of mai tais, you really can’t say no, pilgrim. I poke my head into the cockpit of the Aranui, Tasman Empire Airway’s 45-passenger flying boat. Like Brigitte, the Aranui is a double-decked beauty with a sleek hull and a set of props to make grown men purr like the Hercules engines that spin them. “Welcome to the most glamorous airport in the world,” St. Pierre announces above the roar, pushing up his Ray-Bans. Like the rest of the crew, he’s

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barely in his 30s. And like them, he earned his wings in places like Midway Island and Guadalcanal. He puts the Aranui into a yawing left turn, and 90 seconds later we’re buzzing over the lagoon at 100 feet, so low I can see coconuts on the trees. “Hold on to your Bloody Marys, boys,” St. Pierre says. Rita Hayworth is clearing away a dream of filet mignon when I get back to my seat. She flicks a smile and her silver Ronson as I tap out a pair of Lucky Strikes. “We have a quick refueling stop in Aitutaki,” she says, taking a long, cool draw. “We’ll be in Tahiti by sunset.” I sink into the leather wingback seat for a silk-soft touchdown that’s rudely interrupted by a grinding jolt. The Duke wakes from his tipsy slumber, but nobody spills any champagne. Aitutaki’s semi-international airport is little more than the jetty and a couple of thatched ­p alapas. Beyond the palapas a dozen grass-skirt-

clad Polynesian beauties are practicing the hula, their laughter chiming like crystal bells. The crispy aroma of coconut oil and baking pork wafts from an umu oven. “I missed you, Ruru!” John Wayne booms as he tosses a barefoot youngster in the air. Before I can even take my Tony Lama boots off, Sam Mackey, the Irish airport manager, hands me a highball glass that’s sweating so I don’t have to. “Tide was shy and the tail clipped a coral head,” he apologizes. He’s sending the Aranui on to Papeete without us for repairs; another plane will pick us up soon. In the meantime, he’s rounded up some islanders for a luau and some dancing later tonight. And the tiki bar? Well, the tiki bar never closes. A dark 21st-century cloud drifts across the sun, blotting out my 1950s fantasy. But I’ll be damned if the lagoon doesn’t just glow all the brighter. If this island is heaven, then I think God just turned on the pool lights. | aitutaki now >>

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even 20 feet down in /aitutaki Aitutaki Lagoon, the water so clear I can feel the sun come out from now/ isbehind a cloud, and the warmth soothes

away my goose bumps. It’s late afternoon, and I’m free-diving off Maina Motu at the southern tip of the lagoon. Schools of yellow butterflyfish scatter before us like October leaves as Puna, my guide, points out a giant clam as big as a Samsonite. Back on Puna’s banana-yellow pontoon boat, we towel off. The sun goes behind a cloud again, this time for good. Puna casts a wary glance at the curdled gray sky as lightning flickers. He points to a motu on the far edge of the lagoon. A shaft of sunlight sneaks through a ragged gap in the squall, and the island’s long, coral beach burns like filament. A row of coconut palms, their fronds bent silver in the rising wind, sways in unison. “That’s where it happened,” Puna says above the growl of thunder. “That’s Akaiami.” Back in the 1950s during the golden age of air travel, flying boats flew the Coral Route, the Orient Express of the South Pacific. It was a glamorous three-day journey between New Zealand and Tahiti with overnight stops at swanky hotels in

Fiji and Samoa. On the last leg of the journey, the planes touched down in Aitutaki Lagoon to refuel. One of them ran into trouble, and the passengers were stranded on an uninhabited island. Fat, warm drops kiss my face. Puna shoves the throttle forward and swings the bow toward home as Akaiami vanishes in our wake and a curtain of rain. The low-pressure cell has fled the next day when I join Chief Solomona and his cousin Max on an Aitutaki Discovery Safari Tour, a four-wheel-drive expedition around the atoll. With his gelled hair, wraparound sunglasses and popped-collar Aloha shirt, Chief reminds me of a young Elvis. On our way up Maungapu, the highest hill on the island, Chief points out tombstones neatly arranged in front of almost every house. “We bury our dead at home so they will always be close to us,” he says. Later he points out a fat, sway-bellied goat tethered to a frangipani tree in front of a home. “The Aitutaki lawn mower,” he says, pulling up for a photo op. Chief ’s in the middle of giving a lesson on wildboar hunting — “You set the field on fire, then …” — when Max slams on the brakes. For a cat. “Want a picture?” Chief whispers. It’s an orange-brown tabby reclining by the side of the

Aitutaki Lagoon Resort fronts the blue lagoon. ­Opposite: Atoll activities from reef dives to mai tais and fresh fruit fill days without cluttering the mind.

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A turtle’s-eye view of Aitutaki Lagoon suggests both the remoteness of the atoll and the peace that promises, for a day-cruise picnic or a castaway week.

rutted road. “Not really,” I say, and why the hell are we whispering? We’re not on safari for the Big Five. “Aitutaki is cat paradise; dogs are tapu,” he explains with the Maori word that can mean either sacred or forbidden depending on the usage. “A long time ago a missionary’s dog bit one of the ariki’s sons.” An ariki, Chief says, is a high chief descended from the gods. “Ever since then, dogs have not been allowed on the island.” When Chief and Max finally drop me off at the Aitutaki Lagoon Resort & Spa later that afternoon, Chief tells me that I should look up Mama Ruru at the church on Sunday. “She’ll remember about the planes,” he says. Then the two of them spin out in a big cloud of coral dust. That evening I stop by the Tamanu Beach Hotel where the owner, Mike, invites me to stay for dinner and Island Night, the weekly celebration. He makes sure I try the local dishes like ika mata — raw strips of lime-marinated fish — and roku — boiled taro leaf that tastes like sautéed spinach. As the sun settles into the sea, I’m treated to a cultural show of frenetic pate (slit drums) and hipwiggling women in hibiscus grass skirts. As the young dancers shine by tiki torch, however, I ponder their future. The Cook Islands import a staggering 16 times what they manage to export — and most of that in black pearls and copra. They’re betting on tourism now, but you couldn’t even fill Yankee Stadium twice with the number of tourists who visit the archipelago. Only a fraction ever make it to Aitutaki. Deputy Mayor Paul Bishop was my taxi driver from the airport when I first arrived. The island is torn, he told me, about whether to allow day-trip flights from Rarotonga on Sunday, the Sabbath. “What are you going to do? The cost of living keeps going up, and the economy keeps going down,” Paul fretted. “If there aren’t enough jobs here, the young people will keep leaving Aitutaki.” Earlier in the week while exploring the island on motorcycle, I stopped off to ask directions at the Araura Secondary School. A student blew a triton shell to signal it was time to change classes. One of the teachers watched her charges hustle and shook her head. “Everything is taught in English these days. Nobody speaks Cook Islands Maori anymore,” she said. “Our language is dying.” As the Maori war chants and love songs drift out over the lagoon and the Milky Way frosts the sky, I can’t quite imagine anyone — even teenagers — wanting to leave this place. | aitutaki forever >>

/ walk along the beach, watching gentle ripples

fold over themselves like glass origami./

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D e c e m b e r 2 0 0 9 islands . c om

D e c e m b e r 2 0 0 9 islands . c om

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Mama Ruru smiles. A happy sense of eternity in whatever time you have here, that’s the trick Aitutaki turns.

old seaplane airport /aitutaki the manager, Sam Mackey, smiles up to the new airforever/ asportheonroarshis motorcycle. A trim

91-year-old Irishman with thinning ivory hair, he was hired in the 1950s to look after the flying boats as they refueled. Sometimes he flew with them. “It took us exactly 90 seconds to take off,” he chuckles. “I would look at my watch, and if it went a second longer, I’d brace for an impact with the reef.” A plane did hit the reef once, he says, damaging the tail. It had to be sent on without the passengers, who were stuck on Akaiami for a week. “When we finally got a plane in, no one wanted to get on board.” They couldn’t stay in Shangri-La, but Sam did. He married a local woman 20 years his junior. They have six kids and 18 grandchildren. Puna makes another run at Akaiami for me two days later, this time under cloudless skies. Waves lap

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at the crumbling pier where the seaplanes moored. I walk along the beach for a while, watching gentle ripples fold over themselves like glass origami. Where the old terminal used to be is an airy, rustic lodge with raw plank walls, a four-poster bed and hurricane lamps. Vintage posters of the South Seas and black-and-white photos of those halcyon days hang on the walls. Nobody is home, but Puna tells me it is owned by Mama Ruru and her family. I finally meet her a few days later at the Arutanga Cook Islands Christian Church, a square block built from lime and seawater and plastered white. Arched stained-glass windows filter a weak yellow light, and haunting Maori hymns float up from the pews. She’s a tall lady with eyes that turn into half-moons when she grins, which happens often when she talks about the seaplane days. “I was just a kid, maybe 10 or 11. My father would paddle us out to the beach when the planes

came in. I even got to go inside the airplane once,” she sighs. “To me, it was like a flying house.” She clasps her hands when she remembers the movie stars. “John Wayne was so handsome,” she says. “He was huge! He picked me up and threw me in the air. And then he kissed me!” While a launch pumped fuel, the passengers swam in the lagoon. Mama Ruru and her family grilled fish and cooked coconut crabs in an earth oven. “The passengers were in paradise,” she says. “And the pilots … all those young beautiful girls would paddle out and dance for them.” She rolls her eyes. “The pilots were very, very happy.” Even today, Mama Ruru tells me that she’ll be cooking in the kitchen while the grandkids watch TV, and she’ll hear the Duke’s deep voice. “I have to sit down with them and watch the whole movie.” One day, she recalls, a sad stranger with a photograph showed up here at the lagoon. He said

D e c e m b e r 2 0 0 9 islands . c om

he had been a seaplane pilot on the Coral Route. “His name was Sam St. Pierre,” she remembers. “He had a photograph of himself standing beside a palm tree. He told me, ‘That was the most unforgettable day of my life, landing in this lagoon.’” His wife had died and he was just adrift. And then he came across that photograph that meant so much. “He said he wanted to come back here one more time before he died.” He wrote Mama Ruru regular letters Plan your after that, saying he was coming back trip p. 8 8 again. But six months ago, they stopped. “So do you think this pilot died?” I ask her. She looks out the church window and gently shakes her head. A green lawn planted with a dozen white graves skirts past a row of coconut trees to the beach. Her answer is as hushed as the distant surf beyond the lagoon. “I think he will find his way back again someday.” islands.com/aitutaki

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