Samade on the Beach

Hi everyone!

Sorry, I am getting very slack with these posts! I've forgotten to bring out my camera again, so photos today (it takes forever to upload them anyway), but I will add them in eventually to their rightful posts!

It's Sunday night here and I am running out of new things to try fast! It is a little worry when you still have another 10 weeks to go!

Today Ben and I were back out at Ootu Beach (it's my favourite beach now!). It's by the airport and on the other side of Aitutaki Lagoon Resort (which sits on its own tiny island). The beach at the resort is nice too, but they are now doing some major constructions all along the beach and have shut it down, which is ridiculous seeing as there are still people staying there. I'd be peeved off if I had to stay there and weren't allowed to use their beach and had to put up with forklifts going back and forth the whole site. It looks like they are trying really hard to clean up the whole place and 'stealing' some nice sand from the sandbars in the middle of the lagoon (it's joined to the end of their beach so forklifts can actually just go right across it - photo later) and putting it back on the beach. Our theory is that they are trying to do this for the forum coming this week - supposedly Hillary Clinton is coming on Thursday, along with Julia Gillard (Aussie Prime Minister) and probably other prominent figures. It certainly has the locals excited, since it's not everyday you get someone so significant visit here!

View of Ootu Beach across Samade on the Beach deck.

Forklifts in the middle of the lagoon... it's certainly something different to look at. lol.

Anyway, back to Ootu Beach. There is a restaurant / accommodation provider called Samade on the Beach there. It's further down from Koru Cafe (just around the corner), but the beach is just lovely here. You have the classic sandy white beach and turquoise lagoon water. You can see schools of lagoon fish literally about a metre from the shoreline. You can swim about 20-30m across to one of the sand bars and you'll look like you are standing in the middle of the lagoon!

Say hello to Ootu Beach!

Samade on the Beach provides meals / limited bar services. On Sundays, they do what is called the "All day BBQ at the beach" between 11am - 9pm (I think). Ben and I went last week, thinking it was literally a BBQ on the beach with something like "all you can eat" barbie. Well, how wrong we were. For $20, it was a platter of food cooked up in the kitchen (yeah, the BBQ was inside the kitchen). Food was nice, but I think we could have done with a bit more of a portion. I think we preferred the food at Koru Cafe for similar money (and they do good coffee there!).

The welcome sign...

The $20, All Day BBQ on the Beach Platter

 The manager at Samade, Adie, also lets med students who are here on electives to use their kayaks and paddles. So we managed to get onto one and get pretty tanned! They are currently fixing the kayaks so we were warned to check beforehand to make sure they had no holes at the bottom. So after a warning and checking the kayaks, we still managed to pick one with a hole. We went down about a 100m before we capsized in the lagoon. It was somewhat of a mission to get all the water out and then drag it back to where we started. We then managed to get an intact kayak each and had some fun. I managed to get a fair way out and saw some rocks with some coral, but didn't see a lot. It has been hot and humid the last few days and I was getting scorched out there!

I have been getting eaten left, right and centre since coming here. I think taking my antihistamines regularly is helping with the itch, but doesn't stop it completely! Now it's the heat keeping me awake at night. Thankfully we haven't been woken up too much since I've been here. I have done a few things, like stitch up someone's head half-asleep at 2am.

I think it is bed time for me. Rather surprising that bedtime has changed to around 10pm since arriving at the Cook Islands but I get pretty tired here. I think it's the heat. I don't know how I will cope later given it's only going to get hotter and hotter.

Take care everyone. Will update more later. Ka kite.