Back to school- Honeymoon Cook Islands

Here is a picture of our honeymoon destination. We were fortunate enough to go to the Cook Islands in the South Pacific. There are several islands and we were told through tripadvisor.com that Aitutaki was the prettiest and least touristy of them. The lagoon surrounds the islands and its smaller islands (picture left) the dark spots are the reef and the island lived up to its expectations of being less touristy with great people and overall beautiful.






We decided to roam around the island for a day as all of the island cruises were booked. So my wife and I tried to see all that the island had to offer via moped. The main road was one giant circle/oval with many roads intersecting it. The picture (left) is of myself enjoying some ice cream. The prices for food etc are a bit higher than the US, the NZD or New Zealand Dollar is a little bit less in exchange rate- but the island has to import many of its goods from New Zealand, Australia, and other locations.

We had a great time and I will be putting up more posts about the beautiful islands and our adventures.


OTS Thoughts: It was hard to leave such a beautiful place, but my wife and I did take note of the possibility of coming back to work with the local population. Their lives are much different from our in the states. They live very simplistically with tourism and local crafts being their main income. If I had more time I would have loved to see what the hospital had to offer as we heard that it was a pretty basic hospital (luckily we didn't need to visit it this trip for health reasons). OT on the island would be much different than what is needed in the states and I had not interviewed enough of the population to see how OT would be used. I would speculate from what I saw that we would deal with energy conservation, hand injuries, and some of the children in the school. The island more or less stabilizes a patient and then flies the patient to nearby New Zealand for more in-depth health coverage. We talked with a massage therapist that was trained in New Zealand for the purpose to come back to the island to work and we talked with our driver from the hotel that said she had never left the island.