Motukitiu, Aitutaki, Cook Islands

by Melanie@TravelsWithTwo
(Los Angeles, California, USA)

On a private lagoon cruise around the second-largest Cook Island (in the heart of the South Pacific), we hopped off the boat and landed on the soft, white sand of this windswept motu...which we had all to ourselves.

The water's almost ridiculously turquoise, there's a single makeshift picnic table in the miniature jungle (left over from a recent season of the Survivor TV show), and in case you feel lonely, you can clamber for one minute through said jungle and look out from a volcanic-rock cliff towards neighboring One Foot Island, the most visited of Aitutaki's motus.

Here on Motokitiu, we kissed under a palm tree, waded out into the warm, clear lagoon to peek at sea turtles frolicking just offshore, and sat stock still on the sand, just holding each other and listening to the papery shuffle of rushing wind through the fronds above.