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Aitutaki-Land of Impossible Blues | Tony Bridge

It is said that life is a spiral, that at the end of our lives we have travelled around a Great Circle and returned to the place where we began. Sometimes it takes a sense of place, or rather a sense of Displace, to realise this. It was only on Aitutaki, as our guide explained a little of its history, that I fully realised I had been following the migration back to its source, taking the long circle back to Hawaiiki,  following the humpbacks which come here each year on their long journey from the south. But then all our lives are journeys back to Source. The inkling had begun in Rarotonga when my friends had pointed out the seven waka (canoes) which brought Māori to New Zealand had left from Rarotonga. Now it seemed I had gone back one chain link in the journey. Aitutaki floats in the middle of the Pacific, a delicate turquoise shark’s tooth of islands and lagoon adrift on a vast purple ocean. I hadn’t heard of it before, but everyone I knew who had ever been there spoke in glowing terms. You are going to ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT. Their use of uppercase told me it must be special. I furtively looked at it on Google Maps, read a few brochures and promptly looked away before preconception could poison me. It would only be when I had my feet on the ground and could smell the ocean and feel the sea breezes that I could begin to get to know it, to hear what it had to say. But I sense the blue calling, whispering to me across the night…….

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