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

forever
Caption 1

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

58

/aitutaki skimming at 200 miles per
hour over the wind-scrolled
then/ lagoon from five miles out, glowing in the
South Pacific, I spot the bright turquoise
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 snor-
ing two rows ahead of her. He tied one on last night
at Aggie Grey’s bar in Samoa. That’s why we’re run-
ning 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, push-
ing up his Ray-Bans. Like the rest of the crew, he’s
60
The runway of
clear water where
Tasman Empire
Airway’s flying
boats once landed
hasn’t changed
much since big jets
changed air travel.
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 sec-
onds 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 refuel-
ing 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 >>
61
 /aitutaki even 20 feet down in
Aitutaki Lagoon, the water
now/ isbehind
so clear I can feel the sun come out from
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 glam-
orous three-day journey between New Zealand
and Tahiti with overnight stops at swanky hotels in
Aitutaki Lagoon
Resort fronts
the blue lagoon.
­Opposite: Atoll
activities from reef
dives to mai tais
and fresh fruit fill
days without clut-
tering the mind.
62
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 wild-
boar 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
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 A turtle’s-eye view
of Aitutaki Lagoon
suggests both the
remoteness of the
atoll and the peace rutted road. “Not really,” I say, and
that promises, for a why the hell are we whispering?
day-cruise picnic or We’re not on safari for the Big Five.
a castaway week.
“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 after-
noon, 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 hip-
wiggling women in hibiscus grass skirts.
As the young dancers shine by tiki torch, how-
ever, 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

walk along the beach, shook her head. “Everything is taught in English
these days. Nobody speaks Cook Islands Maori
watching gentle ripples anymore,” she said. “Our language is dying.”
fold over themselves As the Maori war chants and love songs drift out
over the lagoon and the Milky Way frosts the sky,
like glass origami./ I can’t quite imagine anyone — even teenagers —
wanting to leave this place. | aitutaki forever >>

64 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 65

/aitutaki the old seaplane airport
manager, Sam Mackey, smiles
forever/ asportheonroarshis motorcycle.
up to the new air-
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
66
Mama Ruru smiles.
A happy sense of
eternity in what-
ever time you have
here, that’s the trick
Aitutaki turns.
at the crumbling pier where the seaplanes moored.
I walk along the beach for a while, watching gen-
tle 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 pho-
tograph 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 remem-
bers. “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
after that, saying he was coming back your
trip
again. But six months ago, they stopped. p. 8 8
“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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