Endless white sandy beaches, palm trees and fresh coconuts, tropical fish and a coral reef. Does this sound like paradise? It does, but we think it´s for some other reasons than these same white sandy beaches. After spending a little less than 2 weeks on Cook islands, we believe in what we´re saying ;). Read on if you are interested in how our day in paradise looked like!
A random morning on one of the world´s most beautiful atolls – Aitutaki..
Every morning when the sunlight comes through the window shutters and our spacious sleeping room is filled with orange light I take a sleepy look around me and (mostly unsuccessfully) try to grab my phone from the night cabinet to check what time it is. Once I finally find it, I realise it´s out of battery. Right, the battery went off already 2 days ago and I still did not manage to fill it up. What for? I don´t have a signal anyway. I lay back down and start thinking about which day it is. Is it Wednesday, or maybe already Thursday? Ah, who cares, it does not matter! Oops maybe it does matter, what if it´s already Saturday, we are flying on Saturday, omg what if we are missing our flight?! This short moment of weakness passed by quickly and soon I was once again filled with an unimaginable tranquillity that was accompanying us for the last days. Of course it was not Saturday just yet.
On my left side, my big man is snoring (oh sorry, I mean he is breathing deeply), on the right sight our little man is snoring (or probably also just breathing deeply). I seize the moment and sneak out with a cup of coffee, my diary and a pen – off to the beach I go, in my pyjamas. By the way, the way to the beach is maximum 20 metres long. There is nobody there. Such luxury!
All of the sudden I hear giggles behind me. It´s Lu, he came to check if the sea is still so warm today as it was yesterday. He also is still in his pyjamas. With wet feet he pulls me by the hand saying we have to go back to the terrace as Gin has made us breakfast. Whoever said men are totally useless was definitely wrong ;).
Heavy discussions happened at breakfast.
About what we are doing today. Do we go to the beach straight away or an hour later, do we take the kayaks or the car and search for some other beach or do we just want to relax in the garden until it´s lunchtime? Uh, heavy decisions. We opt for the car and random stops on the way – where ever we feel like. Such luxury! No programme, no rushing, no “ticking off” places. And no photo on Facebook at the end of the day.
This is our 4th “offline” day…
.. another day where we do not stare at our phones straight after waking up, after breakfast, while car driving, on the beach or in the evening when we are back in beds, because we just “have to” read or write something important. And you know what? This disconnection feels damn good! The first day it might be a bit odd and you might try and find some free wifi or some other way on how to connect – but when you realise the only way to get online is to buy a 500MB card in the post office, which is closed because of the holiday days, then you can only say: right, I´ll just manage without. In a combination with a not so good German mobile net provider, which also gave me no network this was THE perfect offline scenario. The “no news is good news” strategy seemed to somehow work at our parents as they did not complain too much about us not being in contact all the time ;).
After our lunch in one of the local restaurants (by the way we again had some yummy fresh fish swimming in coconut milk and an obligatory cold beer or to with it) we fall asleep. Yes, just like that in the middle of the day. Even Lu! Such luxury!
In the afternoon we play soccer in front of our villa. Yes, also mom plays soccer. Barefoot.
Actually all three of us are barefoot. The big and the little man are playing like it´s the matter of life and death and I´m trying to get out with as little injuries as possible. I cannot help but imagine how my legs will look like at dinner time when I put on a dress – oh wait, I forgot, we´re not staying in one of the fancy hotels where one has to dress those inconvenient clothes. We´re just having dinner in bikinis on our terrace. Such luxury!
After a dinner which we cooked ourselves, we hit the beach.
I already menitoned it´s only 20 metres away, didn´t I? We drink one more beer watching the sun go down and counting the first stars in the sky. The latest at 10 pm we are sleeping like a log! It´s been a long time since I´ve slept that deep. And of course without an alarm clock ;). Until that orange sunlight comes shining through the shutters.
We cannot afford to have this luxury at home..
.. and of course we cannot even imagine it. For that we would have to change our whole way of living and the way of our making money. Like it or not, we are often hurrying at home, are woken up by the alarm clock day by day (even on the weekends), think about work even when we are not there and feel stressed sometimes – and then there is the mobile phone also, with which we just “have to” post a photo on Instagram every day otherwise “our social life will be over”. Therefore it´s even sweeter if we manage to escape this fast rhythm here and there while we are on holidays. Sometimes we don´t want to, on purpose, and that´s okay, but we really feel like it´s doing us good if we just do not do anything from time to time!
Even though I believe that some of you have envied us those white sandy beaches and amazingly turquoise sea in Aitutaki, we feel like you should have envied us this “offline programme” much more. And this consequent non-thinking about jobs, projects, medical problems, bills and other everyday stuff.
Because luxury today isn´t just white sandy beaches and palm trees (well okay, maybe just a little), the realy luxury nowadays is a complete disconnection from our everyday lives!
*just in case you are not convinced with our version of paradise, there is a new post about Aitutaki with lots of pics of sandy beaches is coming up in a couple of days 😉
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Comments 4
This is really inspiring! Holidays are the only times I really feel I can try this, otherwise I just have a guilty feeling I’m missing out on something! I should probably give it a go at weekends but it’s soooo hard!!
Exactly – we usually never do this, as you said – while travelling we also want to see & experience as much as we can. But this time we deliberately chose to stay 8 days without any plans and just relaxed 😉 Not sure when we are doing it again ha ha 😉 x
So true! I only disconnect when I’m sick. I want to plan a disconnect vacation this year. Thanks for the inspiration!
Welcome Jamie, fingers crossed it works out for you – it´s sooo relaxing 😉