Arrived in Aitutaki yesterday in the pouring rain.
Slept like a log, and it’s a much nicer day today. Walked down to the restaurant to hear my name being called. It was a nurse from theatre recovery back home. Apparently there are a whole bunch of nurses from Wellington here on a yoga retreat. I could not for the life of me remember her name, so I tried that old ruse of introducing my husband (whose name I can usually remember) and then leaving a pause hoping she would fill it by introducing herself to him. No such luck, and she then kept on talking for another ten minutes while I smiled and nodded and heard nothing, wondering at what point it would be too late to ask her what her name was, again? Eventually we made our escape and joined the breakfast buffet. The rest of the meal proceeded uneventfully, although I was very intrigued by the man behind us who was showing off a little box with about twenty tiny glass vials inside it containing small colourless crystals. One woman in a leotard was snorting one of the vials while the man was encouraging her to take a deep breath. So, some sort of crystal therapy? Not crystal meth, surely. Apart from him, everyone else there seemed to fit my preconceived notions of yoga devotees – middle aged women in Lycra. Three elderly overweight couples were the only other people present.
After breakfast we thought we’d explore the island on the free bicycles available at the resort. Unfortunately these were very basic and poorly maintained, so very hard work to ride. We gave up after a hot and sweaty couple of hours, and had lunch at the next door resort. The Pacific resort is much swankier than the place we are staying at, which I’m going to remind Simon of every moment I can, as he was in charge of booking the accommodation. Having said that, our room is lovely.
After lunch, which included some possibly unwise cocktails, we rode home for a nap. Who should we find outside our villa but the same unnamed nurse from this morning, this time in a bikini. She and her friends don’t like the pool by their villas so they come over and use ours. Thus I am currently trying to nap with the sound of an all too familiar voice in the background, giving me flashbacks to shifts as the duty anaesthetist: “I know you were just here, but could you come back and chart this patient some oxygen/ another bag of fluid/ a third antiemetic?”