There is blissfully nothing to do except swimming, snorkelling, sailing and dreaming of calling your boss with the news you'll never be back. Cast off your shoes, stick a hibiscus flower behind your ear and hope to stay forever, sitting on a verandah drinking from a coconut shell.Īitutaki has quite simply the world's best lagoon, a vast, shimmering, peacock-hued astonishment fringed by white sandbanks and barely marked by a single building. The only crowd consists of scuttling hermit crabs on the beach. FOR SHOWING OFFĪitutaki in the Cook Islands, which makes main island Rarotonga feel like the big smoke. Ours are awarded to the best islands and beaches in the world, across a range of categories, from fantasy to action, history to (swimming) costumes. Islands are seldom simple and, beyond the obvious stereotypes, that's what makes these mini-destinations such rich pickings for the inquisitive traveller.Īnd so, in the spirit of the famous festival at Cannes and its hallowed Palme D'or (Golden Palm) for best film, we would like to present Traveller's similarly illustrious Golden Palms.
One Foot Island, in the Cook Islands, where coconut trees form a ragged fringe above pristine beaches and swirling blue waters. The best islands are never monocultures, but are rich mixes of outside influences and hybrid inventions. Their isolation has created distinctive cultures and creatures found nowhere else. Their strategic locations and opportunities for trade have made them hotpots of curiosities and cuisines, stirred together over centuries. Yet islands are much more than this, of course. We fantasise about resigning our jobs, and spending the rest of our life on a beach, living off crabmeat, pickling ourselves in rum and shacking up with an island beauty like a character in a Somerset Maugham story. They offer pirate adventure, and castaway dreams, and perhaps the hope of Shirley Valentine-style renewal. Who hasn't been seduced? Islands are a place of escape, of sun-kissed sand and simplicity, removed from the travails of our busy urban lives, maybe even from conventional morality. Their ultimate symbol is the tropical beach, where white sand squeaks, blue lagoons ripple and palm trees are splashed against outrageous sunsets. They fall mango-ripe from the pages of travel brochures, juicy with images of sunlight and surfing, hip-swaying girls and bare-chested boys, pina coladas and lurid sunsets. Like the irrepressible twang of ukuleles in the Pacific, it's hard to get away from the stereotypes when thinking of islands. Bora Bora and Moorea might be more famous, but French Polynesian island Huahine is flamboyantly beautiful and yet scarcely visited.
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