Aitutaki, Cook Islands, South Pacific

“I’m not a big snorkelling person, so it takes a lot to impress me when my face is in the water. This did. For the hour I spent swimming around, I was surrounded by thousands of colourful fish, I spotted brightly coloured starfish for the first time in my life, I saw the most colourful coral ever, and I was terrified of the giant trevallies. While they were harmless and left us alone, I couldn’t help but notice their teeth as they glided by. Swimming through a shipwreck was a particular highlight, as I didn’t think I’d ever get to do so without going diving.”

“The handful of humans in view, whether on lounges or drinking in bar shacks or walking on sandbanks, have little to say – why would you ruin all this by talking? – so the only sound is the oar dipping in to the water. Even that seems extravagant so I drift for a while, lie back in the kayak and look at the sun and the clear sky. I make a circuit of one of the islands, looking at the palms along the shores, above whose height no structures are allowed to rise here by law, and glance out at the breakers beyond the reef that encircles and protect the islands that make up Aitutaki and flank that lustrous lagoon.”