Why I Chose Rarotonga

I was ten the first time I went to Rarotonga.

My grandparents had taken my mother and me there, and to Aitutaki, for two weeks after my parents divorced.

There is one image from that trip that never left me.

My grandparents were out in a canoe on the lagoon. They were both in their eighties. My grandfather was rowing. My grandmother was knitting.

At some point, the canoe tipped.

It wasn't dramatic. It wasn't staged. It was simply two elderly people losing balance in shallow water.

They both went into the lagoon.

Knitting needles and all.

Later that afternoon, my mother and I came back from horse riding along the beach. The sand was firm near the waterline, darker where the tide had pulled back. The air was heavy and warm.

Outside the room, their clothes were draped over the railing, still heavy and damp. Soap had dried in pale streaks across cotton. The fabric shifted slightly in the breeze.

That was it.

No panic.

No spectacle.

No story told with flourish.

They had fallen in.

They had climbed out.

They had washed their clothes.

The day continued.

"That image lodged somewhere permanent."

Decades later, after my own marriage fractured, I booked Rarotonga.

On paper, it made practical sense.

Close to New Zealand.

Short flight.

No time zones.

One unpack.

A resort with a defined perimeter.

The year leading into that trip had been structurally demanding. Separation. A house sold. Living arrangements reorganised. External pressure. Financial scrutiny. Decisions that required explanation.

I did not want adventure.

I wanted something contained.

One place.

One horizon.

One rhythm.

The lagoon in Rarotonga is held by reef. The ocean beyond it moves with force, but inside the reef the water lies flat and clear. You can see the sand beneath your feet. You can walk out a long way before depth changes.

It looks stable.

Predictable.

"That was the appeal."

I enrolled in a PADI Open Water course before we left.

Fifteen hours of theory completed online. Dive tables studied properly. Equalisation understood. Equipment basics learned.

This wasn't a whim.

And beneath the rational explanation for diving was a private intention.

I wanted to go under in that lagoon.

I wanted to descend deliberately into the same water where my grandparents had tipped decades earlier.

The idea of the knitting needles never fully left.

I didn't believe I would find them. That wasn't the point.

"The point was going down on purpose."

When you've lived through something tipping unexpectedly, choosing to descend feels different.

It feels like agency.

The First Descent

The first descent surprised me.

Not because of fear.

Because of control.

Breathing through a regulator changes the body's response. Inhale and you rise slightly. Exhale and you settle. Sound reduces. Movement slows. Sand becomes visible in fine detail.

There is nothing abstract about it.

You are either neutrally buoyant or you are not.

After months of navigating systems, paperwork, negotiation and external oversight, that precision felt clean.

"For a moment, everything was ordered. Light above. Sand below. Body suspended."