FINDING MANA IN French Polynesia

Five archipelagos, 118 islands, countless patches of ocean heaven... With our trip planner, we help you get your head around exploring the pristine Pacific

- Celeste Brash

I jumped off our small skiff into the sapphire ocean outside of the pass into Ahe Atoll. Immediately, through my mask, I spotted a school of jacks, their bodies glistening silver and gold in the surface-filtered light, their electric-blue edges making them look more of sea than in it.

In a moment, the jacks were far behind. The current propelled me and my three fellow snorkellers towards the lagoon so fast it felt like a carnival ride. The water was glass-clear, so I could see straight to the bottom – at least 20m down – where two whitetip reef sharks cruised over canyons of coral reef that spread like octopus tentacles towards the navy depths of the atoll’s edge. We were now in the pass, with coral cliffs rearing on either side of the 90m-wide waterway. Floating on the surface, it was like looking into a deep river valley, except instead of trees, there was coral and instead of birds, there were fish.

A large Napoleon wrasse nibbled on coral while one of my snorkeller friends dived down for a closer look. I raised my head above water to see the two sides of the pass, both flat land masses covered in coconut palms and bleached-white coral beaches that sloped down steeply to meet the reef. Behind me was some 8,000km of empty ocean and in front was the safety of the lagoon. I felt small. I focused on the Waterworld beneath me again, where fish of every colour swam below and sharks slunk slowly, uninterested in the humans hovering above them.

Five minutes later, after spotting a sea turtle, several barracuda and countless green parrotfish, we found ourselves inside the lagoon where the blues of the shallower water lightened to a glowing turquoise. The ride had been too fast. I wished I could do it all over again.