One Foot Island

One Foot Island — Tapuaetai in Cook Islands Māori — is a small motu on the south-eastern rim of the Aitutaki lagoon, reached by boat from the main island in around forty minutes. It has a beach on every side and nobody living on it.

Aitutaki's lagoon is the reason anyone comes: a triangular reef enclosing an area of shallow water some fifteen kilometres across, dotted with motu, and generally reckoned among the finest lagoons in the Pacific. Tapuaetai is the motu the boats land on, and it has a small post office that stamps passports — a piece of theatre that has become the island's signature and is, for many visitors, the whole point of the stop.

The sand is white coral, the water inside the lagoon is warm, shallow and turquoise, and the reef edge is visible as a line of surf on the horizon. You can wade a long way. Snorkelling is done at stops on the way rather than at the beach itself, where the bottom is sand. The lagoon is shallow enough that the cruise boats navigate by colour, and at several points on the route the crew simply stop and let people stand up in water that is kilometres from any land.

Nothing is built beyond the post office hut and some shade. Boats bring lunch, set it up and take it away. The motu is Cook Islands land held under customary title and access is through the operators.

A motu on the Aitutaki rim with a post office that franks passports and nothing else. The lagoon around it is under two metres for most of its fifteen kilometres, so the colour is extreme and the swimming is wading. It is a stop on a cruise rather than a destination and does not pretend otherwise.