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…while lying on your back or your front in Rarotonga.

It’s 10 o’clock in the morning and I am laid back on a sun lounger peering out to sea. The tide is going out and the lagoon is a shimmering shallow of clear water. The sands to the water are etched with last nights trade routes of the hermit crabs like perfectly ploughed lanes. To watch them drag their homes across the sand is like a young child dragging their responsibility of luggage at an airport. It’s awkward but the crab is unlikely to abandon its duty.

The ocean appears mild and then as I go to write a huge wave crashes into the reef. The palms are bowing to the sands and wafting the shade across my face. Sometimes doing nothing can be so simple, but so complex to achieve that simplicity.

My bit of the beach is really crowded today. The crowd including myself has reached 7 people. Everyone has their own palm privacy and we are spread across the manicured frontage of the property. And everyone has a different perspective both physically and theoretical. I don’t know what they are thinking, but as I peer, the loungers are pointed in different directions and some people are reading, some have their eyes closed and surprisingly I haven’t heard anyone speak. Salutations are waves and those in couples appear to act like some kind of Torville and Dean display by getting into their positions without any fuss or correction. As I tilt my head back, I interweave the backs of fingers with each other and press them up against my face to block out everything around me other than the Palms and the Blue sky above my head. It gives you the feeling of a castaway, but with a motivation to stay not to be rescued.

I do miss not having someone to share these moments. A picture and a few words will help convey what this is like, but there is so much raw beauty that the best way to appreciate its depth would be to just be here. It’s a bit like a kaleidascope, as you twist and turn the picture changes and your emotions turn again and your thoughts change again.

So to my Rarotongan challenge…on my list of things to do on your back…

1. observe nature and the elements just passing by!

When you have this context, the next few come naturally…

2. Thought. What do I want do when I grow up? This is becoming a more regular thought as I turn the corner of the world trip. I had this discussion with a friend in Sydney over a bowl of sloppy long thick noodles. We set out in life to do something and without time to stand and stare you start diluting what you value. It can be your job or your pastimes, but things, often good things, come up to change your direction. Before you know it your aspiration buoy is out of sight, your boat is drifting to a new line and eventual you forget what and who you wanted to be. Living in a fast world you are continually driven into new ports and your compass is replaced by Guides who tell you which direction to head.

So here I am lying in paradise, the only distraction is a bit of Country Music in my ears, so my chance to get out the compass and set a new course for a new destination. Without distraction you can also cogitate too, so assessing what would it need to make it happen, assess the chance of you completing the journey and balancing this with serandipity, because if you find something you want, events will also happen to assist you. Louis Pasteur once wrote “chance favours the prepared mind” and I believe in fate as long as you honestly believe the event is really on your path to fulfilment and not just another nice thing to distract you.

No. 3 Solving life’s problems. As you know I tweet on Behaviours, Values and Culture (although I have been pretty delinquent over the last month!), I try to avoid ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ as it’s a complex subject and gets you into areas of pre-defined thought and prejudices etc. I would like to see a common set of beliefs that this precious old world could share. So here I am in conference, on my back, with myself, and I am putting up observations, ideas and then seeing why the world doesn’t stand together on some stuff. It’s a bit like having a large piece of paper and putting down a problem in the centre then arguing with yourself. The hardest bit is tracking your thought as it is very easy to drift in the warm breeze into …

No. 4 Sleep…

When you are on the next overnight flight, observe the following things that the airline will do for you…a bit of stodgey food, a glass of alcohol, the cabin warms up, they give you a blanket and they put some entertainment on a screen that is hard to focus. Your sleep senses are thinking Hibernate, the airline is thinking Anaesthetise. So, you are on your back with a warm tropical breeze blanket, your eyes are being mesmerised by slow moving natural events and you have probably just eaten a little breakfast/lunch. I also find that reading or writing my blog sends me off too. I guess you have the same dozing sense when reading them too!

But good sleep is great for the body.

See there are loads of things to do on your back…

Let’s flip over… to things to do here lying on your front. My mind is focussed on…

Yes, you have it!…Snorkelling

Yesterday I had my introduction to a larger lagoon a few miles away down the coast road and used my Snorkelling equipment for the first time. Tides are important for what you see but the lagoon pool I would be doing it in is like a bowl circled by a reef that is about 400 to 500 metres in circumference. I dropped my bags off at a Dive Centre and headed out with the basics. Not having a waterproof watch is a bit of a disadvantage as you really can’t work out how long you are in the water. I managed to guage an hour by luck than judgement, but I could have stayed all afternoon. My only fear was that being baked in the UV potent light could be painful. The centre closes at 5pm and they advise you not to leave things on the beach as the local dogs have a tendency to trot off with items. But let me get straight into the Snorkelling…Wow!

From knee deep you start to see fish. Small and golden like the colour of the sand, with their eyes focussed on you. I start to click my camera and then stand up for a replay. My aim isn’t quite right yet, so I am getting 12 megapixels of nothing but a sandy bottom. The camera has got a screen and has the usual zoom lens but the optics are so different between what you see through the goggles and what gets captured. Within 5 minutes of leg flippering (I can’t think of the right verb), I am at a nice 6 to 7 foot depth which seems to be the deepest in the lagoon. This is were the aquarium really starts and your eyes are taken by one fish after another, within 1 to 2 feet in front of you (and behind). Sorry I have gone back to Imperial measures as it is quicker to say. At one point My bouyancy was balanced so my head was just underwater and I was vertical. I stayed still and the fish came to me. It really was one of those moments. I tried my hardest to capture it, but it is going to take a few photo attempts I think.

The colours and the varieties just kept coming. A few large silver ones and some black and white ones like the ‘Nemo’ fish that would swim into the shelter of coral as I got to within a few feet (a metre). Yellow, Blue, Tiger, Black ….Thin, fat, ugly, pretty, it’s all here.

The dive centre had said to watch out for Moray Eels, which are rather large and have big teeth so I tried not to get too close to any holes or lower shelves without having a reccy first. When the final selection of pictures comes I hope I can do it some justice. I do have some video footage but so far it looks like it has been taken by a 3 year old on a bouncy castle.

The tide times are working against me a bit this week. I would need to be out very early to catch high tide or it is coming in later afternoon as the light is fading. Each day it steps a bit later, so shallow water it may have to be. The challenge with shallow water is just that as the swirls of the current push you back and forth the opportunity to nudge into a ball of coral is that much greater. Today’s snorkel did just that. As I paddled slowly between two rocks I was swept into some coral and caught my shin and toe. Some great white shark off the horn of South Africa has probably smelled the blood in the water and is on its way. Coral is as brittle as glass and sharp and you will usually come off second best.

I will put a few sample pictures up now to tease, but more will come when I get to the USA.

So, lots of alternative things to do on your back and front that you may not have been think of in your primary thought. And as you can deduce standing up in Rarotonga is a secondary effort and one left for the important task of walking to or from a place where you need to lie down!