Years ago I read the book An Island to Oneself, by Tom Neale, who describes his experience living as a hermit on a deserted atoll in the Cook Islands. I never imagined I’d see it, but on July 16, after five nights at sea, we entered the lagoon of Suwarrow Atoll, to behold the same vistas that old Tom would have seen back in the 1960s.

After nine months in non English speaking countries we were excited to be able to converse easily with the locals here. The population of Suwarrow has exploded since Tom’s tenure, it is now home to two residents, Harry and Taina, who work as park rangers and customs agents.

Harry ran through the local rules during our check in process, which included: “Don’t throw any compost into the lagoon. If you do it will attract sharks and when you go for a swim they’ll eat you.”

I respected his no nonsense delivery. I employ shark motivated parenting techniques as much as the next person, but my threats always seem to lack teeth. Our compost would remain snugly aboard for the duration of our stay.

There are a lot of sharks here. The sound of a person jumping into the water will often attract a handful of curious reef sharks. These aren’t dangerous, but it’s still intimidating when they’re circling you. They are highly efficient carnivores after all, and I’m 100% carn. This situation can sometimes lead to a difficult choice. Do I remain in the water with these predators, or return to the boat to face an even greater danger: homeschooling.

A shark might tear you to pieces, but they’re not like… mean about it.

School has been a bit of struggle recently, it seems like we go through highs and lows. Our schedule is highly irregular. We don’t do school when we are on a passage, and there’s often something else going on which gets in the way, so we just try to squeeze in some school days whenever we can, year round. This lack of a routine is challenging and it’s rough getting started again after every break.

One of the boats sharing the anchorage with us is Wildflower, a family we’ve become great friends with since we first met back on the coast of California. There is no fishing allowed inside the lagoon here, so one day the Wildflower crew motored their inflatable dinghy out the pass to try their luck near the outside reefs. On the way out their dinghy seemed to bump something. They saw a shape in the water, and then heard the hiss of air escaping from one of their inflatable pontoons. They managed to quickly return to their mothership to inspect the damage. The dinghy had a small slash in the bottom, and there was a sharks tooth embedded in the fabric! It was just a small tooth, but… c’mon sharks, that was a bit much!

Considering it’s a deserted atoll our stay here has been quite social. Sometimes the stars align and a group of kid boats end up in the same place at the same time. There’ve been six other boats with kids aboard during our stay, which allowed for some great paddleboard battles and games nights.

We did a few potlucks and beach fires ashore, and the ranger Harry entertained the kids one evening with a flashlight guided tour of the coconut crab population. These strange land based crabs become very active at night. Despite being known as a delicacy, Harry confided that he has never eaten one. They look too much like aliens for his taste.

Suwarrow will be our only stop in the Cook Islands. Next stop: American Samoa!