Travel Well
The mystery and magic of learning to
Sometimes, it takes getting far away from your day-to-day to find the strength needed to truly show up for your life. Here, one writer shares how she rediscovered her sense of self below the surface
The Atlantic Ocean is a turquoise blanket, unfurled to the horizon beyond the white-sand beach of the Grace Bay Club, a luxury resort in the Turks and Caicos Islands
My husband, Adrian, and I haven’t travelled as a couple since I was 16 weeks pregnant with our oldest daughter, who is now four and half. We left home before the kids were awake, and I keep startling to the awareness of something missing, my hands opening and closing like fish mouths, so accustomed to tiny palms nestled inside. I miss our babies, and I’m glad we’re alone. I can’t be someone’s mum on this trip, not while following the trail of my own fascination.
We’re here in Providenciales, an island in Turks and Caicos, to meet Arenthia Baker – who’s one of the few Black women freedivers and mermaids. Mermaid is a legit qualification by the way: it’s ‘an underwater self-expressive art’, certified through the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (Padi). Along with us is Samantha (aka Sammy) Kildegaard, the first Argentinian female freediver to set a national record in her category. There are murmurs of a tropical storm moving towards us, shifting weather reports, but right now, with the sun hanging bright and hot overhead, it’s hard to believe.
Why I’m here goes back to a few months ago, when I watched a woman I follow on Instagram post a video of herself gliding above the ocean floor in crystal clear turquoise water, wearing a bathing suit, unusually long fins and goggles – no snorkel, no oxygen tank. She was freediving. I lost track of time, clicking through all her ethereal videos, and the algorithm did the rest of the work for me. After that, every time I logged in, I saw some version of a barefaced figure clad in a shimmering wetsuit, descending through what looked like a celestial column of light.
At first, the diver kicks, deceptively languid. Then, around 10m down, the kicks stop. In a disorientating reversal of gravity, they free-fall through the ocean, their eyes closed and arms relaxed as they soar down, down, down, to where sunlight disappears and the water deepens to a strange twilight blue, then deepest midnight, lit only by a headlamp, like an astronaut flying through a dreamscape galaxy.
Also known as apnoea, breath-holding or skin diving, freediving is the act of holding one’s breath underwater without depending on any breathing apparatus. Still, I remember thinking there had to be a hidden
