The plane circled over Aitutaki, a coral atoll flung like a handful of pearls across the Pacific Ocean, each islet shimmering in the blinding sunlight. I pressed my nose against the window, gazing down at the lagoon that seemed almost implausibly blue, a colour that should exist only in the overzealous imagination of a travel brochure designer.

It was a view that belonged to dreams, to postcards, to the fanciful notions of paradise conjured by poets and romantics. But this was real, as real as the slight clamminess of my palms and the hum of the small aircraft preparing for descent."

Get an insider's look at the Pacific Resort Rarotonga with Alyssa Statham's guide in First Class Magazine. Click here to read more