Why is Watopia overlapping a real place? By design?

I was wondering why Watopia is sort of, kind of, matching a real place (Te Anu & Naunonga, Solomon Islands) but also kind of not really either…
If the place is fictitious then why overlap a real place? Couldn’t it be out in the empty ocean somewhere? I also see it is not on the equator or on the international date line so can’t see a link there. Any pearls of wisdom or fun conspiracy theory’s?

Because it’s more fun to ‘kind of, sort of…’ be riding virtually on real islands somewhere in the south Pacific than to see random red traces entirely out in the middle of the ocean your Strava map?