Nauru
Command Ridge
Japanese guns rust on their wartime mounts, still guarding empty Pacific from atop Earth's third-smallest country.
Rust bleeds down the barrel of a Japanese twin-mount gun, its aim still fixed on empty sky. The concrete platform beneath it has cracked but not crumbled. Up here on Command Ridge, sixty-five metres above sea level, the entire island of Nauru spreads out below — reef, road, ocean, everything.
Command Ridge is the highest point on Nauru and the site of a Japanese military installation from the Second World War. During the three-year occupation between 1942 and 1945, Japanese forces fortified this ridgeline with anti-aircraft guns, bunkers, and observation posts to defend the island's phosphate supply. The guns remain on their original concrete mounts, slowly being reclaimed by tropical growth. At sixty-five metres above sea level, the ridge offers the only true panoramic view of the island — the Pacific visible in every direction, the reef flat glinting at low tide. Few countries are small enough that their entire territory is visible from a single ridgeline. Nauru is one of them.
Solo
Stand beside rusting artillery on the highest point of one of Earth's smallest nations and take in the full sweep of the Pacific. The climb is short, the solitude near-total, and the perspective — geographic and historic — is impossible to get anywhere else.
Friends
The wartime hardware and the panoramic views give a group plenty to explore and discuss. The overgrown bunkers and gun emplacements reward poking around, and the scale of the view from the top resets your sense of how small a country can be.
- Japanese twin-barrel guns sit exactly where they were positioned in 1943 — still on their original concrete mounts, still aimed at the sky they no longer guard.
- At sixty-five metres above sea level, the ridge is the highest point on the island — the surrounding Pacific is visible in every direction.
- The military infrastructure is slowly being reclaimed by vines and tropical growth since the Japanese withdrawal in 1945, giving the site a haunted, overgrown atmosphere.
- Only a handful of nations are small enough that their entire landmass is visible from a single ridgeline — this is one of them.
Gedageda — a warming seafood stew of reef fish, ginger, and garlic ladled over white rice.
Chinese-Nauruan fusion at the island's small restaurants, where fried rice meets fresh-caught skipjack.
Kanilai
Gambia
A former dictator's abandoned compound — faded grandeur crumbling in surreal isolation.
Kara-Suu
Kyrgyzstan
The Fergana Valley's largest market sprawling to the Uzbek border, languages shifting with every stall.
Orgosolo
Italy
A shepherds' village where every wall is a political mural painted since 1969.
Flin Flon
Canada
A mining town named after a pulp sci-fi character, built on rock that predates complex life.
The Ring Road
Nauru
Salt air and phosphate dust on the road that loops an entire country in nineteen kilometres.
Moqua Caves
Nauru
Cool freshwater pools hidden inside coral limestone on a Pacific island with no rivers at all.
Buada Lagoon
Nauru
Freshwater shimmers beneath coconut palms at the heart of a coral island, milkfish circling below.