Solomon Islands
Duff Islands
Volcanic specks where elders still build ocean canoes and teach navigation without instruments.
Volcanic peaks break the ocean in a ragged line, each steep enough that a canoe is close to shore before you can see where anyone lives. Gardens are cut into slopes that look too sharp to work. The water between the islands runs deep and fast, and it has been read rather than measured for a very long time.
Polynesian voyagers settled these islands centuries before Europeans entered the Pacific, and the seafaring never stopped. Taumako, the main island of the Duffs, is home to the Te Puke, an ocean-going sailing canoe built and rigged by methods carried in memory, teacher to pupil. The Vaka Taumako Project has worked with elders since 1996 to keep both the building and the non-instrument navigation alive, and in June 2021 the community completed the registration of the Holau Vaka Taumako Association to run that work itself. UNESCO has recognised it. The Lata Cultural Voyaging School operates on the island, and its Halevaka building houses students and visitors alongside the school's office, power supply and communications. Two films in the We, the Voyagers series record the voyaging directly.
Solo
Reaching the Duffs means arranging passage and then staying until there is a way back out, which is far simpler to do alone. The Voyaging School's Halevaka can house a visitor, and that is the practical reason a solo trip works here.
- Taumako is home to the Te Puke, an ocean-going canoe built by methods carried in memory, teacher to pupil.
- Elders have taught non-instrument navigation here since the Vaka Taumako Project began in 1996, and the community took the work over as its own association in June 2021.
- The Lata Cultural Voyaging School's Halevaka houses students and visitors alongside its office, power supply and communications.
- UNESCO has recognised the Taumako work to pass canoe building and voyaging knowledge to a new generation.
Reef fish and coconut in every form, on islands that feed themselves without a supply chain.
Breadfruit cooked in hot stones on a volcanic rim with the Pacific on every side.
Psara
Greece
In 1824 this island of 30,000 was destroyed rather than surrendered — a few hundred remain.
Kapingamarangi Atoll
Micronesia
A Polynesian island lost inside Micronesia, its language closer to Samoan than to its neighbours'.
Quabbin Reservoir
United States
Four drowned towns sleep beneath the reservoir; their dead left one hearse at a time.
Matala
Greece
Cliff caves once Roman tombs, then a hippie commune — Joni Mitchell slept in these rocks.
Taro Island
Solomon Islands
A provincial capital on an island low enough that the plan is to move it.
Ontong Java Atoll
Solomon Islands
One of the largest atolls on Earth, with people living on its scattered islets.
Savo Island
Solomon Islands
Megapodes bury their eggs in black sand that an active volcano keeps warm from below.
Kolombangara
Solomon Islands
A near-perfect volcanic cone with its rim broken open, and cloud forest all the way up.