Solomon Islands
Lake Tegano
A coral atoll cradling the Pacific islands' largest lake, where endemic sea snakes patrol the shallows.
Salt water trapped inside a raised coral atoll, Lake Tegano stretches across the interior of Rennell Island like an inland sea ringed by limestone cliffs and dense forest. The surface is glassy at dawn, broken only by the wake of sea snakes — endemic species found nowhere else on Earth — gliding through water that was open ocean before the atoll lifted.
Lake Tegano is the largest lake in the insular Pacific, spanning roughly 15 kilometres across the eastern end of Rennell Island in the Solomon Islands' Rennell and Bellona Province. The lake and its surrounding forest form part of East Rennell, a UNESCO World Heritage Site — the first natural World Heritage listing in the Pacific. Over 200 small islands dot the lake's brackish surface. The endemic banded sea krait subspecies found here adapted to the lake's conditions after it was cut off from the ocean. Coconut crabs — the world's largest land invertebrates — thrive in the surrounding forest, and freshwater clams are gathered along the shore.
Solo
Rennell Island receives almost no visitors. Exploring a UNESCO World Heritage lake with endemic species and virtually no tourist infrastructure is the kind of deep-Pacific solitude that can't be manufactured.
Couple
The lake's isolation and the strangeness of its landlocked sea snakes create an otherworldly atmosphere. Canoe across a lake that was once open ocean, with nobody else in sight.
Family
Older children with a sense of adventure will find the endemic wildlife fascinating — sea snakes in a lake, coconut crabs in the forest, and a landscape that feels like nowhere else in the Pacific.
- At 155 square kilometres, Lake Tegano is the largest lake on any Pacific island — a body of water that formed when the surrounding coral atoll rose from the ocean floor.
- East Rennell, the raised atoll that contains it, is the first natural World Heritage Site in the Pacific Islands — an entire landscape that exists nowhere else on Earth.
- The lake's sea snakes are endemic subspecies that evolved from marine ancestors trapped when the atoll emerged; they patrol the shallows in numbers that make wading a quietly unnerving experience.
- Rennell has no regular commercial flights and receives visitor numbers in the dozens per year — access by small charter aircraft keeps the island in the category of destinations that most people will never reach.
Coconut crab — the island's prized delicacy — roasted whole over coconut-husk coals.
Freshwater clams from the lake shore, steamed in coconut cream with wild ginger.
Hideaway Island
Vanuatu
Post a waterproof postcard from the world's only underwater post office, then snorkel its coral reef.
Ureparapara
Vanuatu
Sail into the flooded crater of a horseshoe-shaped volcanic island where fewer than 500 people remain.
Isla Magdalena
Chile
Magellanic penguins in their tens of thousands, nesting so close you walk through their colony.
Buracona
Cape Verde
At midday, sunlight plunges through volcanic rock and ignites an underwater cave into electric blue.
Anuta
Solomon Islands
Three hundred people share a coral speck half a mile across in the open Pacific.
Roviana Lagoon
Solomon Islands
Head-hunting shrines and coral petroglyphs line a lagoon that launched war canoe raids for centuries.
Nendo
Solomon Islands
Red feather money still circulates on an island where Melanesian and Polynesian bloodlines converge.
Reef Islands
Solomon Islands
Coral islets scattered like gravel across open ocean, reached by canoe navigators reading the stars.