Robinson Crusoe Island

The light aircraft drops below the cloud layer and a volcanic peak materialises from the Pacific — green, jagged, impossibly small against the ocean that surrounds it for 670km in every direction. The runway is a dirt strip cut into the hillside, the village has 900 residents, and a hummingbird with a blood-red chest lands on a branch that exists nowhere else on Earth. Robinson Crusoe Island in Chile's Juan Fernández Archipelago is where remoteness stops being a concept and becomes a physical condition.

Robinson Crusoe Island is the place where Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk survived alone for 4 years and 4 months from 1704 to 1709 — his story became the direct basis for Daniel Defoe's novel. The island holds 150 endemic plant species found nowhere else on Earth, alongside the Juan Fernández firecrown, a hummingbird that exists only in this archipelago. Access is by light aircraft from Santiago — a 2-hour flight with no scheduled boat services, keeping the permanent population at around 900 in the village of San Juan Bautista. The island operates entirely on solar and wind power, with no grid connection to the mainland and no generator noise after dark. The local economy centres on Juan Fernández spiny lobster, pulled from traps each morning and grilled simply with lemon and butter at the village's handful of restaurants.