Nauru
The Ring Road
Salt air and rusting pillboxes line the road that loops an entire country in seventeen kilometres.
Salt spray drifts across warm asphalt. The reef flat glitters on the ocean side while palms and houses crowd the land side. Seventeen kilometres of road, and you have circled an entire country.
The Island Ring Road runs seventeen paved kilometres around Nauru's coast, with a three-kilometre spur climbing inland to Buada Lagoon. Nauruans have a word for driving it purely for pleasure, pwepoe, and it is one of the first words visitors learn. The circuit strings together the Naoero Museum, Parliament and the BOE Declaration Monument, while wartime pillboxes surface at intervals in the shoreline green. At low tide much of the narrow fringing reef dries beside the road into a bright shelf of coral, and Nauruans work it with cast nets. Equatorial heat is constant, so most visitors make the lap as a guided drive and end it with a swim at Anibare Boat Harbour, a popular local cooling-off spot.
Solo
Arrange a guided circuit, or walk chosen sections in the early morning with water and local advice. The pillboxes, the museum and the harbour mean the lap rewards curiosity more than speed.
Couple
A shared journey around an entire country inside a day. The rhythm of reef, palm shade, homes and historic stops is meditative, and the sense of having circumnavigated a nation together stays with you.
Friends
Do the loop as a group pwepoe with a local guide, stopping for the museum, the memorial and a dip at the harbour. Looping a country before dinner is a story you will retell for years.
- Seventeen kilometres of paved road circle the entire coast of Nauru, with a three-kilometre inland spur to Buada Lagoon.
- National landmarks from Parliament to the BOE Declaration Monument stand directly beside the roadway, with the Naoero Museum on the same loop.
- Concrete pillboxes built during the 1942 to 1945 Japanese occupation still stand half-buried along the shoreline.
- At low tide much of the narrow fringing reef dries beside the road, a bright shelf of coral between the island and the open Pacific.
Fresh coconuts are drunk straight from the husk at Anibare Boat Harbour, where locals fish and swim off the ramps.
Break the circuit at The Bay on the east coast for Indian and Western cooking beside Anibare Bay.
Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Island (Ross Island)
India
A British colonial headquarters slowly being digested by ficus roots in the Andaman Sea.
Grímsey Island
Iceland
A wind-battered island where you step across the Arctic Circle among a million nesting seabirds.
Khasab
Oman
A harbour fort and dhow basin sit beneath Musandam's bare limestone ridges.
Busan
South Korea
Korea's largest fish market runs live auctions at dawn beside city beaches and cliff temples.
