Kiribati
Kiritimati (Christmas Island)
Flung across thousands of miles of mostly empty Pacific Ocean, the island nation of Kiribati is one of the least developed countries in the world. Copra and fish are the country's major exports. It is suggested by some that Kiribati will be the first country to disappear completely from the earth as the oceans rise; the government recently bought a large tract of land on one of Fiji's bigger islands to be ready in case the day to evacuate the entire country's population ever comes to pass.
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Christmas Island, the part of Kiribati that I visited, is the largest atoll in the world. So big in fact, that at any one time only a small portion of it is visible out the plane window. This is a shot of London, the principal village on the island with its one main road. Doesn't look like much, but this is actually the most developed part of the island!
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The official name for Christmas Island's airport is Cassidy International Airport. In a nod to how vast the island nation of Kiribati is, this truly is an international airport as there are actually no domestic flights to or from here! Kiribati's internal airlines don't have aircraft large enough to fly over the water from the capital of Tarawa, thousands of miles away, so getting to Christmas Island is only possible on a Fiji Airways flight from Honolulu or Nadi.
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Fiji Airways arrives on Christmas Island once a week. Miss it, and you're stranded at least until the following week.
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The whole village seems to come to the airport to check out the weekly arrival.
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Pretty road along the north coast of Christmas Island from the airport to our hotel.
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The Captain Cook Hotel, my home for the week.
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My first impression of the Captain Cook? Crabs. They are literally everywhere, sharing the walkways and sand with you. Most are nocturnal, so you don't realize how many of them are there until your first sunset on the island. You have to be careful when out at night because it's pitch black and you will inevitably step on one if you're not careful. The results aren't pretty. Below are pictures of the three most common crab types I saw.
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Sunset at the Captain Cook with our hex beam antenna to the left of one of the hotel bungalows.
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Time to rent a car and drive around the island. As the world's largest coral atoll, Christmas Island takes hours to completely circumnavigate. There is almost no traffic and virtually no sign of human habitation for most of the drive. And there are no road signs. For an island with only one main road, I found it surprisingly easy to get lost because most intersections, like the one pictured below, offer no hint of what lies left or right or if there really is any difference either way. I actually had to use my cell phone's compass a couple times to make sure I wasn't going too far off the beaten path.
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There aren't many villages on Christmas Island, but I found it interesting that the few that do exist were always clearly marked.
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Typical house in Banana Village with what appears to be pressed wood for walls and corrugated iron for the roof. The island definitely has a Third World feel to it.
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The highlight of the drive for me, coming upon thousands of nesting terns on the far eastern tip of the island. The cacophony of noises meant that the experience was just as much one of sound as well as sight. The birds nest right up to the edge of the road, so I had to drive slowly to avoid injuring any.
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The terns are very protective of their eggs and won't hesitate to charge a camera that gets too close.
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At the far western end of the island is the atoll's biggest village, London, supposedly named by a homesick missionary. London exists on a long peninsula surrounded on three sides by water, the rolling Pacific Ocean on one side and an open salt water lagoon on the other. The road around the island is set far enough back from the ocean to make it hardly visible, but the much calmer lagoon was a constant companion. Below are a couple shots of the lagoon near London.
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One of the many churches in London; it seemed almost every possible sect was well represented.
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Local girl strolls down main street, London. Like most residents of Christmas Island, she walks barefoot. Observing little details like this kept reminding me that Kiribati is actually a very poor place despite its captivating exterior beauty.
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I thought this was a good microcosmic image of daily life on Christmas Island. The tiny house. The scooter. The person resting on a hammock in the middle of the day. Doesn't matter whether it's the weekend or a week day, they're all pretty much the same here.
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A couple more shots of Christmas Island's very pretty lagoon. Since the waters are calm on this side of the peninsula, the road runs right along the shore without worries of waves or erosion.
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Did I mention Christmas Island has a lot of churches?
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Monument erected to commemorate the start of the new millennium and the fact that Kiribati is the first country to see each new year. In fact, Kiribati's own Caroline Island was rechristened Millennium Island in 2000 to mark that historic event.
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It dawned on me while driving around the island that beautiful coconut trees are everywhere, but you almost never see the actual ocean from the road. It's quite a surreal feeling to be driving for hours up and down the world's largest atoll and not see any signs of the Pacific (the water in the background of this shot is the lagoon).
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I came upon a water tower and couldn't resist climbing to the top in an effort to get a shot of both the coconut trees and the ocean together; no one was there to object to the idea anyway. It was a different experience to be viewing Christmas Island from above rather than at eye level. And climbing higher than the coconut trees was the only way to see the ocean off in the distance. So close, yet far enough away to be invisible most of the time.
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The road around Christmas Island is sat back from the sea for most of its length, so you see a lot of coconut trees but not a lot of water. But there are frequent dirt & sand tracks that make it easy to drive to the coastline for a bit of beachcombing whenever the mood hits. Here's one such shot of the end of a random "road" along the north shore.
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Farewell party for us at the Captain Cook Hotel. The hotel staff made quite a nice feast and put on a great show despite the fact that there weren't very many of us there to appreciate all the effort.
