13 minute read
Islands: A whirlwind virtual tour of
Treasured islands
What is it about islands that is so captivating to the collective imagination? Certainly, the idea of being cut off from the ‘real word’ is appealing in modern times. But our fascination goes further back; islands have been romanticised in art and literature for centuries.
No wonder adults dream of island escapes, there are dozens of children’s books in which an island is as important as the protagonists – from the idyllic tropical castaway depicted in The Swiss Family Robinson to the savagery of isolation in Lord of the Flies, with a whole host of adventurous outposts in between.
Radio Four’s Desert Island Discs programme asks its famous guests to choose eight records, a book and one luxury which they would take if they were to be marooned and it’s a question that is endlessly fascinating for listeners because it’s been running since 1942.
Writer Gavin Francis explores the collective fascination with islands in his book, Island Dreams, mapping an obsession. He uncovers many reasons to hanker after island life, revealing them as catalysts for self-reflection and transformation; inspiration and awe; isolation and peace.
Leaving the romantic notions of islands aside, there is one very strong reason to recommend them for a holiday right now. Thanks to their natural geographic isolation, many islands and island nations have fared well in the pandemic, with low infection rates and successful track records of handling what cases do arrive on their shores. The government’s green list demonstrates this by
Treasured islands
including several, ranging from the isolated rock of St. Helena to easier-to-reach archipelagos like the Azores (see page 76). It’s likely that more islands will follow as the list is revised so, in anticipation of this, we wanted to offer some snap-shot inspiration for your next island escape. Prepare to whizz around the world and visit some incredible islands...
AFRICA
Islands aren’t what spring to mind when you think of Africa but dotted all around the continent there are some of the world’s most alluring and culturally diverse. Kenya’s Lamu Island has gorgeous beaches and sapphire seas, as well as being a centre of Swahili and Islamic culture for over 700 years.
There is geographic and biodiversity too. Rising from the Atlantic, 300 miles west of Senegal, Cape Verde is an island chain with a collection of landscapes that don’t seem to belong together – wildflower covered mountains and ashen volcanic plateaus within and dreamy beaches of many shades all around. Beside Egypt and Eritrea in the east are Red Sea islands marking underwater marine parks of dazzling biodiversity. CLASSICS: Floating off the Sahara are the politically Spanish Canary Islands, mixing Saharan sand dunes with pine forests, lava fields and cacti-sprinkled plains. Madagascar is an ex-French colony home to rare and wonderful creatures seen nowhere else on earth – like the lemur. Zanzibar, off the coast of Tanzania, is where Africa meets Arabia, with idyllic beaches, fields of rice and cloves and the ancient trading port of Stone Town.
ZANZIBAR, TANZANIA HIDDEN GEMS: Atlantic Principe is a lush island of crumbling old cocoa plantations and deserted banana-coloured beaches. Rubondo Island on Lake Victoria in Tanzania is home to chimpanzees, forest elephants, giraffe and rare antelope. Mozambique’s Bazaruto Archipelago has four islands blessed by pale sand beaches, wild orange and cashew trees and a marine park home to dugongs.
ASIA
Indonesia and the Philippines are home to approximately 17,000 and 7,000 islands respectively, ranging from Java, which is the world’s most populous, to tiny Bohol which is home to the world’s smallest primate, the goggle-eyed tarsier. Islands like Langkawi in Malaysia and Koh Samui in Thailand are home to numerous luxury resorts, while the stunning limestone outcrops and lagoons of Indonesia’s Raja Ampat Islands have just basic homestays and a few dive resorts. But it’s the variety of Asia’s natural resources which stands out. Many of its islands are in the coral triangle, an epicentre for biodiversity. CLASSICS: Shared between Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, Borneo is one of the most biodiverse islands on the planet, its thick forest and rivers hide orangutans, pygmy elephants, clouded leopards and saltwater crocodiles. Hedonistic and hippy Koh Pha Ngan in the Gulf of Thailand is famous for its full moon parties and silky beaches. Bali is a frangipani-fragranced paradise of golden and black sands, temples and terraced rice paddies. HIDDEN GEMS: The Philippines’ Siquijor Island is famous for its mountain-dwelling healers as well as its beautiful white-sand beaches, caves and
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waterfalls. Japan’s Taketomi Island is culturally significant for its traditional houses with red tiled roofs and its roads of crushed coral are plied by buffalo carts. Havelock in India’s Andaman Islands boasts platinum beaches and pristine mangroves, forest and coral reefs.
THE CARIBBEAN
of the year – that’s not all there is to impress. You can windsurf in Barbados, go jungle trekking in Puerto Rico, snorkel with turtles in the British Virgin Islands or explore crumbling colonial plazas in the Dominican Republic. Cayman has a population of less CLASSICS:Saint Lucia’s than 200 and its capital is called Pitons, its pointed peaks Blossom Village, where you go to smothered in greenery, are its get away from it all. The Caribbean is practically an crowning glory. The biggest island adjective for tropical paradise. Most in the Caribbean, Cuba invented the travellers go for the beaches and mojito and its time capsule capital renowned resorts but return for the Havana is one of the world’s most laid-back culture. You can see Dutch atmospheric. Barbados has blissful architecture in Aruba, Spanish beaches, a UNESCO-rated capital casas in Cuba, French restaurants and one of the most legendary in Martinique and British red phone Friday night parties in the world, at boxes in Grenada. The region is Oistins Fish Fry. the home of reggae music, while HIDDEN GEMS: Dominica is many islands have their own annual known as the nature island carnival and all have a hotspot for thanks to its jungle-clad mountains its most popular pastime – ‘liming’, with bubbling hot pools. Montserrat which simply means hanging was famously devastated by a out with your mates. volcanic eruption in the 90s While the beaches are legendary – Protect but is a nature lover’s paradise with a Antigua alone has our islands surprising slice of Irish one for every day The World Land Trust protects culture. Little and sustainably manages important eco-systems around the world, including islands. Best of all, it supports those who live there. worldlandtrust.org SIARGAO ISLAND, PHILIPPINES
EUROPE
The islands of Europe are certainly diverse, ranging from the arctic wilds of Svalbard, stalked by polar bears, to sun-scorched Mediterranean isles like Malta.
Sweden, Norway and Finland (in that order) can claim the largest share of islands on the planet, yet how many can you name? Gotland is one. The Swedish island has pretty sandy beaches, sculptural sea stacks and the remarkably preserved Medieval Viking town of Visby. CLASSICS: Ibiza has it all – white-washed towns of tapas bars, legendary nightlife and quiet beaches and hilltop villas where
SANTORINI, GREECE
SAINT LUCIA
you can recover. Santorini’s sheer cliffs topped with blue-domed villas marooned in the deep blue Aegean are quite simply iconic. Croatia’s Hvar boasts impossibly clear sea lapping its pebble beaches, while inland are lavender fields and terracotta-tiled villages. HIDDEN GEMS: Visiting Saaremaa in Estonia is like stepping back in time, its quaint little villages are swaddled in fragrant forests of pine, spruce and juniper. Around ten people live year-round on Faroese island Mykines, protected by its turf-roofed houses and accompanied by flocks of puffins who nest on its dizzying cliffs. The smoking volcanic mount of Stromboli off the coast of Sicily inspired J.R.R. Tolkein’s Mordor and its ashen slopes contrast with white villas draped in bougainvillea.
EASTER ISLAND
LATIN AMERICA
This diverse region stretches between hot and cold extremities. Down south, the British territory and penguin paradise of the Falkland Islands will appeal as much to history buffs as to nature enthusiasts. At the hotter end of the scale, the islands of Mexico’s Sea of Cortez are legendary amongst divers, with Jacques Cousteau famously calling it ‘the world’s aquarium’. It’s also got some of the most remote but sought after islands in the world – Ecuador’s Galapagos, famous for their unique species ,and Chile’s barren Easter Island, which has a mystical allure thanks to its monumental and enigmatic statues.
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THE MALDIVES
CLASSICS: Nicaragua’s Corn Islands are famous for Creole culture, log book-ticking diving and pristine beaches; Ambergris Caye is Belize’s biggest island, where you can snorkel the world’s secondlargest barrier reef. Brazil’s Ilha Grande is a popular getaway for Rio de Janeiro natives, a car-free zone of forest and stunning beaches. HIDDEN GEMS: Chile’s Chiloe archipelago is famous for its colourful wooden houses on stilts and lush green forests. Omotepe is a twin-volcano island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, green and unspoilt with ancient petroglyphs to see. Colombia’s rocky Malpelo Island is loved by divers for the proliferation of sharks that patrol its depths.
THE MIDDLE EAST & INDIAN OCEAN
While Dubai is famous for its artificial islands, home to mega resorts, there are also natural islands around the Arabian peninsula. Abu Dhabi’s Sir Bani Yas is home to Arabia’s largest nature reserve and flocks of flamingos.
The islands of the Indian Ocean were barely known by British travellers 5o years ago but have since become synonymous with barefoot luxury thanks to a proliferation of five-star resorts, most notably in the barely-there desert isles of the Maldives CLASSICS: The author Mark Twain said that heaven was copied from Mauritius, a vertiginous isle bursting with beaches and botanical delights and mixing French, Indian, African and Arabic culture. Almost every resort in the Maldives is its own private island ringed by pristine white sand and swaying palms. Praslin is the Seychelles’ most photographed island, thanks to its silken sand beaches backed by granite boulders and a forest home to rare bottomshaped coconuts.
HIDDEN GEMS:
Reunion is Mauritius’ drama queen sister, a black rock ringed by beautiful beaches and an interior of emerald forests, waving sugar cane and a rumbling volcano. Socotra is an almost mythical island belonging to Yemen, famed for its surreal looking dragon blood trees, canyons and giant sand dunes. Oman’s Dimaniyat Islands Nature Reserve protects a large number of sea turtles and rare birds.
NORTH AMERICA
Frozen Alaska and tropical Hawaii couldn’t be more different but they have an abundance of islands in common. Alaska’s Kodiak Island is home to as many as 3,000 of the largest grizzly bears in the world while Hawaii’s Maui is pounded by the biggest waves on the planet and inland its diverse interior ranges from lush bamboo forests to the
TAHITI
Mars-like Haleakalā National Park.
Canada has countless islands. They range from Vancouver on the Pacific, where totem poles peek out from moss-smothered forests, to Prince Edward Island on the Atlantic, where red cliffs and white sand beaches surround a bucolic farmland interior, the setting for the Anne of Green Gables books. CLASSICS: Florida’s Sanibel is visited for its dazzling shellstrewn beaches nosed by dolphins. Sitting off San Francisco, Alcatraz or ‘The Rock’ was home to a notorious penitentiary that housed prisoners including Al Capone. Nantucket Island in Massachusetts is loved for its pretty lighthouses, vineyards, beaches and clapboard houses. HIDDEN GEMS:Jekyll Island in Georgia has bone-white beaches, atmospheric forests of live oaks dripping in Spanish moss and a grand hotel which was once the world’s most exclusive club. Manitoulin Island, the largest freshwater island in the world, is located in Lake Huron, Ontario and is rich in native culture. California’s five Channel Islands are a national park famous for whale watching and dramatic, vista-filled clifftop hikes.
THE PACIFIC
Most of the islands in the Pacific are barely specks on the map, but zoom in and you’ll find that these scattered pearls over the world’s largest ocean each have their own unique personality. In Fiji you’ll find Hindu temples and curry houses, while the French heavily influence Tahiti’s gastronomic delights.
Tonga is a proud kingdom where Christian churches abound, where as New Guinea is a patchwork of tribal lands, many of which are farremoved from the modern world. What all these far-flung islands all have in common is mesmerisingly beautiful scenery above and below the water. CLASSICS:French Polynesia’s five island groups range from the fecund mountains of Tahiti to the flat castaway atolls and lagoons of the Tuamoto islands. Fiji’s unhurried culture matches perfectly with its exquisite desert islands and sultry jungles. The Cook Islands’ Aitutaki is one of the world’s most sublime lagoons, lined with tiny deserted islands, or motus. HIDDEN GEMS: New Caledonia is a sophisticated French enclave where desert islands have pine trees and cowboys work an outback-style landscape of red earth. The volcanic islands of Vanuatu are where a visiting New Zealander got the idea for bungee jumping from the locals, who leap from jungle platforms with tree roots tied to their ankles. Samoa was birthed by a series of volcanic explosions which created fertile jungles and intriguing features, like the To Sua Ocean Trench, a deep natural swimming pool surrounded by tangled jungle.
