Look carefully at my map and you will see three tiny yellow dots. The one at the bottom of South America marks the Falkland Islands or Islas Malvinas. At the top of the map is St Helena. Tristan da Cunha Islands are 2,000 kilometres / 1,250 miles to the north, half way to Cape Town and arguably one of the remotest places on Earth.
Tristan da Cunha Islands
Just a few intrepid travellers trouble to visit the 267 inhabitants of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth’s remotest part of her empire, the Tristan da Cunha Islands. There is no airport. The only ships that stop by with any regularity are the icebreaker SA Agulhas II each spring (capacity 100 passengers in 46 cabins), fishing boats from South Africa delivering supplies eight or nine times a year, and the occasional intrepid yacht crew.
When they get there, icebreaker passengers have three weeks to explore a subtropical paradise gathered around an active cone topped with snow in winter and marking where a mantle hot spot wells up from the sea bed. The Tristan da Cunha Islands are a place of exceptional beauty benevolently governed from the United Kingdom, and administered by a governor general assisted by a few officials and a single police officer.
Most visitors base themselves in the Island’s capital, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas that offers home stays at £50 per person per day, inclusive of three meals and laundry. Self-catering guesthouses are half that rate excluding gas and electricity. The governor general decides who stays where, so all islanders share the income fairly.
A single store supplies basic requirements, while the coffee shop serves hot lunches every Wednesday. The locals are warm and friendly towards visitors who support the local economy, but resent those whose sole purpose is to report overseas on what they regard as a quaint, antiquated lifestyle and a museum piece.
The main island of Tristan da Cunha is mountainous except for occasional flat areas where people live and farm. The other three islands named Inaccessible, Nightingale, and Gough are the preserves of albatross and petrels and best left to their own devices. The main island’s centrepiece is Queen Mary’s Peak .
This rises to 2,062 metres / 6,765.1 feet within a footprint of 98 square kilometres / 38 square miles, and is snow-capped in winter so you can ski on a tropical island if you dare and arrive there on an icebreaker.
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