10 essays tagged “islands”.
Tórshavn, Faroe Islands (Denmark)
The Faroe Islands are eighteen volcanic rocks rising sharply from the North Atlantic between Scotland, Iceland, and Norway. The total population is 54,000; the puffin colonies number in the hundreds of thousands. The light is unbelievable. The weather is unbelievable in a different sense.
July 4, 2024
Reine, Norway
Lofoten is a string of granite peaks rising directly from the Norwegian Sea, north of the Arctic Circle. The small fishing villages on the coast, the cod-drying racks, the midnight sun in summer, the northern lights in winter — Lofoten is one of the most photographed landscapes on earth and remains, somehow, undertraveled.
June 8, 2024
Hobart, Australia
Tasmania is Australia's island state, the size of Ireland, with one of the largest temperate-wilderness reserves on earth and a small population concentrated on the eastern coast. The walking, the food, and the genuine emptiness are the reasons to come.
April 15, 2024
Ubud, Indonesia
Bali is several different islands depending on where you stay. The Bali of crowded south-coast resort beaches is real. So is the rice-terraced Ubud Bali. So is the surf-village Bali of the east. The trick is to pick the one you actually want.
July 18, 2023
Stone Town, Tanzania
Zanzibar splits cleanly in two: Stone Town, the densely woven Swahili-Arab-Indian trading city, and the white-sand beaches and spice plantations of the rest of the island. Most safari travellers tack on three nights on the beach. The better trip gives Stone Town three nights of its own.
July 19, 2022
Hanga Roa, Chile
Easter Island — Rapa Nui in the local Polynesian — is the most isolated inhabited island on earth, 3,500 km from the nearest continental coast. The 900 moai are the iconic image; the contemporary Rapanui community living among them is the deeper experience.
September 8, 2021
Papeete, French Polynesia
French Polynesia is at the more expensive and more remote end of South Pacific travel. The Society Islands — Tahiti, Moorea, Huahine, Raiatea, Bora Bora — are the famous core. The Tuamotu and Marquesas groups are the genuine off-grid experience.
June 15, 2021
Oia, Greece
Santorini between 6 p.m. and 9 a.m. is a different island. The cruise ships are at sea. The day-trippers are on the ferry. The whitewashed villages, which spend the daylight hours being photographed, finally exhale. This is the island worth flying to.
June 4, 2021
Nadi, Fiji
Fiji is, in the brochures, a series of identical-looking resort beaches. Fiji as actually visited is 330 islands with significant cultural, ecological, and geological variation; the Yasawas and the highlands of Viti Levu are where the country reveals itself.
May 29, 2021
Puerto Ayora, Ecuador
The Galápagos Islands are the closest thing left on earth to an undisturbed wildlife laboratory — animals that have no significant fear of humans because, for most of their evolutionary history, they had no humans to fear. The experience is genuinely irreplaceable.
May 15, 2021