Question: which island nation is the 10th largest country in the world, as far as total land and sea mass is concerned?
Which country has only about 120,000 people and a total land area of only 811 km2 (313 sq mi) but is dispersed over a whopping 3,441,810 km2 (1,328,890 sq mi) of ocean?
Which country is the only country in the world that sits on both the equator and the 180th meridian - making it sit in all four hemispheres: southern, northern, eastern and western?
Answer: Kiribati!!
Kiribati (pronounced Kiribas) is an independent republic, part of the Commonwealth, and located in the central Pacific Ocean. Kiribati consists of 33 coral islands divided among three island groups: the Gilbert Islands, the Phoenix Islands, and the Line Islands. Christmas Island and Fanning Island are some of the better known islands of these islands and atolls.
Our cruise ship, the MV Zaandam of Holland America Line, left Hawaii for Fanning Island, or Tabuaeran as it is called in the local language. Tabuaeran means ‘heavenly footprint’ - and it does look like that. This 13 sq mile islet, blows the mind. There it was, like a mirage in the desert is shimmered among the waves and clouds. As we came closer, it materialized as a tiny, low island in danger of being swallowed up by the ocean. It is home to about 2,000 people who speak Gilbertese. Ever heard of that language?
Tiny as it is, Kiribati seems full of amazing facts. The country is a full member of the United Nations. Because of the threat of global warming and rising sea levels, the government of Kiribati has purchased land in Fiji so that they can relocate the population should it come to losing their land to the sea.
Kiribati exports coconuts and copra (dried coconut to produce coconut oil). The life expectancy here is only 67 years of age. It’s expected that Tabuaeran will disappear within 50 years. That means many young people here will not be able to remain in their homeland for the rest of their lives.
The opening we would need to navigate to set foot on this land.
There isn’t much on the atoll - a dirt road, a lighthouse, small wooden houses and lots of coconut trees. Unfortunately, after our 2 or 3 days of sailing, the current is too strong to enter the coral ring around the atoll with our little tender boats.
These small islands are all surrounded by an outer ring of coral, like a donut with a hole. An atoll is a ring-molded coral reef that encloses a tidal pond incompletely or totally. It is not always round but can also be long and skinny. Inside the coral ring, the sea is calm and protected while on the outer edge, the ocean pounds the shore line. You may not have heard of it before but you may have seen it: Fanning Island/Tabuaeran was actually used for footage of Gilligan’s island!
The coral ring usually has an opening here or there, sometime quite narrow. At this particular atoll waves are surging through the opening, too strong to allow us in and we can only watch helplessly from the deck as we circle Fanning Island several times before heading off to our next destination, another 4 days away across the equator and the international date line.
But if we are disappointed, I can only image how the local people feel. Only a handfull of ships stops here in a year. A supply ship comes every few month. We had brought gifts for the people and felt so bad that we could not deliver because of wind and currents. Imagine living on such a sliver of land, one of the most remote places on earth.
We feel bad as we sit down to a gorgeous Canadian Thanksgiving dinner that night on our ship, while we leave the atoll to shrink into the horizon, untouched by us, and waiting for the next ship that might or might not make it. We may not have set foot on the island, but we did learn a lot about this unusual and remote country in the vast Pacific.
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