Niue
Ok, nothing to do with anything but come on, it’s awesome. You stop, there are coconuts, what more could you possibly want?!
So the thing about Niue is that the entire structure of the island is so very different from the other islands we’ve seen so far. It doesn’t fit into the mold of Darwin’s Theory of Atoll formation (which if you remember from this entry the island forms from a volcano and then as it slowly sinks and erodes, it is surrounded by a coral reef until there’s nothing left except for a lagoon in the middle of a coral reef). As we mentioned earlier, this particular island is an elevated atoll. So it used to be a lagoon surrounded by coral, but the lagoon is now more than 30 feet above sea level and a narrow skirt of coral creates tide pools around the island.
The locals have adapted to this by finding various paths down to the coral shallows, using natural chasms and caves to lead them out to the open water.
And being as lugging your canoe straight up a massive wall of coral would not be the ideal end to a long day of fishing they also had to find ways to store their canoes.
And yes, in case you were wondering – those rocks are very sharp. They’re made from dead coral, and are very jagged. Think razor blades. Great for defense, suck for sea access. As the ocean crashed over them, they don’t get worn down, they break off into new jagged peaks.
Tiffany managed to scrape herself pretty badly on one of them…
