Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Tuvalu: The Least Visited Country in the World

Episode Date: June 29, 2021

Located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is one of the smallest countries in the world. The country has only one proper hotel and that has just 9 rooms. Once you visit the country, there is no car rental service, there isn’t an ATM machine anywhere in the country, and the entire country doesn’t take credit cards. Oh, and good luck trying to get online. Learn more about Tuvalu, the least visited country in the world, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is one of the smallest countries in the world. The country has only one proper hotel, and that has just nine rooms. Once you visit the country, there are no rental car services, there isn't an ATM machine anywhere, and the entire country doesn't take credit cards. Oh, and good luck trying to get online. Learn more about Tuvalu, the least visited country in the world, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now.

Time travel with us every week on the Thuline podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by Expedia's OutTravel the System podcast. I know you'll love to hear the story behind the story. So let me tell you why I think you might want to listen to the Expedia podcast. out-travel the system. This season alone, the show talks to someone on a mission to visit every country in the world. In case you're wondering, the tally stands at 194 out of 197 countries. There's the man who's visited and stayed at literally thousands of hotels, who share some of his favorite unique accommodations and experiences. Or how about the woman who has reached some deep philosophical conclusions about travel and privilege in no small part because of the

pandemic? Get all of this and more when you tune into the show, including larger insights about the future of travel, as well as tips and tricks to maximize your savings for your next trip, whenever you feel ready to head out into the world again. You can find out-travel the system on your podcast platform of choice. To get started, let's get the pronunciation of the country out of the way. It's pronounced Tuvalu, with the accent on the second syllable, not Tuvalu, with no syllable accented. Tuvalu lies in the South Pacific, about 700 miles north of Fiji, and about seven degrees south of the equator. The entire country consists of nothing but coral atolles.

The word Tuvalu means eight together in Tuvaluan, a reflection of the fact that eight of the nine islands of the Tuvalu archipelago were originally inhabited. Tuvalu was settled by Polynesian navigators, and here I'll reference my previous episode on the topic, who probably came from Samoa, which is located about 700 miles to the southeast. One island, according to legend, also might have been settled from people from Tonga. The remoteness and small size of the islands meant they had little contact with the outside world, even as Europeans began mapping the Pacific Ocean.

A Spanish ship first sighted the islands in 1595, but never bothered to stop. They just made note of the island in their log. It was 160 years later until another European ship passed by in 1751, when a British Royal Naval ship sailed past, but they too never bothered to stop. In 1890, a British ship captain by an American, aren't Skyler-Denable? Depester sailed through and named the islands the Ellis Islands. Through the 19th century, there were American whalers that stopped, and there were some Europeans who established small trading posts on some of the islands. In 1892, the Ellis Islands had become a British protectorate as part of

the British Western Pacific territories, and in 1916, it became part of the Gilbert and Ellis Islands colony. During World War II, the Ellis Islands were spared to Japanese occupation. The Americans eventually came to the islands and built the first air strip on the island of Funafuti as well as a port facility. Funafuti served as the staging point for the Battle of Tarawa, which took place in November of 1943. After the war, the airship and port facilities built by the Americans became the bases for Tuvalu's only airport and their main facility for shipping. In the aftermath of the war, there began a process of decolonization of British territories. In 1974, the Ellis Islands had a referendum on if they should separate from the Gilbert Islands to form a separate territory.

An overwhelming 93% of the electorate favored separating. The Gilbert Islands went on to become the independent country of Kiribati. As part of the separation, the revenue-producing phosphate islands remained in the Gilbert Islands. In 1976, they became the Ellis Island Colony. The Ellis Island Colony was only a transitionary institution, however. The eventual plan was to become independent, which happened on October 1, 1970. If you remember back to my episode on the country of Nauru, they had a heyday from the 1960s through the 1980s, where the country, very briefly, was the richest country in the world per capita from their phosphate reserves. Tuvalu never even had that. The islands which make up the country are literally all sand. The country is 100% coral atolls. The highest point in the country is 4.6 meters or 15 feet above sea level. In terms of land area, the country is only 26 square kilometers or 10 square miles,

making it larger than only Nauru, Monaco, and Vatican City. However, its territory extending out into the sea is significantly larger. Its exclusive economic zone is approximately 750,000 square kilometers, or 289,000 square miles, almost 29,000 times larger than their land area. The population of Tuvalu today is only about 11,000 people, which makes it the second smallest country in the United Nations, with only a few hundred people more than Nauru. With so few people, and so little in the way of resources, the economy of Tuvalu is very small.

Its entire GDP is about $40 million per year, which, to put that into perspective, is less than the annual salary of Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes. In fact, Mahomes could double Tuvalu's GDP and still have $5 million left over for himself. What little economy they do have comes from a few sources. Selling fishing rights and foreign aid are the two big ones. A third major source of revenue comes from a quirk of the internet. Each country has a two-letter, top-level domain name for their country. Canada has.ca. The United Kingdom has dot UK and Mexico is dot MX.

Tuvalu lucked out and they were given the dot TV domain. Currently, a full 112th of their economy consists of selling rights to the dot-mx. TV domain name. And there are currently over 85,000 domains registered using dot TV, usually for TV stations or sites doing video. Revenue from this source is expected to increase significantly over the next few years. While Tuvalu makes quite a bit of money off the internet, it doesn't mean that the people in the country have good internet. I visited Tuvalu and stayed several nights there back in 2016. The internet was bad, and that's putting it mildly. Given their location in the middle of the ocean, it's very difficult and expensive for them to connect with the rest of the

world. There are plans to install a fiber-optic cable to Tuvalu, which would radically improve life for its citizens. Life in Tuvalu is different. The largest island in terms of population and area is Funafuti, which is also the capital of the country. By far, the largest feature on Funafuti is the airport runway. Because it takes up so much land, and because there are so few flights. People just use it throughout the week. People might dry clothes on the runway, play games, or ride their bikes. About an hour before a plane is about to land, a siren goes off, warning everyone to stay away from the runway. As I noted in the introduction, Tuvalu is considered to be the least visited country in the world. It only gets about 500 actual tourists a year.

Nauru, which is similar in size, has its own airline and there are regular flights which fly through their airport, and it's also much closer to Australia. Tuvalu, on the other hand, is really far away from anything. The only flights to the country come from Fiji, and then only twice a week. Fiji Airways is the only airline that services the country, so flights are really expensive. Once you're in Tuvalu, commerce can be challenging. There isn't an ATM machine anywhere in the country and no place takes credit cards, as processing them is so difficult because the communications with the rest of the world is so bad. There is only a machine. There is only a machine machine only one real hotel in the country, and that only has nine rooms. It's on a par in terms of

quality with a roadside motel in the United States. There are a few other B&Bs and guest houses where you can stay as well. To top it all off, Tuvalu uses the Australian dollar as its currency, but all its flights come from Fiji, which does not use the Australian dollar. When I flew to Tuvalu, I had to take out Fijian money, then convert it into Australian dollars at the Nandi airport, which was really expensive to do. Everywhere in the country is no more than about 200 meters from the ocean, no matter where you are. I rented a motorbike one day and literally drove as far as I could from one end of Funafuti to the other, and you were never that far from shore.

If you don't bother to stop, you can probably get from one end of the island to the other in about 15 or 20 minutes. There is one issue that tends to overwhelm all discussions of Tuvalu. If you do a search on Tuvalu, many articles will pop up on the exact same topic, global warming. Tuvalu is in danger of disappearing entirely. Because the entire country is nothing but coral atolls, most everything is just one or two meters above sea level. The tides have been rising about 3.9 millimeters per year. It's entirely possible that at some point in the future,

Tuvalo could get wiped off the map. Australia and Fiji have both offered to relocate citizens of Tuvalu, but the government says that would only be as a last resort. So if you truly want to do something different, to go someplace where no one else goes, consider a trip to Tuvalu. Just get yourself to Fiji, catch a flight, and make sure you have enough Australian currency with you. Also, you might not want to wait too long, because you never know how much long Tuvalu is going to be around. The associate producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Thor Thompson.

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