"Tokelau" a Tokelau Travel Page by ollyf

The islands of Tokelau comprise one of the world's most hard-to-get-to destinations. In fact, it has been named as part of the "Holy Trinity" of isolated inhabited places, alongside Pitcairn Island and Tristan da Cunha.

Tokelau is officially a territory of New Zealand, and while it is also Polynesian, it shares nothing else with its governing land. Only 1,500 people inhabit these three atolls which are too small even for an airstrip to be built.

The only way to get to Tokelau is by sea, and if you don't have an ocean-going yacht, it means you have to get the infrequent MV Tokelau cargo boat from Apia, Samoa. The round-trip takes nine days and only happens twice a month, which is why so few people have visited this little-known paradise. In fact, official figures say Tokelau receives just TWENTY tourists per year. Perhaps that's just as well.

Being so far away and so difficult to get to is what attracted me to Tokelau. It promised to be an amazing adventure, and it was - everything from sleeping on deck through the high seas of the Pacific to swimming among coral pillars and just imbibing the atmosphere of being in a place where, should I have chosen to stay, nobody would ever have found me.