Travel with Indigo

Nuie, at forty miles around and 162 square miles, is said to be the world’s smallest sovereign democracy. Monaco, at just a single square mile, is by far the smallest country but a principality. Though self-governing, this tiny island has a defense pact with New Zealand, but what might be gained from invading the place is not apparent to the casual observer. The Kiwis also provide a heavy subsidy, and perhaps as a consequence of this the locals are indeed almost uniformly heavy. The island’s populace is a mix of Polynesian/Maori and expat New Zealanders and Aussies.

From its tourist literature, the crew and I had formed the opinion that this was to be one of our finest stops in all the South Pacific. It has what is reputed to be the clearest sea water on earth, thanks to the absence of muddy rivers, and thus scenic scuba diving. Owing to its substrata of limestone, there are accessible grottoes, caves, and caverns sculpted by pounding surf and the ravages of time. Its diminutive size makes it easily toured in a leisurely day allowing plenty of time for bar stops.

What we had failed to take into account, however, was that while the island may sound appealing to us it apparently was not so to the locals. A population that in 1966 was 5,200 is today something on the order of 1,300, a decline of some 75 percent. Mostly they left for New Zealand, an exodus hurried along by the awful Cyclone Heta in 2004, the worst storm ever recorded in the Pacific.

It’s one thing to read about people abandoning their homeland on such a scale and quite another to see its effects. Driving through the fifteen or so villages of Niue is a trip through ghost towns, one after the other. Some are completely without human habitation. Modest homes layered in black mold, front doors waving in the breeze, yards overtaken by the jungle, windows cracked open revealing rotting curtains. In other villages, one or two families remain out of the many that once lived there. These homes, still modest, at least bear signs of life: yards freshly mowed, vehicles parked in front, flowers in the garden. And in a few villages there were signs of life as it once had been with freshly painted and inevitable churches dominating the commons.  The whole effect of Niue was something like walking around in a graveyard on a moonlit night, eerie, otherworldly.

I rented a careworn Jeep wagon and drove Seann, Nina, Tomas and myself on a whirlwind tour around the entire circumference. We stopped at a popular swimming hole carved into the shore side rocks and made our way over treacherous jagged limestone to ocean washed grottoes. It was Easter Sunday, and on this deeply religious island no work or even active recreation is allowed on the Sabbath. We saw the people decked out in their finest, ladies in umbrella-like hats, men in dark suits, but were not able to hear their choirs in the full and harmonious, if dwindling, voices for which the island is noted.

For lunch, we stopped at the premier, and only, resort hotel, which I would award a single star. It was an entirely forgettable experience redeemed only by the cliff-top view over the ocean.

Next day, Captain John, Chef Fiona and Stew Nina and I went for a scuba dive under the supervision of the only dive shop, operated by Ian and Annie. Because there is no proper harbor or marina, we drove to a boat ramp where Ian launched from a trailer their 15-foot inflatable boat loaded down with all our dive gear. Annie then took us a half mile or so along the reef to a spot where a large pod of Spinner Dolphin—the mammal, not the fish–were feeding. Two at a time, we slipped quietly over the side equipped with fins, snorkel and mask and held onto the boat as Annie powered us to the dolphins. At one point four of them were riding in the bow wave of our tiny boat just out of my reach. The apparently frolicsome pod, with numerous new calves, cavorted for our entertainment until tiring of us they went on about the all important business of feeding themselves. We watched them swimming away through water that is the clearest I’ve ever seen. Annie said that at times underwater visibility reaches to 250 feet.

Following this fun, we went a mile or so away to the ominously named Snake Gulley, infamous for its congregation of sea snakes. Along with bears and sharks, snakes are among my least favorite animals, and the sea snake is surely my least favorite of all. About three feet long with the girth of a woman’s wrist, it has the distinction of being THE most venomous animal on the planet. One nip and your bucket is kicked. It took some convincing from Annie to get me into the same ocean with these loathsome critters, and unarmed too.

The reefs at our dive spot, once among the most florid and lively in the world, are now as bereft of life as the villages of Niue, damaged severely by the 2004 cyclone. There was the odd wrasse and surgeon fish and spiny lobster, and a few corals had returned here and there, but these were the exceptions. There were, however, lots of snakes, hidden in rock crevasses in horrible tangled writhing masses. Every twenty minutes to an hour or so they are compelled to rise fifty feet to the surface for a gulp of fresh air then return to their dens. With hundreds of the things spread over the comparatively small area of Snake Gulley, their ascending and descending made a veritable curtain of poisonous serpents on the move. Being told by our guide that they are both poor sighted and timid did nothing to reassure me. When she grabbed one and began to stroke it then invited me to do the same, I declined. They are, it is said, unable to unhinge their jaws as terrestrial vipers do and so cannot nip you except in places like the webbing between your fingers. This too offered little comfort. We left Snake Gully—or Death Valley, as I called it—and moved on to several undersea caves filled with more appealing sea life, like fish.

Now it’s on to one of the oddest island groups in the Pacific.