Niue! Known as the Rock of Polynesia, or just The Rock to the Niueans, the name is apt since the whole island is essentially one meticulously built and intricately sculpted chunk of limestone conveniently uplifted above sea level. Despite being only about 25 km across, there is a lot packed into this tiny little island (it was a great struggle to narrow my photos down to 50!). There is only one flight to and from the island a week and there is only accommodation for a little over 100 people at any given time. In a whole week on the island we never really had to share a track, forest, reef, chasm or cave with anyone else and it was easy to pretend you had the tropical island to yourself. This sense of isolation, of adventure and discovery is what really sets Niue apart. If you want to sit on a beach and drink maitais you are probably better off going to nearby Fiji or Samoa.
Niue supports a population of a little over 1000 people, with almost ten times more Niueans living in Auckland than on the island. Though self-governing, the country is essentially reliant on New Zealand economically and diplomatically. Virtually everyone on the island is bilingual, speaking both English and Niuean. The island was hit hard by a cyclone in 2004, after which many people left or moved. Abandoned houses can be found almost everywhere on the island, slowly being overtaken by vegetation.
Island life seems simple and generally carefree, well exhibited by the fact seatbelts are not required to be worn. Everyone waves or greets everyone else, almost without exception. After only a few hours on the island, you realized you were not being mistaken for a celebrity and are just another person sharing this beautiful place. Christianity is well-ingrained and the island underwent a unique transformation on Sunday. Pretty much everyone would go to church for pretty much the whole day. This meant the roads, stores, houses, the whole island, appeared a completely abandoned ghost town until you pas the local village's church. The island produces little more than vanilla, papaya, passion friut, noni and coconut, which means virtually everything is imported. The food on offer was rather limited, but thankfully we had planned ahead and brought most of our food. The best selection actually appeared to be at the gas station where watermelons and drinking coconuts were on offer. The handful of stores and restaurants on the island typically have "we are open when we are open" hours, with some restaurants requiring you to call ahead so they can be sure to be open for you. Chickens and dogs seem to have free range of the island, with many of the dogs so relaxed they were often mistaken for dead at first glance. Giant nocturnal coconut crabs called uga were a particularly surprising creature to run into in some of the caves. Along with the usual diversity of tropical fishes in the sea and geckos and skinks on land, the island is known for its abundance of poisonous (but innocuous) sea snakes, which we frequently found swimming about while we were snorkeling.
Sara and the sea snake
A clever gecko finds a warm spot (Photo by Sara)
Fishing is a popular activity for the men. On most evenings many of the men go to their stashed outrigger canoe (often in a cave or under a rocky ledge next to the sea) and paddle out to sea to fish until after sunset. At
one popular spot where it is easy to get out to sea, there was a whole
flotilla of men in canoes, seeming to do more gossiping than fishing as
the tropical sun set behind them.
The island is roughly the shape of a dog bowl. The highest point on the island is a mere 70m high and forms a more or less continuous rim or ring around the island with a large flat depression in the center of the island. The island's morphology preserves its former history as a coral atoll, with its interior formerly a lagoon. Outside of this ring at about 30m elevation are a series of terrace surfaces representing former sea levels- it is on these surfaces that most of the island's population and infrastructure is located. Being composed purely of a porous limestone (and some dolomite), there are no surface streams on the island. Before the introduction of wells, the islanders had to retrieve all of their freshwater supply from caves and chasms that cut deep enough into the island to intersect the freshwater lens within it.
Almost continuous sea cliffs drop down 20-30m to the modern fringing reef platform. Every place on the coast was a little different. Along portions of the south and east coasts where there is no fringing reef, the waves batter straight into the cliffs. There is a finite number of locations where access through the cliffs is possible and it is obvious the routes used today are the same ones that have been used since the start of habitation here. In many cases collapses at the back of well-formationed sea caves provide the best access through the cliffs. We often stumbled upon little beachlets tucked against alcoves at the base of the cliff. Waves from the deep blue South Pacific crash on a narrow fringing reef around much of the island, which is exposed at lowest tide and generally makes for nice walking. Where ever we went I enjoyed the challenge of finding creative ways to sling a hammock in a picturesque spot.
It does not take much beach to make paradise.
Although much of the reef is barren (which is thankful as it makes for better walking), channels, guts and pools in the fringing reef make wonderful oases for snorkeling. Many of the pools are overhung, sometimes with
underwater archways that connect to neighboring pools. The diversity of corals and fishes was greater than anywhere else I have been. The water temperature was typically a perfect 27 degrees Celcius and we typically snorkeled at every opportunity that presented itself. In places where freshwater issues out of the island's cave system, a half meter thick layer of cool freshwater sits on top of the seawater. Fresh and salt water mixing in this layer gives it an almost milky quality and the visibility is much lower. It was a surreal experience to dive beneath the surface layer into warm crystal clear water beneath. Some of the better snorkeling pools were associated with sea caves, which was an added bonus.
Snorkeling and cliff jumping in a cave!
Some of the longer tracks on the perimeter of the island cross beautifully rugged stretches of forest-clad karst. We past through mazes of karst towers greater than 6m high, with tropical plants wildly growing out of their pockmarked surfaces. The young nature of the limestone meant the coral fossils in it were incredibly well-preserved, and it was not unusual to see corals over 0.5m across protruding from the rock.
At the periphery of the island, particularly the rough east coast, the lack of soil means the forest gives way to low shrubs and vines, which coat the ankle-twisting and hand-and-knee shredding karst. Within the vicinity of salt spray, the vegetation gives way completely to a complex network of pinnacles, cracks, and crevices. It would be a hell of a place to lose your keys.
In places the karstic terrace surfaces around the island have 20m deep vertical-walled chasms, which resemble slot canyons. These chasms exploit fractures in the rock and seem to be solutional features rather than collapse-related as has been proposed. One of these chasms is floored by white sand and wide enough that a small grove of coconut palms live in the protected environment. Most of the chasms we visited however were narrower and floored by impossibly blue freshwater pools sometimes over 10m deep. Refreshing swims in these pools were often unsettling; the dark recesses below were certainly the things of horror films and the crystal clear water almost gave a sense of vertigo. Strange ancient looking fish inhabited these pools as well as the occasional freshwater eel. In one of these chasms it was possible to free dive the end of a pool and pop up into a blue-lit chamber where the only available light was filtered through the dive. Another popular chasm is connected to the sea and allows for swimming and cliff jumping. These chasms are certainly one of the more adventurous features of the island and I have little doubt some of them have yet to be completely explored...
A key requirement of my perfect tropical island would require caves and
Niue does not disappoint. In fact it has at least four distinct types: freshwater caves, freshwater/saltwater mixing caves, the previously mentioned chasms (which are often roofed over), and sea caves. Many of them appear to have been more active in the past (associated with higher relative sea levels), which makes exploration easier. Although there is no surface water on the island, there is a significant amount spilling out of natural conduits all over the island. In some cases a cave entrance is obvious, in others it is only by diving that you can access the cave system beyond. Some of the caves with only one entrance had very high humidity making a
plunge into any available water body very refreshing. Despite
razor-sharp rocks, we carefully caved in only our bathing suits- a
definite novelty. Many of the formations exposed to the outside were
black or gray in color, but further in many of these caves had lovely
cream-colored formations. In one active fresh/saltwater mixing cave, it was obvious after about 50m that we were the first people to explore it. I have never such dramatically serrated and networked bedrock in a cave before in my life. Certainly one of the weirdest caves I have ever seen (wish I had my camera).
The sea caves are enormous in some cases and largely inactive; it appears many of them
date to a time when relative sea level was several meters higher than
present. I got creative with some large formations and was able to set
up a hammock in some places fit for a king. Although there will be no
cave system immeasurable to man on this island, the ones it does have
are beautiful, fun and very unique.
I did my research beforehand and managed to
find most of the caves I hoped to visit. Along the way we found many
more caves in pristine condition, without hardly trying. To my great surprise we found and
explored a virgin cave longer than 300m located incredibly close to one
of the island's most popular attractions. I am thoroughly excited at the
cave potential remaining to be discovered on Niue. I keep telling myself it is a great big world, but Niue is a small slice of it I would not mind going back to with a more discerning eye. May it never change.
Thanks to Sara for a very memorable week in paradise.
This year's New Zealand Speleological Society annual general meeting was based in Masterton in the Waiarapa area of the southeastern North Island. Most of Saturday was spent in the council meeting, but Sunday I managed to go caving in Martinborough, even co-discovering about 150m of new passage. The AGM was a great catch-up with cavers I had not seen for a while since I had been too busy with the PhD earlier in the year to make it to the other annual gatherings and I had a pleasant time socializing at the Saturday night dinner and Sunday night barbeque. I even managed to break the NZSS squeezebox record by painfully forcing my body through a 150mm wide slot (or about the height of a tall beer can).
