Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Tristan De Cunha

I was reading about the most remote human settlement in the World. It is an archipelago in the roaring forties of the South Atlantic, halfway between South Africa and South America. It has fewer than 300 residents, all descended from fifteen original inhabitants. They speak a bastardized English patois and have little education.

Seems like an OK place. A little stormy. Cool weather, not frigid. They have some goats and can grow hardy root vegetables. Plenty of fish and tasty crustaceans. They probably have cheese from the goats. The closest people are on the island of Saint Helena, not exactly a metropolis and that's hundreds of miles away. No airport. The only access is by ship and there is no suitable harbor or anchorage. They don't get much traffic.

It might be nice to live there for awhile. They don't allow immigration but I'm a registered nurse and my wife is a school teacher. They probably don't have many of those. It's not like we're going to settle down and raise a family, little late for that.

1 comment:

beebs said...

Hate to burst your bubble, but from wiki: "All Tristan families are farmers, owning their own stock. All land is communally owned. Livestock numbers are strictly controlled to conserve pasture and to prevent better-off families accumulating wealth. No outsiders are allowed to buy land or settle on Tristan."

My wife and I will be leaving CA in the distant future. I've always thought New Zealand would be a great place.