Niue is a small island as appealing for its diving as it is for quiet escapism – the definition of an easy-to-reach getaway for anyone willing to go in search of it, writes Julia Gessler In Niue, we’re floating in deep blue waters. As pristine as it is all-encompassing. This is an island of beautiful immediacy, one of the world’s smallest countries and largest coral atolls huddled in the Pacific, east of Tonga and south of Samoa, and you’ll witness an entirely different underwater world while snorkelling its crystalline waters; kicking past the shy bearing of seashells and parrotfish as serene as ornaments on a page.
But they’re not the only thing you’ll see again and again in this seductive idyll. Over the course of a week, I saw spinner dolphins, too – believed to be several pods that perform corkscrews and backflips and orbit Niue’s wild corners. This self-governing nation is affectionately called the Rock of Polynesia, mostly because everything grows out of the steep cliffs that rise and plateau as high as 60 metres straight out of the sea.
Coconut crabs – large, land-dwelling invertebrates called uga – crawl through the forests in sky-blue and red. And between July and September, humpback whales float past during their annual migration. For adventurers It can feel like an act of self-disappearing here, into the vastness of nature, of the earth, because while there may be plenty of wildlife, there are hardly any people.
Niue has a sparse population of .